Unit 10

1.         Review your unit 3 personal assessment of your psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being. Reflect on these areas . How did you score yourself on a scale from 1 to 10 in unit 3? How do you score yourself now? Has the score changed? Why or why not?

In unit 3 I scored myself at a 7 for my physical wellbeing, 8 for my spiritual wellbeing and a 7 or 8 for my psychological wellbeing.  Today I would say I am a 7 for physical wellbeing because unfortunately, I am still smoking.  My spiritual wellbeing I am still at an 8 and for my psychological wellbeing I am an 8.  I believe my scores have pretty much remained the same.  I don’t think it is bad for the scores to remain the same.  Especially when I think of the stress level I have been under in both my personal and professional life.  I believe the exercises and practices I have learned and began using have kept my scores from falling.

2.         Review the goals and activities you set for yourself in each area. Have you made progress toward the goals? Explain.

The biggest goal I set for myself I have not reached yet, which is to quit smoking.  I am still working toward this goal.  I have been incorporating more meditation time into my life which is definitely helping me spiritually and I am beginning to really deal with the deaths of my brother and my mother’s illness.  So although I have not reached my goals I am still actively working toward the goals.

3.         Have you implemented the activities you chose for your well-being in each of the three areas? Explain.

I have implemented the meditation into my life.  I have also begun taking a class at my church called growth tracks that are aimed at helping you to grow spiritually and to help you discover you God given purpose.  I believe that as I complete these classes they will aide in my development and growth and I will meet all of my goals.

4.     Summarize your personal experience throughout this course. Have you developed improved well-being? What has been rewarding? What has been difficult? How will this experience improve your ability to assist others?

As I have stated earlier, I am still working toward my goals and improving my overall wellbeing.  I would say that overall this course has been rewarding to me.  I have learned a lot about myself.  And I have learned tools that will help me to continue to grow and develop.  The most difficult thing for me in this class was to acknowledge my weaknesses and to implement tools daily that would aide in restoration of my whole self.  As I continue to grow and develop, I will be able to express myself to others about my process and help them as they choose to begin a journey of self reflection and self development.

Gigi

Final Project

Ginette Trapp

HW420-02

March 5, 2011

I.                     Introduction

It is important for a health and wellness professional to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically because the practitioner must really know and understand his practice in order to be efficient.  Dacher states, “To model and teach this special work requires not merely book learning, but direct hands-on instruction in the many practices that facilitate the path to human flourishing.” 

In my own life, I need to continue to work on the spiritual and physical aspects of my development. The past several years have been full of stress due to the lengthy illness and subsequent death of my only living brother followed by the realization of my mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s.  This does not include the daily stresses of being a wife, mother and full time employee.  I have not always managed this stress well; I have gained weight and been short tempered at inappropriate things and times.  I believe that if I had been more centered and had spent more time in spiritual development, my stress would not have been so severe.  So my goals are to become more spiritually centered and incorporate a new physical workout into my life that will help manage stress as I continue to move forward in achieving my career and personal goals.

II.                  Assessment

Assessing yourself is always a difficult task because it forces you to take a hard and

            honest look at yourself.  I have generally assessed myself by looking at how I am

handling the stressful events that occur in my life.  If I remain balanced, I know that I am doing well.  I ask myself questions that make me look at specific aspects of my life.  As I begin to take on this task, I will rate myself in each domain using a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest.  I believe in the psychological domain I would rate myself at a 6.  I believe I am pretty stable but at times of high stress, I can to show signs of stress.  I have had bouts of depression and I am always susceptible to becoming depressed.  I believe if I continue to work on myself in all of the domains, I will lessen the possible bouts of depression.  I believe that all of them are connected and   they work together to keep you balanced. 

Spiritually I would rate myself at an 8.  I am constantly working on myself spiritually.  I am taking the time to pray and meditate daily.  Spiritual health is important to the entire health of a person because it helps to reduce stress or at least helps you manage the stress; which can have a detrimental effect on a person physically. 

Physically, I rate myself at a 4, because I am not physically active.  I am about 15 or 20 pounds overweight, which I can feel in my daily life.  I need to incorporate some type of physical activity into my daily life.

III.                      Goal Development

Since it is obvious that I have need for improvement in all three areas, I will set

            goals to help me achieve greater development in all of three areas.  In the

            psychological area, my goal is to manage my level of stress and deal more effectively

            with stress when it occurs.  Also it is my goal to work to not allow myself to get so

            overwhelmed that I am susceptible to bouts of depression. 

