Creating Wellness, final thoughts

Hi Everyone!
As I look back at my assessment of my psychological, physical, and spiritual well being assessment I think I was fairly optimistic. When I evaluate it through the eyes of where I want to be it seems that I have a long way to go. I would probably rate myself less on a scale of one to ten than I did. Having said that, I would like to add a disclaimer- ratings are useful for somethings but when looking at my life I find they are not as useful to me. I do not want to see my life as a "solid seven" knowing that I have to go all the way to "ten" to achieve my goal. I want to view today as the best today I could have had and to make tomorrow better for myself and for those people I may come in contact with.

I was at breakfast with a friend yesterday, on an outside patio, and he commented, "this would be better if we were..." someplace else. I agreed at first and stopped myself. I don't want to be someplace else, I don't want to wish my life away by thinking about what could be better than having breakfast with my friend, enjoying our conversation and the possibility of the day? What is better than a great time with a great friend?

If I were forced to rate myself, it would be lower, but the integral life is different for each one of us and I choose not to rate myself! I look at my goals and decide the next thing that needs to be accomplished to reach the goal, make a plan, and do it! Adjust and adapt when needed but always pushing forward.

I enjoyed this class very much, the semester began at the beginning of a huge change in my life. Learning about the principles and practicing the principles and discussing the ideas with this class has propelled my healing through this difficult time. I feel more open, more honest, more loving, more forgiving and ten weeks ago I wasn't sure I would ever be able to feel anything again!

Thank you, Mark, for your leadership, and classmates for your input and encouragement. May each one of you be blessed as you move forward along the path.

Fondly,
Stacy

Personal Application

I. Introduction:

Health and wellness professionals are in the business of helping and encouraging people to live healthy. Health involves three areas of life; psychological life, spiritual life, and physical life. Traditionally, Western medicine has concentrated on the physical or biological aspects of health but research is showing that all three aspects are interrelated and important to the whole being of a person.

Psychologists traditionally concentrated on the psychological area of life, however, it is evident that all three areas need to be addressed in order to guide and encourage clients to a fully integrated life. In order to accomplish the goal of helping and encouraging others, a health professional must first put into practice healthy practices in his or her own life. Practicing and living an integrated life will serve as a role model for clients and also create a more empathetic session, with understanding of the struggles clients face along with encouragement towards success as a client determines their path and forges forward.

Learning about the interconnectedness between body, mind, and spirit are not enough. Professionals must create a plan for themselves in each area and live and work through the plan towards integral health. All three areas should be fully developed personally in order to create an environment that can be used to benefit clients professionally. The professional that has the goal of developing each area personally understands that it is an ongoing process and that each person is at a different place along the path to health and wholeness. The work is not finished in a single session or with a single action, each area can be developed farther, more deeply. The lesson learned in the personal life of a professional serves as an encouragement to the client. For myself, I plan to continue to develop each area of health and wellness and to use the experience to spur others onto health and wholeness.

II. Assessment:

Assessing where a person is in regards to their physical, spiritual, and psychological health is an important aspect of gaining health in each area; in order to make progress a person needs to know and understand where they are. I have spent a lot of time and energy on the psychological aspect of my health, determining not only where I am but how or why I got to this point. The psychological and spiritual have caused concern for the physical so there is no doubt in my mind of the interconnectedness, the question how do I move forward from here?

When I consider where I am in my physical, spiritual, and psychological life and where I want to be I realize that I am far from the goal. I would rate myself fairly low on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the optimum for health and wholeness. I see the interconnectedness and realize that I need to work on an aspect from each area, perfect it to a habit, and then set new goals in order to continue growth towards wholeness of being. This is not a discouragement to me, I believe that growth will be fairly quickly at first, as I gain control over external factors, and be satisfying to my soul as I gain benefits from deeper growth.

Assessment is an ongoing process, and I plan on committing at least an hour a week to checking in on my progress. I have begun with a visualization of what it looks like to be happy, healthy, and whole. As I work through this process I am journaling to track where I was, where I am and where I want to be. I believe that by tracking through a separate journal I will be able to adjust strategies when needed and focus on areas that are immediate needs for the week while also implementing a plan for growth and continued change.



III. Goal Development:

My short term goals (goals that can be accomplished within weeks) for the physical, spiritual and psychological areas of my life include; physical- to gain control over my eating patterns in order to avoid skipping meals, to understand and satisfy the nutritional needs of my body, spiritual- to continue a daily practice of meditation with rest for my soul as the objective, psychological- to understand and deal directly with the anxious thoughts and feelings I have. Longer term goals include the following; physical, spiritual, and psychological- quit smoking. This is a crutch in all areas of my life, the addiction derails intentions. It controls me and it interferes with the physical, spiritual, and psychological healthy practices I am establishing. As I grow and succeed in the short term goals this will be the next on the list, and I believe it covers all three areas of integral health. It is simply not possible to have health and wholeness in the three areas and be addicted to anything in such a manner. I believe it is not the healthiest, best option for handling anxiety and I have relied on it for too long. As I work through my short term goals, this particular long term goal is also being worked on and soon it will be a part of my past. I will then make a list of new goals.

