Unit 10 Self Assessment

In Unit 3 I scored myself on a scale of 1-10 in my psychological, spiritual and physical well-being somewhat differently than I do now in that, psychologically, I gave myself a 10, which I still do, but spiritually, I think I gave myself a 5, in that at the time, I really didn't know what was happening to me spiritually.  I hadn't been to church in months and felt no desire to return, so naturally, I thought something was wrong with me.  Now I would give myself a 9 because I have come to realize what was happening, and still is happening to me in that realm, I have learned to be alone, not to need others to validate my status or soul's standing with God, and I have learned that there may be more than one way to get to Heaven and not to look down on other ways that are just as "right" as I've been taught my whole life.  Physically, I still would say a 5 because, honestly, I still haven't done anything really different as far as meeting my goals to return to the gym, I guess I'll figure it out though. 

The ways I have implemented the activities I chose for my well-being goals has been to be more open-minded towards other paths to God.  I took my studies of Buddhism very seriously as well as the one I did on the Chinese methods and am not opposed to suggestions that there are many ways to wholeness, happiness and health. 

I would definitely say I have developed improved well-being, learning techniques that teach me how to focus on my breathing in potentially stressful situations, using visualization to aid me physically and focusing on turning negative thoughts into positive ones.  The rewarding areas for me were the visualization exercises and studying the different cultural practices of the Navajo, Chinese and Tibetan.  The most difficult exercise for me consistently was the meditations, just forcing myself to sit still like that for such a long period of time, not engaging all the time, simply being quiet and listening was almost torture.  The way this experience will  help me assist others will be because of what I've learned, understood and been able to literally apply to my own personal life can be an example to others searching for different approaches to integral health choices.  Like was established early on, if we have not stepped out of the box and tried something new, how can we encourage others too?

Unit 9 Final Project

          I believe the reason it is so important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically is because in the business of helping others recover from falls or accidents, we too must be aware of all the possibilities of treatment.  If we are not aware or in touch with all aspects of our own integral health, how can we be of any influence or offer any advice to those who still suffer and don’t understand why.  I think integral health practices are more beneficial in the psychological realm only because that focuses on the brain whereas in physical therapy, the focus is on the physical which again, is controlled by the brain.   Really all three components play a part in integral health and recovery since you need all three intact and working properly in order to help someone else reach the ultimate goal of human flourishing and healing.  In order to reach the final destination of wholeness, happiness and healing we must be able to integrate all three of these specific areas into a treatment plan.  We have already determined if one of these aspects is off, the others won’t work in its place, it is not like a sense that was lost so the other senses take over or become stronger in its place, this is an independent and vital component that must be able to thrive on its own. 

          The areas I need to develop to achieve my goals that I’ve set for myself over the next few years are in spiritual and physical.  I truly believe that because my spiritual component is not functioning completely right now, it is affecting my physical abilities and motivation.  As I said earlier, if one is off, then they all are off.  I think that if I can either commit to working out, perhaps it will give me the drive and energy needed to get back in touch with my spiritual aspect.  I still don’t completely agree that we have to be around others or in an organized setting to get what we need from our higher power; I do agree that we need others like minded to encourage us to grow and even challenge us to change.  I know that my relationship with God is different now, it changed, when my son came back into my life, I felt something that I had never felt before, complete.  Not saying I don’t need God in my life, I very much do, however, I feel closer to wholeness now than I did last October before I found my son and had contact with him.  Even if I don’t choose to involve myself around organized religion again, I do have to go back to working out, that is a must.  I don’t feel that as a Physical Therapist I can set the example of being fit if I’m over weight.  I know I need to lose at least sixty pounds to feel good about myself in that aspect, only then will I feel happiness and enable myself to flourish biologically.  I know I can do this; I just have to prioritize and make up a schedule of when I’m going to work out and let nothing come between my schedule and my normal responsibilities on a daily basis.  Every time I think about cancelling my membership, I visualize myself walking into the gym, because you have to give written notice of cancellation, and I can smell the way it smells in there, refreshing, clean and inviting.  I know that I am not willing to cancel it because that is giving up to me, that is saying I am not going to even try to improve my physical condition; which is something I am not willing to say or do.  I think that right there, shows there is a deep, inner desire to return to the gym soon, and even a longing, I see myself going back even as early as next week.

