Unit 9

Introduction

As a health and wellness professional it is important to understanding psychological health because this can be the foundation of understanding an individual and gaining insight.  Building and developing from the inside at the inner core of a person will shine through to the outside.  For an individual to portray strong and healthy outside behavior, working from the inside first is necessary (Dacher M.D., 2006, p.59).   Spiritual health is important because it takes more than medicine to be healthy you must believe in a higher power of some type to help heel you and make you better. You must be able to focus on your minds thoughts and clear them of any negative thoughts to become healthy.  As wellness professional you need to be spiritually in tune with yourself before you can help other become spiritually in tune with their selves. It is important to be physically healthy because your body controls so much of your thoughts and feelings. Being physically healthy also helps with being psychologically healthy. You must be physically healthy in the Wellness field or others are not going to trust your advice on them becoming physically healthy.  I really need to develop my spiritual health in order for me to reach the goals I have for myself. I need to be able to clear my mind and get rid of all the negative thoughts in my head that are currently there. It has been a rough three months for me and I need to get back to focusing and I need to return to church and leave a lot of stress in the hands of God.

Assessment

            I have assessed myself in each domain by figuring out how I am dealing with my psychological health, my spiritual health and my physical health on a daily basis.  Do I feel that I psychologically deal with things with a clear mind or am I being un-logical about certain things and situations. I assess my spiritual state by asking myself do I have a clear mind am I able to remove my negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. I also ask am I connected to God do I feel I have a relationship with him.  I assess my physical health by saying am I healthy, do I feel good. Do I look physically healthy? On a scale form one to ten I score myself in my Psychological health at about an 8. I feel I deal with life on a psychological level pretty well. Ion the same scale for spiritual health I give myself about a 4.5. I do not feel my spiritual health is where it needs to be. I feel that I am missing something and that I need to learn how to just stop and relax and how to remove the negative thoughts with positive thoughts. I also need to figure out how to reconnect with God and stop feeling like he is after me to make my life miserable.  I would give my physical health a 9.5 I am in great health and in great shape I work out at least 2 hours a day if not more and I physically feel wonderful.

Goal development

My psychological goal is to get things in order a little more. I need to look inside myself a bit deeper and figure out what I really want in life. I also need to learn how to deal with my mother without losing my temper on her. She is a very difficult women to deal with she is not exactly kind and she never gives without expecting something in return. She is one of those people who lack loving-kindness. I psychologically need to figure out how to have a normal relationship with this woman without having the feeling of frustration and anger every time I speak to her.  My spiritual goal is to get back to church. With summer being over and things going back to the regularly scheduled program I am will be able to get back in touch with my spiritual self. I need set time aside daily to just think and remove the negative thoughts. I also am hoping that going back to church and meeting with the pastor again that I can game some faith in God. I was always taught God will never give you more than you can handle but lately I am losing faith in that belief.  He has a plan I just can’t figure out what it is and I need to sit back and figure out what that plan is.  My physical goal is to lose some more body fat and become more physically fit. To do this I must go back to the gym and start lifting weights 5 days a week again. I only lifted 3 days a week in the summer. I also need to change my eating habits.  I have added 2 more classes to my fitness teaching schedule so I am hoping these two classes will also help me accomplish my goals of losing some of my body fat percentage.

Practices for Personal Health

In my psychological growth I should read more. I subscribe to quite a few news letters about health and wellness and growth and development. These are things I should actually sit down and read.  I have always been interested in psychology and the way the mind works. I my also go and see a professional psychologist so that she can help me to see things a bit clearer. So that she is able to get me on the right path psychologically dealing with my mother and also dealing with my child who has not had the perfect life and who stresses about things she should not stress about.  In my spiritual growth I will do the practice of going to church. Going to church and listening to the pastor speak and often times meeting with the pastor one on one will help me reconnect with God and figure out what path he is trying to take me on.  I will also try and start practicing my meditation skills that I was professional trained to do years ago. For my physical health I will continue to teach my nine plus classes a week and go to the gym and lift weights 5 days a week. I will also try and stretch more because I have many muscles that are very tight.  I will also start looking for healthier recipes to make and watch what I am eating.  I often slack on this because I exercise so much that what I eat really does not matter that much as long as it is not high in fat and in sugar.

