Review

In reviewing my unit three and comparing it to my unit 9 assignment in comparing my health and wellness in mind spirit and physical wellbeing. In unit 3 i scored myself in my physical wellbeing on a scale of 1 to 10  and 8 in unit nine i scored myself an 8 so there was no improvement or decline. In unit three i scored myself in mental wellbeing an 8 in unit 9 exercise i scored myself a 7 the reason i feel i scored myself lower is because i really question my mental wellbeing so i don't feel i declined in mental wellness but i just realized i need more work than i previously thought. In unit 3 i scored my spiritual wellbeing a 5 in unit nine i scored myself a 5 so there was no improvement or decline. I feel i have made progress with my goals because this course has made me set goals for all three areas of health and wellness. This course has been very rewarding just in the simple regards of really taken a look at myself with no bias and seeing what i have to work on to improve myself.

reflection

            The importance for a health and wellness professional to develop psychological, spiritual, and physical well being is so that the health professional can teach others how to do the same. A quote that describes this perfectly is,” One cannot lead another where one had not gone himself.” The areas I need to develop to achieve my goals of psychological, spiritual, and physical well being is in all these areas of my life.  I feel that you will always have room to grow and further yourself in these areas. There are no end goals just milestones.  If I was to score myself on a scale of one to ten on my health and wellness in psychological, spiritual, and physical well being one being non-existent and 10 being fully developed I would give my physical well being an 8 My mental wellbeing an 7 and my wellbeing spiritual a 5.  My goal for physical well being is to work out 5 times week and eat healthier and enjoy it. My goal for mental well being is to turn my loneliness into relaxing alone time and self reflection. My goal for spiritual wellbeing is to go to church with my mom. The strategies I have to implement to foster growth in physical wellbeing is to start a 6 day pre planned work out program called insanity  that are 45 minutes to an hour long. The second thing im going to do is start running 3 days a week boxing at least 1 time and week and playing soccer 1 time a week.  I plan to shop and buy and cook healthier food no fast food just home prepared meals. The strategies I have to implement to foster growth in mental wellbeing is each time I feel lonely I am going to reflect on the fact that I am better off alone and am not in a destructive relationship just because I don’t want to feel lonely. I am also going to focus this energy to working out. Furthermore I will use these feelings for self reflection and change the perception of loneliness to alone time and meditation. The strategies I have to implement to foster growth in spiritual wellbeing are to go to church with my mom and meditate. I must get more sleep to get up on Sunday morning and have the will power to drive an hour to see my mom on Sunday and go to church with her. The other practice im going to use to foster spiritual growth is meditation. I am going to use the meditative practices provided to me through this class Loving kindness, subtle mind practice and meeting Asclepius. I am also going to use stomach breathing techniques along with this in my meditation. I will assess my progress in the next six months with my physical well being with my mirror and my weight scale and by how many times I eat in as I do eat out or fast food. The strategy im going to use for this is track how many times I eat out as I cook for myself. To assess my progress for mental wellbeing is to see if my actual loneliness goes away with the exercises I outlined above. The strategy im going to implement is to keep a journal at the end of each day and record my ups and downs so I can look back and see how much I have improved and to keep my mind focused on my goal. To access my progress for my spiritual progress im going to meditate and see how much mental chatter and how much I can quite my mind this should be easy since my mental chatter sounds like a bar as of right now. The strategy im going to implement to maintain this is using my mom to hold me accountable to go to church with her.

reviewing meditation practices.

After reviewing the meditation practices (Loving-kindness, subtle mind, visualization) the two practices i found most beneficial to me were the subtle mind and the visualization. The reason i liked these two the most was you only had to focus on 1 thing at a time and most often you just had a single point of focus. Exercises where you focus on different things are very distracting to me and often my mind wanders  and just plain hard to stay focused. So these two exercises were most beneficial because i was actually able to meditate and relax instead of being distracted when it was time to switch to a different focal point. I can implement these practices in my life to reduce stress in my life when i am feeling overwhelmed by school, relationship, and bills.

Meeting asciepius

The meditative practice for this week was meeting asciepius. This practice had you focus on a person that is wise and you respect a healer. first you focus on them than on kind wisdom speech and a kind heart at the end of the meditation you turn yourself into the wise healer and focus on yourself. This exercise was very relaxing i did get distracted with thoughts several times but was able to refocus i still have quite a bit of mental chattering going on. These practices i can continue to use in life as a stress reducer they calm me greatly.
       the saying "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself"  Applies to health and wellness in the spiritual sense if you are not spiritually mature how can you show or lead someone else to spiritual maturity that is why it is important to practice spiritual wellness to help others attain this goal to be physically, spiritually and mentally healthy.

          The universal Loving-kindness exercise is used to expand your heart and mind. You close your eyes  and for a minute or two rest into the natural ease of your mind and body, and repeat the following phrases for 10 minutes:
May all individuals gain freedom from suffering
May all individuals find sustained health, happiness, and wholeness.
May i assist all individuals in gaining freedom from suffering
May i assist all individuals in finding health, happiness, and wholeness.
This exercise was easy for me to relax and concentrate on. I had just got into an argument with my roommate right before this exercise and honestly the last thing i wanted to do is wish for her happiness and wholeness but after this exercise i just didn't care anymore. So it did help me relieve stress. The only difficult part about it for me i couldn't keep my eyes close and remember what to say to myself. I kept having to open my eyes to read what i was supposed to be telling myself.
          The second exercise you are supposed to ease into a still mind and ask yourself what part of my life spiritual, biological, interpersonal, or worldly is source of difficulty. then think of what area is more essential for you at this point of your life and concentrate on that. My focus was on my spiritual aspects of my life it is so hard to be spiritual in the place i live and the friends i have. I almost don't know where to start when it comes to spirituality.

Subtle mine exercise

I found the subtle mind exercise to be more relaxing and easier to do than the loving-kindness exercise. The reason for this was the focusing on the breath every time you get distracted. The loving kindness exercise had me think of to many people that gave me a lot more things to be distracted by my wondering mind. With the subtle mind exercise all you had to concentrate was on your in breath or out breath just much simpler for me to stay focused or to refocus after my mind would wonder. The connection between spiritual, mental wellness, and  physical wellness. Is you cannot have one without the other. If you are sick spiritually you probably will not have the drive to work out physically. You probably will be searching for something to fill that void drugs, alcohol, sex, addiction is not the breading place for a mentally healthy mind or a physically healthy body. In my own life i feel mental health every time i go to church with my mom to fill my spiritual health when i feel this way usually i work out which is good for my physical health.

Experience of love and kindness

I was very relaxed with the loving kindness exercise. It let me reflect on loved one and myself and brought a calm over me that was very beneficial to my soul and body. I had some distractions with an inch or a pain shooting through my body but was able to quickly refocus. I would recommend this to others it is very nice to get in touch with ones self and really puts into perspective the important things in life instead of getting distracted and stressed by the small things in life that are really of no consequence.
the concept of a mental workout is exercising the brain and really concentrating on the spiritual and mental side of our human selves. Research definitely supports a stress reduction and physical health benefits of a mental workout. Mental workouts can help with stress and just make your day better. As i said before puts things in a positive perspective.