Review Post:

     Well, I have reviewed my post for unit 3 and I said that my physical health was at about a 7, my mental at a 2, and my spiritual at a 9. Sadly, I do not think those numbers have changed very much, however, I do believe that some progress has been made in my overall health. I think that now I am at a 6 in physical well being because I have not been eating as well as I should be. I have fallen out of focus when it comes to that and I need to re-focus myself and work harder at being aware of what I eat. I do think that I have progressed from a 2 in mental health to about a 4. That may not seem like much but to me it means the world! I believe that my desire coupled with the encouragement from this class has helped me to motivate myself to get my mind into the healthy state it should be in. My God has helped me overcome some of my worry and anxiety and has showed me how to begin on my path of mental healing. This goes along with my spiritual health as well. I believe I am still at a 9 because I believe things are going very well because I am learning to trust and love my God more and more but I know there are still things I need to work on and be more diligent in.

     As far as goals go, I have spent more time with my God which is the most important part of all integral health practices I believe, but I have flunked when it comes to trying to find time to meditate and just rest my mind or focus it on a particular thing. I always stay busy and I don't like to be still to be honest! : ) I like it when I do it and think to myself "Oh! I need to make time for this, that was great!" but when it comes down to it I don't make time. I just need to jump in there and do it because I now know how important and helpful it is to take time to rest and heal your mind and make your mind into a mindset that is always calm and at peace even in the turmoil. Meditation also helps you have a discerning mind, which I believe is of great importance! My exercising has gone nowhere as well. I am having a hard time getting motivated!!! At least I am focusing more now on my goals but now is the time (well, the time was a long time ago but...) to start acting on what I know I need to do. I hope I can accomplish this in the months and years to come!

     I have absolutely loved this course! It has been very encouraging and it has brought things to light that I had never thought of before. For instance, I knew that meditation was good for relaxing but I didn't know that it was good for developing a more discerning and calm abiding mind. These two things are great treasures that are worth fighting for and I didn't really understand what the tools where for doing that until this course. I also don't think I grasped exactly how important the healing of the mind was. Now I know that it is just as important to integral health as the body and the spirit. It has been difficult for me to implement these practices since I do not like taking time to be still but the good thing is that this course has instilled in me the desire for mental health which I believe will drive me to action. All of you in class and Professor Maule, have been wonderful and your views have been very insightful and helpful. Thank you for a wonderful semester and God bless you!

It is so very important for health and wellness professionals to have integral health in their own lives psychologically, spiritually, and physically. The reason for this is that without that experience of having built up to integral health themselves, practitioners can only speak from principle. Yes, principles are the foundation for everything we do, but we are not going to be able to convince others that something is the right thing to do unless we are dedicated to doing it ourselves. If you don't show that you think it is important than why should they think it is important? Actions speak louder than words as it concerns a healthcare practitioner.

For myself, I know I need to really work on the physical aspect of my integral health. I love eating healthy, so that is not an issue for me at this time, but I do not like to exercise so that is a real road block for me. I have a hard time motivating myself to achieving that goal in my integral health. I also know that I need to really work on my psychological well being as well. I cannot seem to quite my mind very easily. I always have to be accomplishing something with my hands or with my mind and I often times have a hard time falling asleep because I am constantly thinking about one thing or another. I am getting better at practicing having a good spiritual life. I am reading my Bible every day and I am trying to have a very active prayer life. However, I am still struggling with the fact that I worry so much and am afraid of everything! I am always thinking of things that could happen and trying to figure out ways to prevent it. This is exhausting and a very unpleasant way to live and I know that God does not want me to live that way. I am working on giving everything to God so that I do not have to worry about things anymore. I know that if I can learn to give everything over to Him that He will take care of ALL of my worries no matter what they are and that He will always do what is best for me and my family. So, I guess I would say that I am doing worst in my psychological health since I am not finding the time in the first place to work on it which is one of the goals of being psychologically healthy, and that physical health would be the next worst, and that spirituality would be the best rated of all three of these aspects of my integral health but all of them need to be continually worked on and built up.