Commitment

I will asses myself in the next six months by asking myself questions.  I will need to ask myself have the goals I made in each aspect of health been met.  For example have I started to have a “normal” relationship with my mother or do I still get irritated every time I speak to her? Another example for spiritual health is have I started to go to church more than once every few months. Do I go at least every other weekend? My physical health question would be has my body fat percentage dropped or have I lost any weight?  I am a person that if I set my mind to it and make the goals to do it I will do it. A good strategy I use is that if I don’t accomplish my goal I usually find some way to punish myself. I am very hard on myself and not accomplishing a goal makes me more determined. I will also use the strategy of my daughters school keeps track of how many times we go to church a quarter. This will let me know if I have come close to the every other weekend goal.   I don’t have a strategy for my physical goal because it is something I just do as a daily routine.  The fact that I get paid to do a lot of it is great motivation and does not really give me much of an option. It is my job to be physically fit and I am not in a position where I can quit that job.

References

Dacher, E. S. (2006). Integral health: the path to human flourishing. Laguna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publications

Unit 7 Mind-Body-Spirit Paradigm

This is going to sound really funny but my wise person was not somebody I knew it was the wizard guy from the lord of the rings. I have no idea why but when she said picture a wise and healer I instantly had the vision of an old man with white hair, a long beard, and a pointed hat sitting on a rock. When she started talking about the white light  and all the things the white light represented I automatically thought of Jesus. The little old man disappeared and Jesus was the one sitting on this rock. Jesus is the only person I can think of that had all the qualities she was describing. However when the light went away and I was to become this amazing person the little old wizard came back.

"One can not lead another where one has not gone himself?" This means that if you have not done it yourself if you don't believe in it yourself you are not going to be able to get somebody else to believe in it or practice it. In the Health and Wellness profession you can not expect somebody to do what you tell them or ask of them to do if you have never done it yourself.  This is why servers usually need to taste all the food on the menu. If they have never tried it how can they tell you their opinion on it. In my profession for example Zumba instructor/fitness instructor/ soon to be personal trainer. If I was a 200lb 5'2" female who did not exercise at all what are the chances I would be successful at my job. How am I going to tell you fitness is important, you should lose weight exercise and eat right if I am sitting here doing/ or have never done anything that I am telling you to do. Why would you believe a word a said? It is very hard to convince somebody of something you have never practiced your self before.

If I was going to implement spiritual growth in my life I would need to take my butt back to church. I have not been there since April and the church keeps calling me worried that something is wrong. I always tell them no but I am just not feeling the spiritual end of my life right now I have so many other things going on with trying to find a full time job, being a single mom on an unemployment income that church is the last thing on my mind. However I need to start going back again because maybe if I do if I take that hour of my week to be spiritual I will be able to clear my head and figure out some of the things that are causing my brain to go crazy.

Unit 6 all loving-kindness

This was both easy and difficult for me. It was difficult for me because it was late at night and I just got finished teaching a class with 3 and 4 year old children and 2 hip hop classes so I was a little tired. If I had to close my eyes for 10 minutes I would have been asleep. The second reason it was so difficult for me was because I could not remember the 4 lines. To open my eyes and read them would make me lose concentration. (I have the attention span of a gnat). However the ways it was easy for me was because I have lots of loving-kindness. I have a very difficult time being mean to any body but my child. She does not count because that is more discipline than being "mean."  Anyway when reading through the 4 phrases I found my self saying I ask for these things often just in my daily life. I try and never wish bad on anybody (except my child's father who happens to deserve it from time to time, but then I take it back usually lol.) I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I am one of those people that do not like going into hospitals especially children's hospital. Every time I walk in the place I end up in tears. I just can't under stand what I child has done to be punished with so much suffering and pain. I wish all those little kids all the time freedom from suffering. The second phrase I feel that everybody should have as much health, happiness and wholeness as possible and I will do just about anything so that they do lead a very healthy, happy, and whole life. I think my going into Health, Wellness and personal training allows me to assists people in both those areas. If I can figure out why they are suffering I may be able to help them out of their suffering. I am hoping that my Wellness practice and my personal training practice will help people live healthy, happy and whole lives.

