Wrap Up

Since Unit 3, I don't think that my scores on my wellbeing have greatly improved.  But at the same time, I have learned many tools and exercises that I can use to improve my overall health.  Between work, school, and the holiday season I am happy just to get enough sleep each night, never mind add new things to plate!  Now that we have a break coming up it will be much easier to find the spare time to try this exercises continuously, instead of doing it one night and not being able to get back to it for over a week.  I fee that this class has taught me a lot about the mind body spirit connnection, and it is something I need to work on and improve, especially my spiritual side.  I greatly enjoyed taking this class and wish that there were more like it.  This is a subject that is hard to grasp if you aren't given a path to follow, and the more we can learn about integral health through school, the more likely we are to seek and find other sources of knowledge on this subject to improve our own lives and the lives of the people that come to us for advice.  

Happy Holidays Everyone!!

Final Project!

My Integral Health Plan

As a health and wellness professional, it is important to practice what you preach. The field of health and wellness is concerned with developing the mind, body, and spirit connection. Through everyday experiences we become aware of how closely connected these three aspects of life are, and when one is suffering, the other two tend to follow. As a health and wellness professional, it is essential to learn how to exercise and improve our physical, psychological, and spiritual self so that we can improve our own lives before trying to help others do the same. Granted at any point in time we may find it hard or difficult to maintain a certain level of balance, after all we are only human and reality likes to throw us curve balls, but the key is to know how to recognize these curve balls and bounce right back instead of getting thrown off course.

For myself, I need to work on my spirituality and pay more attention to my psychological health. I have a strong foundation in my physical life since I am a group fitness instructor and I love what I do. I push myself hard in my workouts and physical challenges yet I know when to cut back a little and give my body some extra rest and recovery time. Just like everything else, my physical needs are constantly changing and if I don’t change my regimen to cater to these changes then I am doing more harm than good. For the most part I have a healthy mind, but I let stress get ahold of me way too easily and would like to work on improving this over time. I have very little knowledge of my spiritual self and would like to enhance my understanding of it and strengthen it to be a bigger part of my life.

Assessment

When it comes to assessing my physical spiritual, and psychological wellness I look at different aspects of my life and how I perceive my acceptance of them. In the case of my physical self, I know that I am physically fit through fitness testing. While I try to maintain a healthy diet, I tend to have unhealthy breaks that I would like to avoid. Overall I am a healthy individual, and nothing stands out as a health problem or a red flag for one. I feel I have a high score in physical health, yet it is something that can always be improved upon through daily choices.

I assess my psychological wellness in how I deal with situations. I am a laid back, logical, practical, down to earth person and am rarely thrown off by big changes in my life or events happening around me. But for whatever reason I tend to let little insignificant things stress me out, and that fact that they get to me stresses me out even more. I tend to have control issues and do not like to let go of them, and most of my stress has to do with these types of things. I like to know details of who, what, when, where, and why in my life, and when I can’t get the answers to those in a situation I get unnerved. Other than this specific issue why my psychological wellness, I feel I have a somewhat high score in psychological health.

When it comes to spirituality I can’t really say I ever tried to assess myself. I am not religious at all, and up until I started taking courses on health and wellness, I thought that was the only part of spirituality. Now that I know there is much more to it than being religious I would like to find ways to embrace my spirituality and improve it. I definitely score low in spiritual wellbeing and need to make the effort to balance out my mind, body, and spirit connection.

Goal Development

My physical wellbeing can be further developed by varying my fitness program. While I am set in the classes the I teach each week, I make an effort to take others to learn new techniques and moves that I can incorporate into my own classes. I also enjoy the change because it is something my body isn’t used to and new routines are better for preventing boredom. I recently started taking a box and sculpt class and would like to learn about kickboxing. When I have extra time I am going to schedule one on one instruction with our instructor.

To further develop my psychological wellbeing, or mental health, I want to take up some form of meditation. I do not have quite enough extra time to find a yoga studio or take hour long classes but there are endless books, CD’s, DVD’s, and what not that can teach me how to meditate on my own, even if it is just for ten minutes a day. I would like to find a type of mediation that suites me best, and that will allow me to clear my mind and start fresh.

My spiritual wellbeing needs a lot of work. One of the most important aspects of my spiritual self that I would like to improve is my ability to accept unconditional love. I am a very independent person and over time have developed a skewed view of society. I am in no way a “people person” and I don’t really have an explanation for why I am this way. I want to make the conscious effort to learn how to open my heart and mind toward others, not just my family and friends, but to strangers too. Instead of viewing the cup as half empty, I would like to view it as half full.