 

          The way I have assessed my health in each domain is based on the information I have learned in this course, by understanding the different realms, levels and every aspect of integral healing I do believe these will be the guides I can use the rest of my life to hold myself accountable. 

The way I score my wellness spiritually is rather low, perhaps a 5, simply because I haven’t been to church in five months, which is a long time for me.  The reason I stopped going was, when my son was down here, he didn’t want to go, he only went once with me and that was simply to make me happy.  He is an agnostic, which was rather disheartening to me, but I accept it because I love him, and he accepts my beliefs in turn.  He made some pretty good arguments to me, some of which made me actually question my beliefs, but in the end, I hold on to my relationship with God and have no doubts about that aspect of it, while I may question the historical actions of the church, which have been heinous even today, I don’t question the man I follow, Jesus.  I know why I am following Him, I believe in what He did in His life, I believe in what He stands for, and I love Him with all my heart.  If the church can no longer be the example I have a peace with, He can always be one.  There was a lot of history I didn’t know about or ever question before; my son of course, was more than happy to bring all of it to my attention in hopes of winning me over to his point of view.  I listened with an open mind but still don’t think giving all the credit of good or bad things to the “universe” rather than to God and His plan and purpose for me.  My son will give credit to the universe before he will ever acknowledge the power coming from God, and it hurts me to think of how lonely and difficult his life will be without help from above.  He already believes he has to do everything on his own, only after spending four months with me can he even call and ask me for help when he needs it, other than that, he is determined to conquer this world all by his self.  I learned a long time ago that I need help, I cannot do it all on my own, I will never be perfect and nor will the world I live in be perfect so I might as well let the one who is perfect handle everything for me.  My son believes he can make his world perfect and his self as well, that will be a painful lesson for him to learn and accept failure to.  I hope that I can be there for him when he comes to this sad realization that it just isn’t ever going to happen, I hope I can give him advice and hope that someone once gave me, reassuring me that it’s ok not to be “the best” at everything, not to be perfect, to make mistakes so that we can learn from them and move on.  I hope he will not see his self as a failure or not worth anything, but see it as part of a journey, walking down the path to integral health instead of a path of destruction.  My words to him will be that you can try to be the best at everything you do, but it’s ok if you can’t, in the eyes of those who love you most, you will always be perfect to them.

          Physically I rate myself even lower, at a 3 because I’m not doing anything to improve my current condition of being overweight.  I’m not grossly overweight, but like I said earlier, I do need to lose at least sixty pounds.  I have not given up on myself though, I do have the desire to go back into the gym, and I believe by using visualization practices, I will be back there sooner than I know, every day, my plan is to visualize myself driving to the gym and walking in, I get excited just thinking about it right now, so I know I’ll be going soon. 

          Psychologically I rate myself at a 10, the reason why is after spending two years in inner healing, I resolved more than half my issues and forgave all those I needed to forgive.  I’m not saying I don’t have bad days, I’m not saying I don’t think about committing suicide on occasion, but the reason I rate myself a 10 is because even when I have those thoughts, I don’t carry them out.  Years ago, a thought like that would come into my mind and I would be off to carry it out.  I think that is the best success rate you can give a two year program, not to mention that before I spent my life without an ounce of self-worth, something I see in both of my sons now.  I let people walk on me, reveled in being a martyr, was addicted to people pleasing, and hated myself the entire time.  Now, I have self-worth, I am valuable to myself, I can say no to people, I can  stand up for myself, defend my opinions and choices to others even if I know they won’t agree or like them.  I can spend money on myself occasionally rather than on others, I believe I deserve good things too, I refuse to allow myself to be abused in any way, and I choose not to abuse others because of my wounds.  Joyce Meyer said something once that has stuck with me, “Wounded people wound people” and that is my motto; no longer wounded I don’t need to wound others.  I’m not saying that I never hurt anyone’s feelings, it happens, but I don’t set out to, that’s the difference.  I’m not saying that I have “arrived” either; I’m still on this journey to freedom, wholeness, happiness and health.  I have finally come to the realization of what I deserve and what I don’t deserve, and I don’t deserve to be used by others, abused, manipulated or controlled.  I do deserve love, attention, compassion, true friendship, unconditional love, loyalty, commitment and freedom to choose.  I couldn’t have said that ten years ago, all I thought I deserved was death and I set out to achieve that goal.  What we believe determines our actions, it sets us on a path to life or death, without the tools to know why we are choosing either, we can never change the direction we are travelling nor can we know the reason we are choosing to travel.