I asses my life on a regular basis this was taught to me from when I was young to do regularly. It is probably part of the meditation process that I grew up with. My father has always practiced holistic medicine and meditation. However when life would get all crazy on me my step mom would always sit with me and asses everything that was going on and what needed to be worked on and how to do it. Currently I think the main thing I need growth on is interpersonal. I am very very hard on myself. I was also in a very psychological abusive relationship for 9 years. It was actually today that it dawned on me that all the mean things he would say to me daily (fat, stupid dumb, nobody will ever want me) I currently even after almost 3 years of being apart I still think that way without even knowing it. Today after a nurse in a doctors office told me I was beautiful and look like I should be in a magazine I caught myself thinking me beautiful in a magazine yeah right who would want me in a magazine? Are you just saying this to be nice? Once I realized what I was thinking I remember having a conversation with my boyfriend and he kept saying why do you think I don't want you. All I can remember thinking was because nobody will ever want me.  Then in another conversation my boyfriend was saying something about how men fall in love with people's minds. My first thought was well you don't have to worry about a man falling in love with my mind I'm kind of stupid. All of this just dawned on me today that I do this. I have been doing this for years and did not even realize it. So right now my interpersonal self is something I really need to work on. I need to work on reversing the negative psychology. Just like the skit on Saturday night live " I am good enough, I am smart enough and gosh darn it people like me." LOL  The exercise I am going to have to implement most is to not allow myself to put me down. I will need to become conscious of the thoughts I think about myself. On the outside it looks like I have very high self esteem but on the inside I don't think I believe any of it.

The second part kind of hit home with me today sorry for the long drawn out babel.

Unit 5 Subtle mind

My mind is never free of thoughts so I really am very bad at this. I can not just concentrate on my breath once I do I start having a hard time breathing and I have to start taking deep breaths. I liked the loving kindness more because he gave me people to think about and not just my breath. I have to much going on in my life to just think about my breathing. The time spaces in between her talking were way to long and I found myself dozing off. If you tell me to sit still and do nothing for to long I am knocked out. I related much better to the loving kindness than the subtle mind. Nothing about my mind is subtle. LOL

My physical wellness is at it's peak. I am very physical and when I am not I am lethargic and feel like poop. I actually took today off from the gym and exercising and it was not planned. I feel very tired and lazy. I am thinking about taking a run tonight just because I feel so blah. My spiritual wellness is not very good right now. I am guilty for not going to church and the people from church keep calling to remind me that I have not been there in a few months. I just hate getting up and going to church because it is so boring. I hate when people talk at me. I don't even listen. One of our pastors I don't like and we but heads frequently when he is preaching I just tune out totally. I do love one of our pastors I just can't seam to ever catch his sermon. I really should be going to church but I can think of a million reasons not too more than I can think of reason to go. Yes I believe I just don't like to be talked at.

Unit 4

I enjoyed the loving kindness exercise but it was almost to long and there were to many long pauses causing me to drift off. However the person closest to me is my daughter who I have been having behavioral problems with since her dad left. Half of this is my fault because I feel so guilty for all the crap she has been through that I let so many things just go because I feel bad and I love her and I don't want to hurt her. She is all I have. I don't have a husband and really don't get along well with my mother and I am not close to my father so really it is just my kid, the dog and I. Well I have my boyfriend too who is really trying to make her behavior better and trying to train me not to give in to her but then I end up getting mad at him because I usually know why she is acting up especially if it is late at night but he still wants to be firm and do our form of punishment and I just want to say she is tired let her be. I always have an excuse for her bad behavior and I shouldn't but again that is because I feel so guilty for her not having the perfect life.  The person closest to me that is Ill is my brother. He has a lot of mental issues going on and for a while he was on suicide watch and a lot of other crazy things were going on.I am always wishing him better health because it breaks my hear that he is the way he is. He does lots of therapy and holistic methods. I am not sure if he is on medication any more or not but I think he is because he 100% lost it when they tried to take him off.  I always feel some type of love and kindness for strangers that seam to need a hug or a prayer. I would never hug them but I will pray for them if I feel they need be. This was a difficult thing to listens to for me because it brought up things I usually push to the side in order to get through a day.

