Final Project Hosistic and Inegral Health

At the beginning of this course I did not know what to expect. If I would truly gain anything from it or how I would feel doing all these exercises and practices.  As I completed each unit, read our text and did the exercises I realized how important holistic and integral health is to the human body, mind and spirit.  On my journey I discovered that it is important to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically in our lives in order to achieve happiness, genuine wholeness and health. In order to help other’s we as professionals must be able to understand all aspects of health and wellness. How do we help those in need if we have not achieved those goals our self. I am a firm believe that we can not judge others unless we have been in their shoes. With this being said if we don’t have the correct out look on our lives psychologically, spiritually and physically we have no right to preach about holistic and integral health.

            In my life I like to say I live on a rollercoaster, lots of ups, downs and crazy twist, turns and loops. I have many goals in my life: educational, professional, relationships and family are all my topic goals I have set. In order to achieve them I must be on the right path to achieve and strive for human flourishing. I believe that I need to improve on all three of these aspects psychologically, spiritually and physically. I must not allow all the negative energy to overcome my mind. Psychologically I need to replace the hurt, pain and suffering of my life with more positive way of thinking. The past is the past and I can only learn from my experiences and work at become a better mother, daughter and friend. Spiritually I believe I have a great understand of my higher power, that I know he guides me through my journey here on earth but I would like to become more aware of my inner thought process and gain inner peace within myself. In order to develop physically I must tell myself that I am worth living a healthy life and try to achieve my goals through exercise, mediation and nutrition. All three of these are extremely important for us on our path to human flourishing. We must realize how each of these affect us mentally, physically and emotional and discover that there is a better way to live our lives and that is with happiness, wholeness and health.

            This assessment of me is difficult to do. I look at where I have been in the past and where I am in my present. If I where to of scored myself before this course I would of flunked myself but now that I have a better understand of what is truly important in my life I would score my spiritual growth at a 5, physically at a 7 and psychologically at a 7. I have had a lot of loss in my life and had lost focus of what was truly important. I’d say this course has been a reality check for me and my family. I have a better outlook on my goals and I know that I can achieve anything I set my mind to, I allow myself to have more patients and see that each domain affects my mind, body and soul.

            My goals have changed recently because my priorities have changed. One physical goal I have set for myself is to start exercising. I realize that when I exercise I feel better about myself and have more self confidence and self esteem.  When one feels good on the inside they will shine on the outside and I believe this is an important tool for integral health. My psychological goal is to change my mind set. Allow the little things to not bother me, to listen to others open mindedly and no sweat the small stuff in my life. I need to shrug all the negatives off and replace my thoughts with positive growth. My goal spiritually is to start attending church and turn more to my higher power when I feel defeated. I feel that by combining all three of these goals together I have a better chance of achieving and fostering integral health and human flourishing.

            The strategies I can implement to foster growth in my physical wellness is I have decided to take a kick boxing class. I decided even though I use the excuse I do not have time, it is important to make time for myself. It will allow me to reduce the stress in my everyday life while getting more physically fit. I have been working more on implementing my growth psychological. Each morning I have been staying in bed 15 to 20 minutes long and completing my mediation exercises. I have fostered in subtle mind practices and loving kindness exercises. I have found this to be very beneficial to my outlook on each day.  It gives me time to focus on myself and what I need to do to accomplish the stress of my day. Staying focused only on the positives aspects of my life and it gives me a stronger foundation.  One practice I have started doing more to become more connected spiritually is praying. I have not prayed often in my life but have realized that I need to connect more with my spiritual side. This has giving me a greater sense of inner peace.

            I am planning to track my progress by journaling and blogging. I have discovered that I enjoy writing what I feel down. It gives me an outlet to my emotions and feelings. I can express what is happening in my life, the good, the bad and the crazy. I feel that my biggest strategy will be to stay on track with my goals. Now that I have a better understand of health, wellness and effects it has on me I plan to achieve health, happiness and wholeness.

My two favorite practices that worked best for me

It is hard to believe this course is already almost over. I have truly enjoyed most of the exercise and practices and have learned alot about myself in these past 8 weeks. The two practices I plan to implement in my personal life will be visualization and meditation. With both of these exercises I just felt a sense of inner peace. It gave me time to focus on all the positives and good in my life allowing me to feel comfort, calming and relaxation. I have been trying to implement these in my life every morning before I even get out of bed. I lay there for an extra 10 to 20 minutes thinking about my life, what changes I want to make, focusing on all my happy places. During this time I feel a connection with my mind, body and spirit. I believe eliminating all the stresses in my life, not allowing all the little things to bother me will give me greater peace within my self which in return will give we happiness, wholeness and health. With these steps I hope to gain lasting holistic health.

Unit 7 "Meeting Asciepius"

For myself this week's meditation practice was a bit different than the past weeks. I focused on my brother which I lost a few years ago. At first it was very difficult but as the exercise continued I felt like he was right here with me. I thought about how much I loved him, how I missed him and then my thoughts went to our younger years and all the laughs and tears we shared together. As the practice went on I felt such an inner peace and calming I really believed that this type of mediation helped me with some of my grieving. I don't think I have aloud myself to except that he has passed on but once I completed this exercise I was smiling at the feelings I felt.