                        Physically, my goal is to get my weight back down to a weight where I feel more

            comfortable with myself.  So this means that I will also begin a workout plan that will

            help me lose weight and get in shape.  Instead of sitting down in front of the television

            for hours doing nothing.   I will do jumping jacks or sit ups during the commercial breaks.

            I will also try to incorporate yoga combined with meditation which will help me with

            development and growth in the psychological and spiritual areas too.

                        My  goals spiritually is to continue to read, study and meditate on the God’s

            word.  So that I will continue to grow and become more settled and balanced.  I will take

            classes at my church that will help with my growth and development. 

IV.                 Practices for personal health

There are several strategies I can implement to help me achieve my goals for

            physical development.  As I stated before I will start to do some type of physical

            activity during commercials when I am watching television.  I will also implement a

            workout program that I will commit to at least three times a week.  I will also monitor

            my food intake so that I am eating proper portions as well as eating more nutritional

            foods.  All of these things combined will help me achieve the goal of losing my desired

            amount of weight.

                        Strategies that I will use to help me meet my goals for psychological

            development are to implement exercises or practices such as yoga and meditation. 

            Both of these exercises are great to help calm and quiet the mind so that it can be

            cleared of all the noise so that you can think more clearly.  This also helps to release

            Stress levels and helps you learn how to manage stress.  When I begin to feel stress,

            I can take a few moments to meditate to help alleviate stress before it becomes a

            serious problem.

                        The strategies that I will use to help my development spiritually are to the same

                        As those I will use to help me develop psychologically.  Yoga and meditation are

            great tools to help with spirituality as well as psychological development.  I will

            Implement the loving kindness exercise into my daily routine and if not try to do the

            Exercise at least three times a week.   

V.                   Commitment

I will assess my progress or lack of progress over the next six months by using my

            monthly calendar to plan when I want to do each of these exercises and practices.  I will

            note the weekly on my actual participation or lack of participation in each of these

            exercises and practices.  I also like to journal, so I will make a point when I am

            journaling to note which activity I have actively done.  This will give me a written

            log of my progress which will give me the information needed to monitor my

            progress.  These same practices of making a monthly calendar and journaling are

            the tools I will use to help me maintain my long term practices for health and

            wellness. 

References

Dacher, M. E. (2006). Integral health: The path to human flourshing. Laguna Beach, California: Basic

 Health Publications, Inc.

Unit 8

1. Review the exercises and practice sessions you have completed in this course. (Loving Kindness, Subtle mind, Visualization, meditation etc.) Choose two practices that you have determined to be most beneficial. How can you implement these practices in your personal life to foster “mental fitness”? Provide specific examples.

The two practices that I found to be most beneficial for me are the meditation and loving kindness exercises.  I can implement these into my daily routine by allocating 10-15 minutes in the morning for meditation prior to waking up my children or husband to begin the day.  I can also take a few minutes every night prior to lying down for the night to do one of these exercises to help me relax and prepare for a restful nights sleep.  I believe if I can become consistant with implementing at least one of these practices into my daily routine in the morning and at night before bed, I will see significant changes in myself.  I can't wait to see the new me after a few weeks of doing these.

Gigi

unit 7

1. Complete the "Meeting Asciepius" exercise on track #4 of the Dacher CD. Describe your meditative practice(s) for the week and discuss the experience. Explain how mindfulness or meditation has fostered an increase in your psychological or spiritual wellness. How can you continue to apply these practices in your life to foster greater health and wellness?

As has happened in the past, I found it difficult to really get into this exercise and had to restart it when I knew I would have the time to devote to it.  I choose my Grandmother to connect with for this exercise, she passed away several years ago, but she was one of the wisest and sweetest people I have ever known.  I felt a strong connection to her during this exercise, a connection I have not felt sense she passed.  Meditating has increased my spiritual wellness because I am more of aware of myself.  By that I mean I am more conscious of my thoughts and my reaction to things and people around me.  Meditating is also helping me to connect more with my prayer life which is developing my relationship with God.  I am and have been feeling more hopeful and at peace than I have felt in a very long time.  My relationship with my husband and children seem to be much lighter and more fun.  I am finding that I have more patience to deal with my Mother who has Alzheimers and I am enjoying my time with her instead of focusing on her illness.  I will continue to spend time in meditation daily and will try to add time for meditating not only in the morning before starting my day but at night before I lay down for the night.

1. Describe the saying: "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” (P.477) How does this apply to the health and wellness professional? Do you have an obligation to your clients to be developing your health psychologically, physically, and spiritually? Why or why not? How can you implement psychological and spiritual growth in your personal life?

