U9 Final Project

Growth is essential when it comes health and wellness professionals. The key to this is growing in not just one area, multiple areas.  For many people it is quite easy to make one area your primary focus and then stray away from others. The areas of focus that I am referring to are physical, spiritual, and psychological. It is very important for health and wellness professionals to develop themselves in all of these areas because that is something that they are going to preach and project off onto patients. In order to be truly healthy, a fine balance of stability in all three areas is required. These three areas are not at all three areas, they truly reflect on one another, and go hand in hand in the development of each other in the end. I have noticed that lately in my life it has been challenging to gain balance in my spirituality. The reason for this is because I just have not made time to develop myself in this category, and the other areas of focus have suffered from this as well.

            When it comes to my wellness in these categories I think that rating them by letter grade would paint the best portrayal for my self-image of wellness in each given area. My physical being has lacked as of late, and I truly need to focus on making time to condition my body, with that said I would give my physical grade of a B-. My spirituality has been next to non-existent, so I would have to give myself a D. Lastly, my psychological presence has been very consistent. I have always been very strong willed, and stable. I would have to rate myself an A- in this area.

            I have a distinct goal for myself to use each area to grow off of one another. I think that by getting back in the gym on a regular basis will allow for me to certainly grow physically, but it will also heighten my psychological stability by releasing the tension within from outside stressors. To tie this altogether, my wife and I are going to join a church that is down the street from my house to gain perspective on things that may not necessarily be within my control. This will help my grow spiritually, which will also create that higher awareness and quality of life by twining together the physical and psychological with that spiritual gain that I have been missing for so long.

            As far as practices, the physical comes very easy to me as it does to most. I will start my day by going for at least a one mile jog to create that physicality early in the morning. On top of this, I will then go lift weights following the work day before I come home at night. For spirituality, as stated, my wife and I are going to join a church for starters. The second practice ties into all three categories in my mind, and that is yoga. I am going to do yoga twice a week, every week. Lastly, I have decided that once a day, I am going to find a dark and quiet place to reflect on my thoughts, and then just clear my mind, and try to become one with my body by bring all of my senses together.

            I have started to implement my plan already by doing a couple of different things to ensure that I am staying motivated. The first thing that I have done is placed sticky notes all around my house and in my office with motivational quotes and questions on them. This has proven useful for the fact that when I do not feel like proceeding with what I have set out to do for that day, I happen to turn the corner and see one of those notes and it reminds me of why I started this process of growth in the first place. To help with all three areas of focus, I have also decided to quit drinking alcoholic beverages altogether. It has been 3 weeks, and I truly feel great thus far. I am monitoring my progression/regression by measuring my physical endurance, as well as my stress levels on a weekly basis. I am doing this because in order to set a goal and achieve a goal, it has to be written down, and it also has to be tracked to gain perspective on progression. I think once I am into my new lifestyle for one month, it will become second nature to me again, and I will be able to continue to grow as a student and a practitioner of health and wellness. 

Unit 8

Of all of the exercises I think that the two that I can find most beneficial in my life are meditation and loving kindness. This being the case for the simple fact that in my career, it is very high paced and very stressful. So with that said, I need to find time to take a step back and help myself relax. I think that meditation will allow me to focus on the things that really matter, and will ease the stress in my life. Loving kindness will help me by transferring my feelings of negativity into something that is positive, and that outcome alone will foster a better feeling and an overall better way to live.

Unit 7

1. Complete the Meeting Aesclepius mp3 (located in the Doc Sharing area). Describe your meditative practices for the week and discuss the experience. Explain how mindfulness or meditation has fostered an increase in your psychological or spiritual wellness. How can you continue to apply these practices in your life to foster greater health and wellness?
2. Describe the saying: "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" (p.477). How does this apply to the health and wellness professional? Do you have an obligation to your clients to be developing your health psychologically, physically, and spiritually? Why or why not? How can you implement psychological and spiritual growth in your personal life?
3. Participate in the Blogs of at least two other students.Provide them with feedback on their strategies for growth and wellness. Would their exercises be beneficial for you? Why or why not? Do you have any suggestions for them? Would their exercises work for your clientele? Why or why not?

I found that the exercise was quite interesting. I came into it with an open mind, and definitely participated as best I could. When envisioning the wise person, my grandfather came into mind first. To me it just seems as thought when envisioning the wise person, they must be significantly older, and obviously display great knowledge of a great deal of areas. I think that just taking the time to truly think about things, and free your mind of anything else has given me that ability to do this in the future to free myself of other problems as well. 