1. "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” I believe this to be a powerful statement. I am a firm believer that one can not understand someones path if they have never traveled it before. This apply's to the health and wellness professional because we must understand what our clients our feeling and what is happening within their lives in order to help them reach human flourishing. We have an obligation to your clients to be developing our health psychologically, physically, and spiritually because  if we have not reached human flourishing and integral health then what right do we have to try and practice this with our clients. Each day we can implement health, happiness and wholeness in our own lives by letting all the negatives disappear and replace them with a more positive outlook on life.

Unit 6 Integral assessment of my life

As I completed the first part of our assignment on Universal Loving Kindness, I had to stop and think about all the people that have it so much worse in life that me. Sometimes I take my life for granted and don't realize how many people are starving, homeless or our dying from a disease. This exercise made me open my heart up to others that are not close to me. The ones as I drive down the street in my new car holding a sign saying "I'm homeless and need food". I have stopped many times and givin this people a value meal and just go on. Never looking back at their struggles. After I completed Universal Loving Kindness I felt like I had a personal experience, I have a deeper understand of my society and how their our so many uncontrolled situation's in my world around me.

The next step was my integral assessment of my life. I thought were do I start. All four aspects need attention. As I thought about my past and present relationships, my diet, am I as spiritually as I want to be, can I focus more on being the person I have always wanted to be instead of just going with the motions. As I layed their on my couch and felt the stillness of my mind and body release all the negatives. I came to realize that I'm the only one that can change my life, I can have a life of health, happiness and wholeness if I stay focused on the important things and let go of all the things holding me back.

This class, and this exercises have aloud me to see that we each hold our own destiny and we must take control of our inner self to have complete human flourishing.

The Subtle Mind Unit 5

I started this exercise out listening to the audio, for some reason listening to the voice makes it difficult to relax so I decided to do this one from the reading. I had a much better experience than I did with the Loving-Kindness practice. I felt that the breathing techniques allowed me to find peace within my mind and body. With each breath I felt the stress and emotions leave my body. My mind did develop witnessing consciousness and I had unity in my consciousness. I could feel all the tension be released as I proceeded with this practice. I was allowed to stay focused on the steps of my breathing and felt a relationship between my mind and body. During the process I felt that my thoughts and feelings were not as important as I thought they were and I felt at times I was escaping all the negatives. Once I completed this, I layed there so relaxed and just at peace with my self and my life.

Connection of the spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness is how we gain psychospiritual flourishing. With spiritual wellness we can allow our mind and body to have health, happiness and wholeness. We can find inner health from within ourselves and with using the practices and exercises in our life will allow use to release our daily stress and pressures and find total integral health.

Loving-kindness Unit 4

For myself I found the loving-kindness practice to be difficult. I first began by reading "Getting Started" so I could understand the exercise. Then I listened to the audio and followed the instructions. It was difficult for me not to keep shifting my focus from one area to the next. At moments of the practice I did feel a sense of peace, mostly at the beginning when I thought of my children, I felt a loving-kindness with a sensation of pleasant thoughts. When it came to shifting my thoughts, feelings and images in an out of awareness this became difficult. I wanted to just quit but I kept going but I could never truly gain focus of the exercise. I don't know if I would recommend this to others since I could not get the full affects but for some it may be beneficial.

The concept of "Mental workout" means that we can practice and train our mind through exercise. Everyday that we can do this brings us closer to better health, happiness and wholeness within our life. I can implement mental workouts by setting aside 20 minutes a day of quite time. I could practice letting my mind release the negative thoughts and stresses of my day and replace them with positive thoughts and energy allowing to foster psychological health.

My wellbeing

As I was posting my experiences of the exercise. I forgot to post where I rate my physical, spiritual and psychological wellbeing. For all three of these I will rate myself at a 6. All three of these areas need improvement in my life. I believe I am not overweight but I do have my moments when I loss sight of eating healthy or doing things that are not the best for myself. My spiritual side I feel at most connected with. I believe in my higher power and pray often. I get a sense of peace most with my spiritual wellbeing. My psychological wellbeing is powerful, I am a over thinker and find myself needing the most improvement in this area. As I continue this journey I believe I will find a balance between my mind body and spirit and stay focus on whats most important to myself.

The crime of the century blog

After doing the mediation procedure "The crime of the Century" I had to really wait to do this blog. I had so many different feelings and emotions running through my mind and body. I truly felt a connection with this exercise.  A great feeling of peace, calming and comfort came across me. I had a overwhelming feeling of wellbeing physically, spiritual and psychologically.

My goal is to find more inner peace within myself and my environment. Doing such an exercise such as mediation allowed me to discover this. I plan to try and complete this activity on my own each day. As I took each deep breath I felt all my energy focusing on letting all my negative thoughts be released. I felt like this allowed me to take control and find a balance within my body, that my mind could find peace and that I had a spiritual awaking that I have never felt before.

I believe that if we can find a connection such as this with our mind and body we can have a life full of happiness, wellness, wholeness and health. This exercise was a very powerful experience that is difficult to explain.

Reflection exercise

As I listened to the reflection exercise, I allowed my mind to clear, It felt so good and I felt at peace with my thoughts.

Welcome statement

Good morning to everyone.  I am not sure if I am doing all this correctly. I have never blogged before so this will be a learning experience. I hope everyone has a great day and I'll see everyone in here or the DB.

Experience

Hello class and professor, Just thought I'd try this out and see if it worked.