           My goal physically is obviously to go back to the gym starting Monday, psychologically, it’s to continue to flourish within building my self-esteem up by eliminating thoughts of self-destructive and actions such as suicide and smoking, and spiritually I hope to find a way to achieve peace regardless of whether I attend church or not.

 

My plan to foster growth physically is to become more aware of how I am eating and when, starts working out again, and continue to treat myself to new clothes and keeping up my physical appearance on a daily basis.  The ways I do this now are by getting my hair and eyebrows done every few weeks and dressing up when the occasion arises.  Psychologically I plan to continue to foster my relationships with my sons, husband and others close to me in my life. The ways I can do this is by staying in constant contact with my oldest son, supporting him financially when I can, being there for my younger son and helping him get on the path to independence by teaching him how to manage his money and keep a checking account ledger. With regards to my husband, just continuing to trust his judgment financially and include him in decisions on how we spend our money.  I also am working on truly allowing him to be the head of the household by handling issues with my younger son such as whether he moves out, the conditions on his staying with us and the decision to move in March and not take him with us.  I think although that will be a hard decision for me to rectify, I understand he is 18 years old and needs to get out on his own two feet and experience what real life is like without me around to do everything for him.   Spiritually I plan to foster my relationship with God by spending time completing a daily devotional every morning and contemplating what that devotional means to me and ways I can incorporate it’s meaning into my daily life.  I accept that I cannot convince my oldest son that having a relationship with God would benefit him, however, perhaps by simply setting the example and letting him see how it works in my favor will be convincing enough one day.

 

          The way I will assess my progress or lack of progress in the next six months will be by writing down my goals and setting a time line that six months from now, I will return to the list I made and see what items I can actually cross off as completed.  The strategies I can use to assist in maintaining my long-term practices for health and wellness is to simply continue to practice visualization techniques and meditate on where I am now and where I want to be within six months. 

 

Unit 8 Summary

The loving-kindness exercise was pretty interesting, the soothing sounds, the lights projecting out of different parts of our bodies to symbolize different feelings.  I had a easy time projecting love on those who are in my life that I am close to and taking in their suffering was no challenge as I tend to empathize with others easily.  I really enjoyed this exercise I think because I implement it in my daily life already.  The subtle mind was different, but I think as hard as it was for me to stop and try to shut down my random thoughts, it was nice to know I could if needed.  I learned a lot about how mental chatter can really affect us on a daily basis and how important it is to learn how to control it.  I understand the brain can be trained now, which I wasn't really aware of before.  Visualization was a little bit harder for me, especially trying to visualize a wise man in my life, there haven't been any other than my now husband.  The only man I consider wise enough to turn to for advice is Jesus so it makes it hard but easy at the same time, as far as the visualization goes, it's easy to see Him but hard to picture anyone else.  As for meditation, I had a very difficult time accomplishing this, I don't mind sitting here for hours typing information or dialogue, but to sit and do nothing but listen to instructions, is very hard and almost painful for me.  My mind wanders so easily, and again, I know this is where the witnessing mind exercise should come in, but I just feel like time is so precious and rare that I want to take full advantage of every second.  Sitting still for even twenty minutes straight seems like a waste of time to me, when so much more could be getting done.  Guess it goes back to my type A personality kicking in, but in some regards, it keeps me from being lazy!

The two most beneficial practices I feel were the loving-kindness and the visualization.  The ways I can implement them into my life is by practicing them on a daily basis, or continuing to, and teaching others that are interested to do the same.  Visualization has helped me conquer many fears and reach many goals in my life, it is like a mental to-do list for me, like I mentioned before, I visualize what I need to get done before I go into work every Sunday and by seeing myself doing it in the order it needs to be done, I get it done.  I love doing that, mentally preparing myself sets me up for success.

