My Reflections

Hello Everyone!!

Physically, I had myself at a 7 on the 1-10 scale because I had started to watch my nutrition and exercise, but I think I have drastically gone down from that number since I first initial assessment.  This semester there was a lot of things going on at work, having to work extra hours, stress, etc. so I was just too exhausted to cook and exercise.  So, I ate out a lot instead of cooking at home, didn’t exercise as much as I wanted.  Now that work has been better, more normal activities day to day I don’t have to worry as much about work.  I will be able to spend more time concentrating on my physical well-being.  This weekend, I’m going to do yoga and Tai Chi.  I’m hoping to practice these every weekend for at least a half an hour each.  I have also been watching what I eat more closely recently.  Eating more fruit and vegetables and limiting my junk food and dessert intake.  I’m getting married next year and I need to fit in that dress, so this is also helping to motivate me on eating right.

Spiritually, I wasn’t able to rate myself on this because I never really felt I was very religious or spiritual, but rather I’ve been continually in search mode.  I find myself inclined to the Eastern philosophy and religions.  I would rate myself a 6 on the 1-10 now because recently I have been reflecting more on the subject with the help of this class.  I have been practicing breathing techniques to help calm my mind and body.  I also meditate at least once a day, finding quiet time for myself to reflect on my day.

Psychologically, I forgot to give myself a numbered rating, but I feel great emotionally.  I feel like I am a 7 rating now.  I have come a long way from previous years emotionally.  I feel stronger as a person, having a stronger mind.  I have squashed my feelings of insecurity and have embraced happy thoughts towards myself and others.  This is a continual process of course because life has ups and downs, but I feel like I have learned some of the necessary skills to help me cope with these things. 

My goal is to continue to practice what we learned through this class.   I have started to practice some of the techniques that we’ve learned such as meditation and visualization.  I have also tried yoga and Tai Chi recently and would like to incorporate these practices more fully into my life.  I will need to concentrate on limiting my activities to simplify my life.  This is the most difficult thing for me to do at this point because I grew up having a full schedule of activities.  I have been setting aside “me” time to practice meditation and breathing, but I feel as if I have to make myself do this instead of it being a natural thing to do. 

This class has opened up my eyes to other approaches to being healthy.  I feel that I was on the path before this class, but now have a better understanding and appreciation.   I hope to help others in the future as well as to continue seeking knowledge to become a happier, healthier and whole individual. 

My Personal Health & Wellness Plan

Hello Everyone!  Here's my plan for this year to hopefully keep me happy and healthy. 

Health and wellness professionals should continuously develop themselves psychologically, spiritually and physically.  It is important that they do so in order to best help not only their own health and well-being, but of those individuals that seek their guidance.  In this paper, I will identify the areas that I need to develop within myself to achieve optimal well-being.  Making an assessment of my current health in regard to my mind, body and spirit will allow me the understanding of myself and the changes I need to make in order to improve as a whole person.   I believe I need help in all areas.  Physically, I need to start an exercise and nutrition regime that will help keep my body healthy.  Psychologically, I can take steps to ensure my emotional needs are taken care of such as doing the things that make me happy.  Spiritually, I would like to start meditation and some of the techniques that we learned about in class such as Visualizing and Calm-Abiding practices.  My personal practices and commitment to become a healthier individual in mind, body and spirit will hopefully help guide me to be a better person.  Eventually, I would like to be able to say that I am whole in mind, body and spirit.

I assessed myself using a feeling word checklist.  This checklist is a simple list of descriptive words that can help me identify how I feel.  A feeling word checklist is a practical method to classify feelings (Neukrug & Fawcett, p. 224, 2010).  I searched online for feeling word checklists and I came across a few that helped me define how I feel physically, psychologicallyand spiritually about myself.  There was no scoring method listed on these feeling word checklists, however it was suggested to use the assessment as a way to think about what I feel. 

If I were to score myself on my health in each of these categories:  physically, psychologically and spiritually on a scale of 1-10, I believe myself to be a 7 psychologically, a 6 spiritually and a 4 physically on the scale.  The reason why I feel that I am a 7 psychologically now is because in my past life experience, I have come a long way in terms of my emotional health.  There was a point in my life years ago that I was depressed and unhappy with my life. I used alcohol  and cigarettes as a crutch to make me feel better.  I did not care how these substances affected my physical health.  It came to a point that I didn’t like myself anymore and decided that I need to make a serious change if I was going to get healthy again.  It took about six years, but I eventually did it.  I quit smoking, stopped drinking and started to hang out with people who didn’t bring me down emotionally and psychologically.  I changed my lifestyle, but I know it is important to continue making changes.

