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.

Unit 5 Subtle Mind Exercise

I actually found I liked this one more at the beginning than the Unit 4 exercise, I found it easy to get into focusing on my breathing and following the instructions of the female voice this time.  I did notice how much effort it took just to focus on my breathing and keep my mind on that and that alone though, it is how she says, a deliberate almost forceful action.  I wasn't able to keep going the whole time however and turned it off early to document my reaction, which I find more enjoyable than sitting through an entire exercise.  I feel guilty not finishing it off but I almost felt like I was about to jump out of my own skin had I sat there in silence much longer.  It was very uncomfortable to me.  I never realized just how difficult this exercise would be, I still find myself partial to the Journey On exercise for some reason, I'm not sure why.  I have given a lot of thought as to why these recent exercises were so unpleasant for me to sit through and I think I'm like many other students in this class in that I just have a hard time turning my brain off from activity to inactivity.  It feels uncomfortable not to think or plan or "do" anything for even twenty minutes, does this mean I'm not comfortable with myself?  No, I don't believe so, I have no issue sitting alone at home watching my favorite show (The X Files or Bones), actually I prefer the peace and quiet to do my school work by being home alone.  This brings to mind more questions, do we lose the desire to be surrounded by people as we get older or do we just move into a different place or level in our lives as we continue to grow?  It seems to me that for the last three to four years now, I have become quite content either having only one friend or no friends.  I'm not sure why, I used to live to be around people and had a deep, inner need to have many friends all the time, constant contact with them.  Now I find myself irritated with even friends trying to chat with me on Facebook all the time.  I don't think I am isolating myself, perhaps the opposite, in finding myself it is such a personal journey that distractions of other people being around would interfere with my goals.  I find myself more at peace being alone in regards to having friends, I find myself even reluctant to hold long conversations with one of my neighbors that has recently been coming over to our house, I want to reach out to her yet I don't want to really get involved with anyone else's problems if that makes sense.  I see me befriending her as only eventually an irritation to myself that I invited into my quiet, peaceful life.  I have learned from previous experiences that if I have the control to not make the same mistakes in my life twice, then I need to exercise the power I have over my own life to choose not to.  As with anything  we do or don't do in our lives, it all boils down to choice. 

Loving-kindness mp3

I'm not sure why but this particular exercise had no effect on me, positive or negative.  It reminds me of what the professor said, that we would either love it or hate it.  I didn't like it, the voice wasn't familiar to me, it wasn't soothing, I had a very difficult time relaxing and following the instructions.  I wonder if my brain was used to the other guy and will only respond to his voice maybe.  I don't know why this exercise had no success at all, the instructions were even very different than what we had been used to up until this point.  I'm disappointed in the results but I hope the next ones go better than this one did. 

I would not recommend this exercise to anyone else, but I would recommend the previous two as they were successful for me.

I think the concept of a mental workout is similar to a physical work out, in that we are exercising the brain, which like a muscle, only gets stronger with use.  I think that is why they make games specifically designed to exercise the brain such as Memory and other games.  I mentioned before that I used to enjoy word finds as a young girl and I believe that exercises your brain as well, teaching it to look for things that are not out in the open and obvious. 

I think the way I can use mental workouts to foster my psychological health is by practicing meditation, forcing myself to be still for that long and just listening to instructions is training my brain to stop all the mental chatter for a period of time each day and just relax.  Some would call that praying, I think it can be both once you learn how to balance the two and if that is something you choose to do.  For some simply praying would be more beneficial, while for others simply relaxing would work best.  I would like to be able to balance both. 

Unit 3

I would rate my optimal wellbeing in the following way:
Physical wellbeing: 5
Spiritual wellbeing: 8
Psychological wellbeing: 9

The reason I rated my physical wellbeing as a 5 is because I need to get back into working out at the gym, and I recently started smoking as well which was stupid considering I had quit for going on five or six years now, and I am a bit overweight.

The reason I rated my spiritual wellbeing an 8 is because I haven't been to church in the last four months since my son had come down to visit me, I don't know if I just lost interest or if it was the distraction of wanting to spend every waking moment with him.  Even since he has left I only visited another church one time and wasn't inclined to return.  I love my church I normally go to but the hours I work on the weekends make it near impossible to get up early on a Sunday morning, and since my husband gets off work at 7am on Sundays, he goes right to sleep.  I hope to return to Sunday services but I have a feeling it won't be until I quit in November from my current job and have my weekends free once again of late nights.

As for my psychological wellbeing I rated it a 9 because although I still have rough days, I am so much better after finding and meeting my son that I had to give up for adoption.  Spending four months with him every day healed me in more ways than I can say and enabled me to finally forgive myself for a decision that I held a lot of guilt about.  His success and amazing tenacity to excel has given me the reassurance I needed to know I did the right thing for him.  His life was hard, much harder than I intended it to be, he lost his adoptive mother, my best friend at the time, to cervical cancer when he was only 5 years old.  Everything went down hill from there for him but he rose up from the ashes and made something of his self regardless, his will to survive and to be the best at everything has kept him going.  Now I have memories of our last four months to replace the last memories I had of him before I gave him up for adoption, which were nightmarish ones.  I now also have pictures all over of him as a baby that I thought I'd never see again thanks to getting in contact with his biological dad as well, so this experience brought me healing and wholeness all in one.

A goal for me to develop in each area will be to go back to the gym, phone or no phone, get back into attending church on Sundays and continue to develop and build my relationship with my oldest son.

Activities and exercises I can implement in order to move forward toward each of these goals would be going to the gym first thing in the morning when I wake up, spending time in meditation if I can't get to church on Sunday, and keep open and honest communication with my son regularly.

My experience of listening to the exercise Crime of the Century was very different than the Journey On one, in that I felt dizzy and sea sick for some reason, at one point I had to lay my head down on my desk just to finish it out.  I liked the visualizations of the different colors coming out of different areas of my body and I especially liked that I didn't have to figure out what colors represented what areas but that he provided that for us.  For some reason his voice even tickled me in my stomach area but I have no idea why, I think it's just so soothing listening to his voice in that quiet, calm voice.  I liked when he said my lower spine was the color red and when he said to visualize that color shooting down past my feet, I was shocked to discover my feet actually felt really warm for a second.  Even though he said it shouldn't make you feel tired or sleepy, it did make me feel exactly that, but I did notice that for some reason throughout this exercise I was having some involuntary twitching in my left index finger, no idea why, anyone have any thoughts on what was causing that?