My goal in psychological health is to first set aside a time to where I can actually practice meditating so that I can clear and still my mind. If I can do that I have no problem practicing and I know I always feel better after I do and I know the benefits of long-term practice. Exercising is a hard one for me since I like to be at home with my young son and then my husband when he comes home from work, so I guess I don't really make time for that either. I'm hoping that my husband and I can develop an exercise program at home so that we can do it as a project together after my son is in bed so that we can still spend time together but still reach our fitness goals. Spiritually, I know I can remedy my worrying by keeping up my prayer and Bible reading regimen and by also doing more research on how to give my trust over to God and overcoming my issues about being fearful. I think that resources from other writers can be extremely beneficial in offering advice on how I need to proceed from the state that I am in right now.

Tracking my progress seems a little hard in some areas such as the spiritual aspect of my integral health but I know that once I am free from the burden of worry and fear even for one day or even for half a day I will know that I am making progress. If I start to exercise a little more each week I will know that I am doing better concerning my physical health since I do not set any time at all apart for it right now. For my psychological health I will know that I am progressing when I take time EVERY day to practice having a calm, discerning mind. I know I will feel more at peace and I will probably sleep a lot better once I have achieved progress in this area. I also need to make sure that I keep up the progress that I have/will make. I think that reviewing why I need integral health will help keep me motivated to keep on keeping on. I need to continue to seek out books and lectures on this point to continue to grow in my knowledge and to review what I have already learned. I KNOW I can do this if I just go out and do it!

Hello everyone!

      I have gotten so much out of all the exercises we have done from Dacher but the two that really stand out to me are the visualization exercise we did this week and the loving-kindness exercise. The visualization exercise we did this week involved remembering times in your life when you felt the happiest, most whole, and most alive! Remembering those times gave me a sense of hope and made me the happiest of all the exercises. Even though those feelings were temporary they helped me in remembering what those three things felt like at their fullest. There is a verse in the Bible that says "Whatsoever things are true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things." (Philippians 4:8) I believe remembering past things that are everything this verse says is so beneficial to us! It helps us remember that there is light among the dark and that it is stronger than the darkness. I am making a very pointed effort to think on good things and push out the bad. I have a confession to make. I have a great worrier and I am always afraid that something bad is going to happen. The last few days I have been thinking only on those things that are good and no matter how tempting it is to worry about some thing or another, I am putting it all in God's hands and remembering every time I am tempted to worry that God is greater than anything else in the world. He has promised to make everything work as good for His children and focusing on this truth and the times He has blessed me in the past is an essential practice that will help me overcome my fear and anxiety.

     The loving-kindness exercise was of great help as well. It helped me focus on the attributes I wanted to express in my own self. Imagining others who have the trait you want to have and imagining it in yourself is a great first step towards actually having it in your life. Focusing on what you want is the first step in getting it. The second, is asking God for it and for help to achieve it, and the next is doing it.

     Both of these exercises are wonderful tools to learning to live a happier, healthier, more fulfilled life. If anyone has not tried them yet, PLEASE take time to do them at least once. It will give you a taste of this happy healthy life that you want and it will drive you to be disciplined in it. Don't give up! Diligence in these will pay off a thousand fold. Just remember, only God can give you the complete happiness you seek. I consider these meditations as good tools but after trying them and then letting God take control, it is no contest between the two! Giving your life to God will do so much more for you, but God has given us tools for us to help ourselves achieve our goals while He actually gets us there in the end.

Aeschypilus Practice

The Aeschypilus practice was interesting. It was hard because the wisest person I know on earth was my mother and she passed away 2 years ago. It was good to focus on her amazing traits and see them flowing into me. I think focusing on the goodness/wisdom of another is good so that you can get a better handle on how you should be yourself.
I will be honest, I have not been doing very many meditation practices lately. I have been so busy moving to a new house with my husband and one year old that the only relaxing practice I have done lately is to read my Bible and to pray. I always try to make time for that but I know that I need to make time for calm meditation as well so that I can better train my mind to be still even among all the turmoil that has been going on this weekend. So, "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" is a good reproof for me this week. It   reminded me that I have to do this so that I can show others how to do it and tell them about through my experience. Learning about it on paper is good but actually learning about it from experience gives you a whole new kind of knowledge to impart on another. Another good phrase to describe this is "the blind leading the blind."
Good luck everyone and may you be more diligent than I!