In regard to my spiritual health, I feel I am currently at a 6 on a 1-10 scale.  After all the years of negative thoughts about my life, I wanted to start having a more positive attitude and calm mind.  I started to practice breathing techniques and try meditating, quiet contemplation.  I still could use work of course in this area and plan to continue practicing. 

Physically, unfortunately I am a 4 on the scale.  I have been really bad with my diet and exercise in the past two years.  There was a lot of issues that I was dealing with at work, lots of changes and drama and I just stopped exercising and watching my nutrition.  Instead, I ate whatever I wanted, sometimes binging on food and eating junk food due to stress.  I also stopped exercising and would come home after work, have dinner and fall asleep on the couch every night.  I was not motivated to exercise at all.  I am currently trying to get back to a healthy diet and exercise program, but it has been a difficult process.

                                                                                                                       I believe that since physically I am currently at a 4 on the 1-10 scale, I feel that I need to work on this area first.  So, my goal this year is to commit to eating only healthy foods in my diet and exercise at least three days a week minimum for an hour.   I plan on minimizing junk food, soda and desserts from my diet.  I know myself and I am unable to cut these things out completely so minimizing my intake of these things will help me to eventually cut them out from my diet gradually.  I want to practice yoga and Tai Chi on a regular basis as well.  I have can practice yoga on my Wii, but would have to maybe get a video on Tai Chi in order to follow the movements properly.  

Next, I would like to implement some of the practices that we learned in this course to help my spiritual and emotional growth.  I think Loving-Kindness is a great practice to start with.  “This is our most powerful antidote to destructive emotions like anger, intolerance, jealousy, pride, and greed that agitate our mind and make it unavailable for further development (Dacher, p. 51, 2006).  I think this would be one of my main obstacles that would keep me from continuing to grow.  I liked how our textbook mentioned that we need to show loving kindness to ourselves in order for us to show loving kindness to others (Dacher, p. 51, 2006).  I will try and catch myself from thinking negative thoughts about myself and change them into positive ones.  Once I get into this habit it should make it easier to do the same when thinking about others.  Another practice that I would like to implement is eliminating the unnecessary activities that make my life busier than it needs to be.  My life is filled with activities that I plan for myself.  My calendar is always full, there is rarely a time when I just have time to sit quietly because I am always on the move, going somewhere, doing something. 

Practicing silence stillness will definitely help me prioritize what is important and what is not in my life (Dacher, p. 55, 2006).   In order to do this I will have to make a conscious effort to make time for myself.  Setting aside at least an hour a day to start. 

In order to assess my progress in the next six months, I will use the feeling checklists that I did at the start of this personal plan and do another one six months from now.  This can help to see whether my outlook has changed in terms of my feelings about myself psychologically, spiritually and physically.  To help assist me in maintaining my goals, I plan on writing my thoughts down in a journal.  I did not have much success doing the blog site since it was difficult for me to have access consistently.  So, having a journal notebook that I can take with me and carry in my purse everywhere is better suited for my lifestyle.  In conclusion, I feel that this class has given me valuable information and tools to help me succeed in making changes towards a happy, healthy and whole self. 

 Thank you all, all the best on the road to your health and well-being.

Jill

          

Visualization & Meditation

I believe all of the exercises were good, but the two that was most beneficial for me is Visualization and Meditation.  The visualization exercise helped me to recall my most positive and pleasant memories which make me smile whenever I think about them.  Fostering happy thoughts has definitely been beneficial since I've started to practice these visualization exercises almost daily.  Whenever I may be feeling down or upset especially at work, I try to catch myself before I get to the point of constantly dwelling on the negative.  I take several deep breaths first to clear my mind.  Then, I try to visualize  happier momentz in my life such as when my fiance first proposed to me or how he always tries to make everything better by being so supportive.  I think about my dog and how she makes me happy.  Then I remember how great my life is and why would I want to dwell on the negative happenings because they are so temporary and not worth such effort.  I also have been enjoying the meditation exercises because it helps me to focus my attention on my breathing and helping to calm my mind and body.  I used to get hives from stress a lot, just about every other day because I would let things get to me.  I would get agitated and itchy and have big welts all over my arms and legs.  I have noticed recently though since practicing some of these techniques I get hives less frequently.  I can't pinpoint exactly what practice is helping the most, maybe a combination of both, but I'm just happy something is helping.

