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.