IV. Practices for Personal Health

Growth is an intentional process. After setting goals, a plan must be implemented in order to track progress and meet goals. I have decided on the following two practices for each area of growth; physical growth includes nutritional needs which will be implemented by planning healthy meals to prepare for myself (short term goal) and adding aerobic activity to work out my lungs (long term goal), spiritual growth includes meditation daily to simply rest my soul (short term goal) and reacquainting myself with the smells of nature that are not surrounded in a puff of smoke (long term goals), psychological growth includes recognizing the physical symptoms of anxiety and understanding how to calm the thoughts (short term goals) and reframing my thoughts when I believe the only thing that will calm me down is a cigarette (long term goals).

V. Commitment:

Progress will be tracked weekly through the visualization and journaling process that I have learned through this course. This is a modification of the exercise that involved visualizing yourself at a time when you were happy, whole, and healthy. I visualize myself happy, whole, or healthy and consider the goals I have made to achieve the state of mind. Through free journaling, a technique that involves putting the pen on the paper and writing continuously for 15 or 20 minutes, I will consider what worked that week, what were my successes, and what needs greater effort. Ideally, as I progress through the process, I will see growth and adjust the goals to foster deeper growth. Also, I will see what didn’t quite measure up and adjust in those areas. This will keep my goals in front of me weekly and allow me an hour a week to focus on my well being. I expect to be able to create a mini list for the upcoming week based on what did or didn’t work so that I can continue to adjust the plan. Progress isn’t to be measured by successes and failures, but rather progress is life, and through it all my commitment to myself is to live life abundantly, through the hills, valleys, and plateaus.

Optimal Well Being

I enjoyed the subtle mind exercise very much, it brings calmness to my otherwise jumpy thoughts. I also enjoyed, and benefited from, the visualization excercise for this week- visualizing yourself happy, whole, and healthy. I modified it a little to combine with journalin and I am looking forward to continuing that practice. I am scheduling the subtle mind as a daily activity, in the evenings, and the visualization as an occasional activity to help track progress and keep me focused.

Stacy

Asclepius Exercise

This week I did the “Meeting Asclepius” exercise. This exercise was difficult for me because I am not a visual person. It was hard to get a visual on whom or what I was supposed to be receiving health from. Something was faulty with the visual person in my mind, and I had questions about the personality and character of this person. Visualization is difficult and frustrating; I prefer words and sounds. I did the exercise once and returned to my regular meditative practice the following day.

I am incorporating loving-kindness meditations on a regular basis; I believe it is fostering a less judgmental and more flexible attitude in my day to day life. I have also discovered a physical pre-symptom to my anxiety and acid reflux and have been able to narrow down the thoughts and feelings that are causing the attacks. I am healthier now than I was seven weeks ago; it has been several weeks since I have gotten physically ill from anxiety. As I continue and deepen my practice, my health will continue to improve. I am aiming for not just controlling the acid reflux but to never suffer its effects again. From that point I am looking forward to gaining control over other biological concerns as my mind and spirit continue to grow.

“One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself.” As a psychology student that hopes to pursue a doctorate, I believe that living a healthy psychological life is important in order to be a support and encourager to clients. I have a desire to help and encourage clients towards a deeper understanding of health and the interconnectedness of body, mind, and spirit. My experience with anxiety has taught me firsthand what the mind can do to the body and I believe that I can use the principles learned in sessions with clients, to teach them how to live and grow through the experience instead of just managing it.

Integral Assessment

First, the universal loving kindness exercise- A still and quiet mind has been a practice I have been trying to develop for well over two years. So much turbulence in my life, I need a quiet and safe place so when I sat down to attempt to develop a loving kindness for all of man kind my mind naturally sought the internal. The new neighbor, a recent divorced mom was screaming at her children again-that disturbs me. I started there and she quieted down. I had to do the exercise with my eyes open instead of closed to break from the natural pattern of internalizing, that helped. I gained insight into this whole idea of universal kindness as I went through a list of people and faces, some that I know and love, some faces I have seen here and there, and some that I have some not so loving feelings towards. "What's the point of universal loving kindness?" Well, Stacy, wouldn't it be awesome to develop a community, a world, that cares and loves the all members? Wouldn't each of us then be able to contribute our gifts, our talents to a greater good for all man kind? To imagine such a community would actually make my situation of the last few years a non-issue, and isn't that where my bitterness keeps gravitating towards? People just don't treat people that way. It was done, not to me, but because of a selfishness, a general disregard for others. So, in this light, I was able to say her name and picture her face and truly believe that if she knew and understood the principles-if she didn't have her own suffering and could cultivate health, happiness, and wholeness in her life then the situation would not occur again. I felt the bitterness dissolve a little more. This is huge for me.