Reflections (Unit 3)

Hello Everyone! It has been awhile, but I'm back!!

I would definitely say that I am not at my optimal level of well being by any standards.  In fact, if I had to be honest I would put myself at a 7 on a scale of 1-10.  Physically, I could lose a few pounds, the 30 or so pounds I put on the last year and a half from eating unhealthy food and not exercising has taken its toll.  I just feel more tired, sluggish after work and it just is hard to stay motivated to exercise.  I'm slowly working my way back to exercising regularly. 

Spiritually, I'm not exactly sure.  I can't say that I am a very religious person.  I don't attend church or pray, but rather am still searching for something.  I try to do good for myself and for others. 

Psychologically, I never felt better.  I was having a very difficult time for a period of about six years about ten or so years ago.  I had a traumatic experience that I just had to get over and it took a long time for me to get out it.  I was a very negative, depressed and dark person and I felt and probably looked it too.  I started having anxiety attacks.  I developed a bad cigarette smoking/drinking habit.  I don't think I really cared about myself at that period of my life.  I had to gain my confidence in myself back and take control of my life.  With the help of a Psychologist and great family and friends, I was able to do that. 

My goal physically is just to eat healthier, keep away from the junk food, eat smaller meals and exercise regularly, four times a week on my Wii.  My goal spiritually would be to read up on the subject more.  I think I seem to find myself more in tuned to Eastern philosophy and religion at this point in my life.  For my psychological goal I would just try not to dwell on negative things too much in my life.  I found it just brings me down.  Life is going to happen, the good, the bad, but we make our own personal choices on what route to take as we learned from Dacher in this unit with Integral Healing. 

Until the next time. . .

Wishing Everyone A Very Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Hello Everyone-
Just wanted to wish you ALL a happy, healthy holiday season.  I'm sure from now until after the new year, we will all have ate way to much, drank one too many cocktails, but had an awesome time with family and friends.  Be safe & enjoy the Winter Break!!

-808IslandGirl

East becomes West & West becomes East

Hello Everyone!!
   I'm back.  I took a short hiatus from blogging since nothing substancial came to mind regarding the subject of health and wellness the last couple of days.  Although, today, the reading from this unit mentioned how "the East is now witnessing a rise in materialism, and the West is now experiencing interest in the mind and spirit" (Dacher, 2006, p. 25).  I wonder how this shift in thinking will affect both cultures in the long run?  Will they both eventually become balanced?  
According to the text, the forgotten half of human existence will reassert itself.  So, what exactly does this mean?  It does not seem promising that either culture will become balanced, but will have to continue their journey to seek health and wellness through other means.  Anyone have any ideas regarding this subject?  

-808IslandGirl    

Contemplating Yin and Yang

Welcome to DAY TWO of my new blog. 

Today I'm contemplating the concept of Yin and Yang.  Yin and Yang is all about balance.  The Yin and Yang symbol is widely recognized in both the East and Western cultures.  I've been trying to incorporate this concept in my life for some time now.  Although, I can't say that I'm entirely good at it or even on the right track.  I mean who can actually say that all things in their lives are well balanced, not me.  I'm so unbalanced it's not even funny.  My life is one extreme to the next.    According to the article, The Concept of Yin and Yang Theory by Rachel Mork, "According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, balance is essential for healthful living".  This means you must have a balanced lifestyle, a balanced diet, the energy in your body must be balanced and your environment must have balance.  In other words, Yin and Yang affects every part of our lives. 

The trouble is finding balance throughout every aspect in our lives.  It can be difficult juggling a  full-time job, a family along with one demanding, but cute pooch, being a full-time student and trying to eat healthy and exercise all at the same time.  I'm sure some people are just naturals and have everything all figured out, but for those individuals like me it can be exhausting just thinking about it.  I can be doing great at work and at school, working hard at studying and at my job, but then be too tired to exercise when I get home.  So, instead of exercising, we eat dinner late since I have to cook when I get home from work, then pass out in front of the tv after dinner on the couch. 
Okay, I know some of you know what I'm talking about.  This is life as I know it just about every day except for the occasional "I'm feeling guilty" workout that I throw in now and then on my Wii.  The bottom line to the Yin and Yang concept is that it is a matter of finding the balance between everything going on in our lives.  I'm hoping I will get there eventually, but if any of you get to that Yin and Yang point in your life first, let me know.  Much thanks in advance.