Unit 10-Follow-up

Hi everyone, I can't believe this is the last few days of class---kinda sad. We were asked in unit 3 to assess our physical, spiritual, and psychological well being and I rated myself a 8-9 in physical, 6-7 in spiritual, and 7-8 in psychological. Today and since we have started the class I would have to say I have improved in all the areas. Physical: 9-10--I have included additional cardio in my training plan which was one of my goals in order to improve. Spiritual: 7-8--I have always gone to church but I think it was just the motion now I actually "feel" it as well as daily practice of loving kindness has come along way, it is now a part of daily routine and I even do not have to think that I need to practice it. Psychological: 7-8--This one is still difficult especially as I write about this this evening. This is the anniversary of my fathers passing and it may have been 7 years ago it is still pretty raw since for the last 8 years I have been the caretaker, defender, and everything of an alcoholic and abusive ex husband so since I am finally free I am just now going through the grieving stages. Erika

Unit 9-Personal Plan

Hi everyone, here is my personal plan: Personal Plan As a health and wellness professional developing ourselves is a key aspect in being able to help others, we should “practice what we preach”. It will also help with developing a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our clients as well as those we work with. Self-development and practicing integral health should be a lifelong commitment and while not one aspect is more important than the other we may need to work on one more than the other. At the beginning of the class one of the exercises was to identify an area that I needed more attention and I chose spiritual development. Through process of elimination I would have to say I need to work on both spiritual and psychological development. I was able to assess myself based on a couple different ideas. First, how do I feel? Second, how are others responding to me? Based on that, I would score myself as follows; physical: “9 out of 10”, psychological: “7-8 out of 10”, and 6-7 out of 10” in spiritual health. Setting goals to fully have integral health is important. For physical health my goal is to incorporate more cardiovascular exercises to my current weight lifting routine. Psychological and spiritual health is something that I would like to work on simultaneously. My plan is to include at least a half-hour (morning and evening) to clear my head and specifically for spiritual is be more involved in church and then actually applying that to my personal life more stringently. My strategy is the same for all three and it is quite simple in thought but more difficult in practice, take and make the time. The following are the examples of exercises I will plan on including daily; 1). physical: walk or elliptical post workout for 20-30 minutes depending on muscle group that was trained that particular day, 2). psychological: tai chi and/or visualization for as long as I need to “relax” my mind, and 3). spiritual: in addition to being more involved in church my plan is to practice loving-kindness and subtle mind; while these are recommended to be done in a quiet area I know that I can do this anywhere and anytime and that is my current plan especially for practicing loving-kindness. Assessments should be an on-going process; however, a six month assessment should be done in greater detail. Detailed assessments are important in being able to make adjustments in the program and my plan is to ask questions. How do I feel on the inside and outside? Do I need to increase the amount or time spent on the exercises? Do I continue to have mindless chatter? How are others around me feeling when I am in the area? Based on the answers I can change or alter my program. This is not a on again off again program and it has to be flexible enough to change as we change throughout our life cycle. I hope that some of my ideas work for each of you as I have incorporated ideas that were suggested throughout the class. v/r Erika

Unit 8-Initial blog post

Hi everyone! I'm sitting here trying to figure out which of the two exercises that I found where the most beneficial...I guess if I have to choose it would be loving-kindness and visualization. I chose loving-kindness because that is the foundation and visualization for the benefit of "seeing" things that are not distorted and quite frankly that's how I learn anyway. Practicing loving-kindness on a daily basis or even when you become upset with others and yourself can help me refocus on the good things that we can offer. The visualization is something that I do most everyday anyways but can used for more than picturing a task that I have to complete. Erika