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.

First Post

I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts and feelings of life with you on this blog. I am new to blogging, so this will definitely be a change of pace for me. I am typically a person that is somewhat closed off when it comes to sharing my emotions, so that will definitely be limited as far as what to expect from my posts.