Practices for Personal Health

While I would like to further my development in kickboxing skills specifically, I am also going to make an effort to learn all types of new exercise regimens. With a little time and research, it is easy to find all sorts of training programs for different aspects of physical wellbeing. Like a how-to girl from a magazine, I would like to try out all different forms of exercise, no matter how unique they may be. I will also practice the ones I enjoy and incorporate them into my classes so others can enjoy their benefits too.

While there are many ways to foster growth in my psychological wellbeing, I feel that visualization and mediation exercises will be most beneficial to me personally. I will find a guided visualization exercise that caters to personal experience. I find beaches and places of warmth to be the most relaxing, and even just small day dreams of these places can leave me with a refreshed feeling of calm. Meditation is harder for me to stick with since my mind loves to wander. I have tried and enjoyed meditation practices based on observing the breath and since I can use that as my main focus I am able to maintain a calm stillness in my mind. I will try to do this meditation practice for 5 minutes every day at first, and increase its length over time.

The loving kindness exercise in Elliot Dacher’s book Integral Health the Path to Human Flourishing is a great place to start my goal of learning how to love unconditionally. By focusing my thoughts on my breath, and taking in others suffering with the breath, and letting go of concern and worry on the out breath I can learn to accept that just like any other emotion or feeling, love is not set in stone. I can appreciate the people around me for who they are, and accept that who they are may not be who I want them to be. There is no sense in holding attachment to things I cannot change, and I need to learn how to embrace the uniqueness of others I would normally not come in contact with. I can also make an effort to work on my spiritual union with my boyfriend, something he may need work on too, by doing intimacy exercises. We each have a hard time expressing our feelings to each other, and the exercise Dacher describes between partners would open our eyes to a deeper connection. We know it is there, we just don’t make a point of acknowledging it.

Commitment

            Coming up with goals and exercises is the easy part of integral health.  It is implementing these ideas and sticking with them that is the real challenge.  Just like I do everything else in my life, I will schedule these activities into my week, and hopefully stick with them.  I will assess my progress or lack there of by keeping a weekly log of what I have done and what I have pushed to the side.  I will also make a conscious effort to keep notes on what I like and dislike about the new health exercises in my life.  If I don’t particularly like something at first I want to give it a chance before writing it off completely.  If I do like something, I want to look for more ways to implement it.  Over the next six months, three of which will be filled with my last term at Kaplan University, and the next three filled with a whole lot of extra time, I plan on greatly improving my mind, body, spirit connection so that as a professional I can pass on my knowledge and suggestions to help others.

Wrap Up

In my opinion, the two most beneficial exercises for obtaining integral health are visualization and meditation.  While the others were also helpful, I feel that there are a lot more wiggle room with visualization and meditation. You can find your own style and preferences and go with that.  We all find comfort in different things and I think we should learn how to focus on that and use it to our advantage on a daily basis.  Just thinking of these things can help create a calm in our chaotic day.  Meditation is also a great way to relax, whether you are crazed or just looking for some rest from your thoughts.  These are also easy exercises to do when you have a few spare minutes and just like a nice day dream, you can snap in and out of it depending on where you are and the time you have to devote to it.

Asciepius Exercise and Leading in Health

I enjoyed the Asciepius exercise because this is something I already believe in.  The people in your life have a great effect on the choices you make.  If they approve and/or are supportive then you have a much better chance at succeeding in your personal goals.  If you put you down or are unsupportive, you will most likely fail.  I have learned over time that a friend who doesn't support changes in you is not a real friend.  Family and friends can be a great part of a wellness goal if they want to see you succeed, and may even try to join a quest you are on, even something silly such as eliminating white breads from your diet. (No more deli sandwiches for your lunch date!)
One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself is something I live by.  It makes me angry when people run their mouth about things they have either not experienced themselves or have not done themselves.  In health and wellness you need to practice what you preach, or you have no validity to others.  You wouldn't take driving lessons from someone who has never driven a car so why would you take health advice from someone who doesn't practice it themselves?  At the gym we have a trainer that for a while fell off the wagon and got pretty round.  He was always a big guy, but he is a heavy lifter and looked the part.  When he gained weight he didn't look like he belonged working at the gym, and many people didn't want to train with him because he didn't look like he would know what to do to get them the results they wanted (and he is actually an amazing trainer, which goes to show image has more to do with skill level to someone that doesn't know you).  Then he got back into the swing of things and changed a few things in his life, and now he looks like a heavy lifter again and his client list has gone up.