Unit 6-

I really loved the loving-kindness exercise!!! It was so hard to focus but once I started to focus on the words of the exercise, my mind started to focus. I realized a while back that I wanted my goal in life to be relieving us much suffering from others as possible in every area but especially spiritually and physically.  Doing this practice reminded me of my passion and life goal. I believe I will continue to implement this exercise into my daily life and someday when I am practicing my goal in a professional setting I believe that will be on my wall somewhere for me to see every day.

     I really liked the self-evaluation exercise too! I believe I have found that the part of my life that has been biggest source of suffering has been my psychospiritual life. I have been driven by fear in how I react to things that come my way. I snap at others when I am feeling threatened even in a slight way and I am always on the defensive, wondering what someone really meant when they said something. This is an awful way to live and I really want to make this fear go away! I am motivated by "the first source of motivation (that) is instinctual, reactive, and ego-centered. It is usually driven by fear." (Dacher, pg.107) This is also the same area that needs developing.

   I intend on implementing meditation, coupled with lots of prayer to combat this destructive attitude. I intend on being more focused on realizing when I am allowing this to take over my attitudes and actions and help myself work through those moments.

Dacher, E. (2006). Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health Publications:

            California.

I really loved doing the Loving-Kindness exercise! It really helped me to focus my meditative exercises on someone other than myself. When I was asked to focus on showing loving-kindness to everyone (including myself and the parts of me that weren't feeling too good just then) I was challenged to do mentally what I should be doing physically too in my every day life: showing love to everyone and everything no matter if I like it or not. So, instead of getting mad at my aches and pains, I tried to focus on nurturing them. I think it was an extremely beneficial exercise!

The subtle mind exercise was great too! It helped me focus more on the different attributes of myself and how they affected others. I thoroughly enjoyed this because it helped me feel completely calm and it helped me to just focus on myself for a moment instead of everything around me. So, I guess the subtle mind exercise was more about realizing who I was and what I am made up of and the loving-kindness exercise was more of learning how to use what I had inside of me.

Spiritual wellness, I believe is the key to mental and physical wellness. As a Christian, I believe that a person's relationship with God is what gives us the best mental and physical wellness possible. It gives us the peace of knowing that our God is in control so that we do not have to worry about what happens because He will only do what is good for His children. It gives us a sense of joy to be able to please Him and to know how to better help others. It also give us a profound sense of acceptance of ourselves since all our sins are taken away by our God. Studies, as we have read, show that reducing stress and excelling in love, gratitude, and forgiveness (all very prominent virtues in the Bible) will improve our mental health which in turn improves our bodily health.

The Loving-Kindness Exercise, to be honest, was both challenging and beneficial for me. When I focused on someone who showed amazing love in their life as well as someone I greatly loved, it was hard for me to focus because the person I focused on was my mother. She passed away almost two years ago but she was the most loving, caring, kind, wise woman I have ever known. Besides my husband she was my very best friend. So, sadness seemed to kind of overtake me at the moment since I had to go so deep in my reflections of her. I know if I let it though those remembrances will strengthen me and encourage me to be like her.

The person closest to me that I know who is suffering is my father. This was hard to focus on as well because he is suffering because of the loss of my mother. It is hard to remember his pain. I found myself slipping into prayer without even noticing so I decided to make that part of my whole exercise when dealing with someone more distantly connected with me and those who I guess I would consider my enemies ( I wish I could find a better word than that).

On the bright side, this exercise definitely encouraged me in the fact that I was practicing loving-kindness to others at least in a mental way where I believe loving-kindness to others starts. I think that when I resolve to change something in my life, whether it is an attitude or a specific way of life, I will do this exercise so that I can practice doing it mentally and resolving to do it mentally before I attempt it physically. I had never really thought of doing a specific exercise to help with this but I believe it is going to work well. The Bible says that the thoughts of a man are the product of his heart. If we can make our heart and consequently our mind/thoughts right then our actions will be right and loving as well.