Unit 3

Hello all. I rate my overall well being at about a 6. However I rate my physical well- being as a 10. I rate my spiritual well- being as about a 6 and I rate my psychological well- being as a 8. The reason I rate my physical well-being as a 10 is because I am very physically fit. I exercise anywhere from 2-4 hours a day. I am opening a fitness studio because of how much I enjoy exercise and my physical well-being. I rate my spiritual well-being at a 6 is because I question a lot in spirituality. I come from a family where my mother is was Italian catholic and my father Jewish. I am raising my child to be Lutheran. I question all 3 religions and don't really know what to believe in spiritually. I believe that much of holistic and spiritual medicine works very well.  I rated my psychological well-being as an 8 because right now I am very stressed out. Being laid off and trying to make ends meet as a single mother makes things a little stressful. I've been doing a lot of "hustling" to make extra money (teaching all the fitness classes I possibly can) However normally I am pretty relaxed and don't stress out or get up tight about much. My nick name in my family is the bounce back kid. I usually am able to bonce back from just about anything. 

I think I can improve my spiritual well-being by relaxing and meditating however when I do this I just fall asleep so it is almost useless unless it is a day I am having trouble falling a sleep. As much as I exercise sleep comes to me pretty easy at the end of the day once I settle down and relax. My psychological well-being will increase as soon as unemployment and financial aid get their act together and send me the money I am suppose to have. LOL  My physical well-being can't be improved by much I am very healthy and very fit. However I am picking up more classes and starting to do more exercises and develop exercise programs for my new studio.

My goal in my spiritual well-being is to be able to meditate and connect with myself spiritually without falling asleep. LOL My goal for my psychological well-being is to make enough money so that I am not constantly wondering how the bills are going to get paid. My physical well-being goal is to be trained in more fitness classes so that I can teach more classes and teach my own private classes in my own studio.

I did listen to the meditation however I was not able to do it because I tried and started to doze off. If I would have fallen asleep I would not have been able to write this wonderful blog of mine. :-) However when I was younger and went to camp over night one of our camp councilors use to do something similar to us at the end of the day so that we would calm down at night and go to sleep. Mediation does not make me feel energized like the man says. Meditation makes me sleepy. Meditation is not very easy for a person with ADD. To have that much concentration and not move at all either A makes us sleepy or B makes our minds wander to something other than what the man is talking about. I have my daughter sitting next to me listening to it and she went right to sleep trying to do what the man said to do. Like mother like daughter I guess. My father meditates daily every morning before breakfast. I don't live with him but I think his day is off if he does not do this. He even does it on vacation. I have never known him to miss a day of meditation.

Unit 2 just more blah blah blah

So I've been reading this book for this class and it is actually very interesting. I am not a big reader in fact I hate reading (except fifty shades of grey series I love that lol) so I am usually one to skim through my text books just to find the information I need. over the years I have mastered this technique. Nobody said it was a good one but it's worked for me thus far. Oh and I don't ever sell my books so I can always go back if I need too even if class is done. Any who while I was reading this book I found that Dacher reminds me a lot of the way my boyfriend thinks. There are just moments when he says certain things like imagine if you could stay in this state of thinking all the time how would your life be different. My boyfriend posses questions to me like that all the time. So it's kinda funny that while I sit here and read I often find myself smiling at some of the things Dasher says because I swear I heave heard this before.

Meh here I am blogging for yet another class. I do not like to blog because I am not much of a writer or should I say an interesting writer. I'll write a paper all day but blogging takes creative writing and I don't have much of that at all. The class I am blogging for is a spiritual class so it should be interesting and quite entertaining. I have the attention span of a gnat so for me to meditate for any period of time is often unsuccessful. Unless Sleeping I need to be in constant motion, something on my body needs to be moving.  Welcome to the journey of spiritual blogging.