Practice what you preach

"One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" simply stated means you cannot hope to get someone to buy into a vision that you yourself have not bought into.  This is a concept we use at work a lot within  management and employee relations.  It can also apply to experience, if you don't believe in meditation how can you expect to convince a patient that it might work for them?  If you haven't ever been depressed or suicidal how can you relate or encourage someone who has?  If you have never been terminally ill, how can you give advice to someone who is?  That is why it is so important to work in a field that you know you can easily relate to others in, I'm going into Physical Therapy simply because I know I won't have that many specific conditions that would need my personal experience in order to effectively treat a patient and help them recover.  I have been hospitalized for a diving accident that paralyzed me from the waist down when I did a flip and hit my head on the board on the way down.  I had to re-learn how to walk again and it was frustrating and my parents even thought I was faking it!!  That is the worse thing to deal with when you get seriously hurt is the people you count on not even believing you are really injured. 

I do believe we have an obligation to develop ourselves in any area that can better enable us to treat and participate in the recovery of our patients, being well versed in all areas of integral health can only help us.  You never know what kind of background your patients may come from or be active in so knowing a little about each one is certainly advantageous.  The way I can implement psychological or spiritual growth in my life is to apply it when needed, and be open minded to others and the many different ways they choose to apply it as well.

Unit 7 Meeting Aesclepius

Somehow the narrator is more interesting to me than the female voice, try as I might, I still struggle with these exercises.  I had no problem visualizing the wise, man that I would honor and respect, even though I had to create him, but sitting through the long spaces of time in between the instructions is what kills me.  It's as if my body doesn't want to relax, no matter how weird that seems, it's like my body feels good or "normal" stressed.  Perhaps it's only when I'm truly interested in something that I can relax, such as watching tv after I get off work, I seem to have no problem relaxing my mind then and focusing on that one aspect.  The other day my husband and I were talking about our move to Kentucky next March and how much I was looking forward to the drive there because it was the only time I can sit and not think about anything, simply observe.  I explained to him this was called the witnessing mind, the ability to simply let thoughts come and go without grasping onto anything in particular.  I can sit in the car, look at the scenery outside and even nap off and on without a sleeping pill.  The only natural sleep I get is in a moving car.  I wish I was more into the idea of meditation, prayer is different for me because it is engaging and conversing with God, it's an action.  I guess that's me, all action.

Unit 6 Integral Health Assessment

What I discovered about myself by doing this assessment is that I really still need to work on the psychospiritual aspects of my life in that I have a hard time trusting any organization that is based on religion, for instance, my husband wants to attend Liberty College online to get his Bachelor degree and because it's a "religious" school, I have a hard time feeling good about that.  One of my employees at work attends St. Leo and she has such a hard time, the instructors are mean to her and hard on her in an unreasonable manner so that just adds fuel to my fire about not attending a school of that premise.  I don't feel however that this is the most essential line of development for me right now, as I do regarding my biological factors, such as losing weight.  My current level of development is non-existent since I still have not returned to the gym, I have no idea why I'm not motivated to attend something that I pay for every month.  Maybe it's the idea of having to work out alone, I don't know.  I'm honestly not sure which area of my life is ready for growth and development, I know that we are getting ready to move to Tennessee next March and perhaps that is an area of growth for me since I have a lot of anxiety about moving somewhere I've never been and don't know anyone.  I have no idea what the next level of development would look like except to say I wouldn't experience any anxiety about moving new places and meeting new people.  As far as the psychospiritual aspect, I still have not been motivated to return to church even with working twelve hour shifts all weekend, I know I could still get up and go to church on Sundays before I go into work but for some reason I have no desire to.  I feel good about my relationship with God, I pray, I meditate and talk with Him as if I went to church every time the doors were open, but I don't have any desire to be around an organized environment.  I don't have anything against it, I just don't want to be there I guess.  I don't know what I'm going through, I guess all I can do is be still and wait for God to reveal it to me.

Unit 5 Connections

When asked what the connection of spiritual wellness is to mental and physical wellness means, I found myself in a quandary.  I suppose it goes back to self-worth.  If I don't feel connected, loved unconditionally or worthy of receiving any love from my higher power, it will affect me mentally, possibly cause depression or other mental disorders such as paranoia.  If I am unhealthy mentally, I won't be motivated to take care of my physical body, I don't believe when you are mentally disturbed you care about what you eat, if you eat at all, or how you look.  Therefore, spiritual wellness is as dependent on mental and physical wellness as each of these are dependent on spiritual wellness.  As I heard someone say recently, "You must come full circle to find the truth", all three of these aspects are reliant upon each other in the same manner.