The integral assessment process starts with a still and silent mind and taking inventory of the four aspects of life and determine what needs attention; the psychospiritual, the interpersonal, the worldly, the biological. I have determined to focus on the biological. The main concern I have for myself right now (and what I hear from people that know and love me) is the nutritional aspects. I don't eat much, at all. When I am upset, anxious, and stressed, I do not eat because I am not hungry and it often will make me sick after I eat if something comes along and upsets me. Naturally, this means that the nutrition aspect is connected to the interpersonal and psychospiritual- but I will concentrate on nutrition as the focus. The steps will be easy enough-eat! Buy food and keep it in the refrigerator! I am comfortable with that choice, eating will increase my energy level, regulate my metabolism, and lift my mood. Then I will be able to concentrate and tackle the next step. I liked the step by step instructions for the integral assessment process-it will allow me to focus on one area and yet still see the interconnectedness between all of life. I will check up on my progress daily and see how that works out, my goal for this week will be to hit 1200 calories or so a day.

I would like to add a disclaimer here, for anyone reading this and wondering if I have an eating disorder-I do not. I have had a bleeding ulcer that is aggravated by anxiety and I have trouble keeping food in my stomach. I have been fighting this off and on for two and a half years, I have made big changes that is easing the anxiety (and, as life goes, creating a some temporary anxiety here and there). I can skip eating for a few days and then eat too much of the wrong foods. That is what I want to get control of- the overeating also aggravates the condition. I want to make the best choices daily and eliminate the overeating of the wrong choices.

The Subtle Mind

It is interesting how this exercise became such a metaphor of the distractions of my mind. I put the CD in and I was witnessing the rise and fall of my chest as breathed in, breathed out. This was not difficult, it is the technique I use to fall asleep at night but this time I was sitting on the floor and not laying in bed. Thoughts came and I released them, as I do every night. All of a sudden, the CD went from artificial ocean noises into static; sharp and intruding. It scared the daylights out of me! I got up and checked the CD, slightly amused at the irony of being calm and witnessing my breath and startled back to reality, a brutal metaphor of what life has become these last three years. And so, we have our first lesson from the exercise-life is sometimes brutal and in the not so distant past I would have reacted with a bit of anger at the technological failure of the CD and irritation at the disruption to my seeking peace and contentment!

OK, I thought. I don't have enough time to replace the CD and get this assignment finished (goal oriented) and really, isn't this what my mind does when I am attempting to change my thought process? Meditate through it, it will eventually stop. So, I lowered the volume and started the CD over. When the static sprang forth from the CD again I mentally released it from my thoughts over and over. The static kept my mind from jumping around and I was able to bring my thoughts back to the rising and falling of my chest, witnessing my breath. The static continued to the end of the track, until track 4 began. I got up, turned off the CD and took the dog for a walk in the rain.

While I was walking I considered the experience and wondered what was on the rest of the CD. I couldn't listen to it so I read the exercise in the book. "I can do this without the CD," I thought, and I set the timer for 20 minutes, sat on the floor and began again. I was not able to get farther than witnessing the breath. I never found a still place inside of me. As I mentioned earlier, the breathing exercise is what I use to fall asleep but fortunately, I didn't fall asleep! "Our mind is clear, quiet, stable, open, alert,and all-knowing" (Dacher, 2006, p. 76). I want that! I want to connect with the real me!

I preferred this exercise to the loving kindness exercise because it seemed less abstract, more peaceful, more calming. A few weeks ago our blog exercise was about rating different aspects of our lives on a scale of 1-10. My spiritual rating was low, and it still is. Could this be the connection I am missing? I feel like I am missing a connection between the spiritual, physical, and mental. I understand the connection between mental and physical. But spiritual still seems a bit abstract, not quite something I can put my hands on. So, what have I learned? That there is a spiritual connection and that it is possible for some people. If there are people that experience the inter-connectedness, then I know it is possible for me! "An ease and lightness enter our life and cleanse our mind and body" (Dacher, 2006, p.86). Yes, I do believe I will continue to pursue this daily.

Dacher, E. (2006). Integral Health. The path to human flourishing. Launa Beach, CA. Basic Health Publications.