This saying really means that you can't sell something that you don't believe in yourself.  So if you are trying to teach and guide someone to a healthier life and you are leading an unhealthy life; how can you possibly be effective in transmitting this message positively.  As health care professionals we have to at least appear to be healthy, the old adage, do as I say not as I do doesn't work so well with grownups.  We tend to be more visual and need to see the resuts and hear personal testimonies of transformation.  As I have said before, you can implement the exercises we have done throughout this course into your life as part of your daily routine to began developing your psychological and spirtiual growth.  It can also include yoga, tai chi and other exercises that will help you.

Unit 6

1. Describe the exercise and assessment process. What did you discover about yourself? What area have you chosen to be a focus of growth and development? Why? What are some specific exercises or activities that you can implement to foster greater wellness in this area?

The Loving Kindness exercise gave me a sense of peace and happiness.  I was in a very good and happy place after completing the exercise.  I had been feeling stressed out due to dealing with my mother's illness and thinking about the death of my brothers earlier in the afternoon.  I felt a sense of hope that all would be well with my family.  As for the intergral assessment, it was a little difficult for me because I couldn't really concentrate because my children were in and out of the room as I was trying to complete the assessment.  I do feel, however, that I need more growth and development in the psychospiritual area because the growth and development in this area will help me become more at peace with all of the things I have going on in my life presently.  I will spend more time meditating and maybe if time permits add some yoga to my daily activities to foster more development in this area.

Gigi

Loving-Kindness

1. Describe your experience. (Did you find it beneficial? Difficult?) Why or Why not? Would you recommend this to others? Why or Why not?

I found this experience to be beneficial.  I found it easy to focus my love on those close to me and especially those family members that were suffering or dealing with a painful situation.  I even found it was not to hard to focus on myself and give all the love in my heart to me.  To be able to completely focus on my body and feel what it was feeling without judgement, which is usually what I do when I think of different areas of my body.  For instance, my stomach, that I feel is too big, but I am the only one that feels this way.  I tend to be very critical of myself both physically and emotionally.  So to be able to just love ,me for who I am both physically and emotionally was quite pleasant.  And I would recommend this to others so that they to can begin to love themselves for who and what they are as well as the world at large.

2.  What is the concept of “Mental Workout? What does the research indicate are the proven benefits of a Mental Work Out? How can you implement mental workouts to foster your psychological health?

Mental workout is a way of training the mind to become efficient at the contemplative exercises that will help us to evolve our psychospiritual life.  It will take a consistant mental workout to reach the 'progressive development of an expanded consciousness and its healing capacities'.  Implementing mental workouts are difficult because discipline is needed just like when implementing physical workouts.  One way to implement a mental workout is to make it the very first thing you do when you wake up in the morning.  The quietness of your home and with your mind clear of day to day activities at that time of day is a great way to start your day.  I am going to try and make this a part of my morning routine by first importing the cd onto my ipod and closing up in the bathroom and complete this exercise before I do anything else to begin my day.

Unit 3 Blog

1.      Based on your reflections, and on a scale of 1 to 10 (ten being optimal wellbeing), where do you rate your A-physical wellbeing, B-spiritual well-being, C-psychological well-being? Why?

I would rate my physical wellbeing at 7.  I chose this rating because I am a smoker but I am taking chantix and hope to soon be counted among the nonsmokers very soon. I would rate my spiritual wellbeing an 8 because I pray and study my bible daily.  I would rate my psychological wellbeing a 7 or 8 because I am still dealing with the death of my brother and learning how to deal effectively with my mother who has Alzheimer’s disease.

2.       Develop a goal for yourself in each area (physical, spiritual, psychological).

My goal physically is obvious, quit smoking.  My spiritual goal would be to incorporate more of what I am learning into action, because the bible tells me that faith is a great activator.  My psychological goal would be to completely come to terms with the losses in my life.

3.      What activities or exercise can you implement in your life to assist in moving toward each goal?

I can count the days I have gone without smoking so that I can see my achievement.  An exercise I can implement for my spiritual goal could be to meditate on a specific scripture that will help me to achieve my goals.  As far as my goal for my psychological wellbeing, I can acknowledge the different stages of grief, find someone to talk to that could be helpful to me, maybe a counselor or therapist, if necessary.

4.  My experience with the relaxation exercise 'Crime of the Century' was not as pleasant as the previous one.  I don't know why it was so different, but it could have been all of the extra activity and noise going on in my home.  The kids interrupting me during the exercise, the tv, my husband in and out of the room.  So I think I will listen to it again when no one is in the house to see if my first experience was authentic. 

Gigi