I think that this statement is so very true. I have thought about this since I was in high school. I joined a gym my senior year, and to make a long story short, the personal trainer that I was assigned to for my introduction/orientation to the gym was not exactly in shape at all, and appeared to be quite unhealthy in fact. To me that just placed a negative image on him for the fact that he is preaching something that he cannot follow. The reason this does not sit well with me is because I have always led in a manner that I will never ask my people to do something that I would not do myself. WIth that said, this is equally important in the health industry whether it be psychological or spiritual in nature. 

Unit 6

1. Practice the universal Loving Kindness (meditation) exercise on p. 93.
2. Complete the Integral Assessment discussed in chapter 11 (p.115).
3. Describe the exercise and assessment process. What did you discover about yourself? What area have you chosen to be a focus of growth and development? Why? What are some specific exercises or activities that you can implement to foster greater wellness in this area?

I think that this was a nice concept, and I agree that a world free of suffering, and full of health, happiness, and wholeness would be amazing, but I do not feel that this is even close to a realistic thought. My life is dominated by acceptance, analyzation, and logic. With that said, the loving kindness exercise, as state earlier, is a nice thought, it is not my style, nor is it realistic, however, I did participate in the exercise to give it a chance to feel something more from it. 

I did take a good hard look at myself with the integral assessment portion of the exercises. i have found that I can surely improve on exercises that will aid in ease of mind, and maybe just take a little bit of stress out of my daily life. With that in mind, I am considering doing yoga in the mornings before I go to work 3 days per week. I think that this would be a great way to channel some of my thoughts, and help offset my normal workouts and cardio sessions. I am more than willing to give the well rounded mind, body, spirit approach to wellness a shot, and I think yoga would be a good combination and fit for me to pursue this new concept in my life. 

Unit 5 Post

1. Compare and contrast the Loving Kindness exercise and the Subtle mind exercise. Explain your experience including the benefits, frustrations etc.
2. Discuss the connection of the spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness. Explain how the connection is manifested in your personal life.

1. To arrive at my point quickly I will just say that I have never been one to really dig deep into feelings nor have I ever decided to sit down and think about things in the dark or anything like that. With that said, I feel like I took much more out of the Loving Kindness exercise, as opposed to the subtle mind exercise. Honestly I thought the subtle mind exercise was complete crap for a lack of better words, simply because I just cannot relate to it, nor apply myself to it. 

2. Spiritual wellness, mental wellness, and physical wellness are all very closely tied together. Studies have shown that with at least 20 minutes of exercise per day among college students, those whom exercised actually carried a half of letter grade better GPA than those who did not participate in exercise daily. This type of connection is present in my life as well. I feel that once I started exercising in my daily regimen again, things just started to fall into place for me. I started to feel better, which in turn made me much more happy throughout the day, and thus I have been promoted 3 times over the past 7 months. I think that is truly a reflection of the interconnectedness of the mind, body, and spirit. 

Unit 4

1. I have never thought of doing an exercise like this before, just for the fact that normally I am a fun loving person that does not require this, or so I thought. I found that in performing this exercise it allowed me to relax, and free my mind from troubles and stresses from work and home life, etc. I think that this exercise could be very beneficial to those who are suffering from high stress.

2. I think that mental workouts are just like any other workout that we have taken part of throughout our lives. Just like you would lift weights continuously in attempts to get better with time, you will want to perform mental exercises such as the ones in this segment to strengthen yourself. In doing this regularly, I can absolutely see how this would foster much better mental health. These types of exercises allow for direct reflection and coach you on how to let those feelings go, in order to relieve the stress, and replace it in this instance with rest, and loving kindness.

This Is Me

I would like to lead off by sharing a little bit about myself and what i do. My name is Drew and I am from a small town in Illinois. I went to college in eastern Iowa, and currently reside in the same area with my wife and 2 dogs. I am a Used Car Sales Manager at a larger auto dealership in Cedar Rapids, IA. I work long hours, and deal with a high volume of issues, complaints, concerns, and general problems that people have, but all in all, I love my job, because I do get that everyday interaction with new and interesting people. Being that people come to with all of their problems, it tends to become very stressful. I have found it very useful to perform relaxation exercises to ease my mind and body. Deep breathing and relaxing thought has made it so I am able to calm myself down and relax after a hard day at work. That is what has helped me the most. Thanks, and stay tuned classmates.