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