HW420-Unit 4 Loving-Kindness

The loving kindness practice has been hard for me so far. It is easy to visualize someone that I hold with great love and tenderness and expand on those feelings and I was able to turn them into myself and become at peace with myself and my body, but it was hard to treat some of my unpleasant experiences as friends therefore it was very difficult to get to a place of stillness, peace and gentleness. I tried to take in a loved one’s suffering and just found myself worrying about them, but still I tried to send out health and joy to them and contemplate how I might be of assistance to them. Because I was fully successful with the first two parts of the exercise, it was almost impossible to take on the suffering of strangers.  In spite of all this, I did feel my heart expanding with loving-kindness. This is a practice that will take some time to master and I can see why they recommend doing it daily. I would recommend to others as a practice to help someone expand their mind.

A mental workout is as necessary for psychological and psychospiritual health as physical exercise is for physical health. Research studies show that mental training can transform the mind by reducing anger, hatred, fear, worry, confusion and doubt and enhancing patience, loving-kindness, openness, acceptance and happiness  Daily mental training through meditation, prayer and visualization can open one’s mind and help to develop one’s mind-body connection and expand our healing capacity thus promoting physical, mental, psychological and spiritual well-being (Dacher, 2006).

Reference:

Dacher, E. S. (2006). Integral health the path to human flourishing. Laguna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publications, Inc

HW420 Unit 3 - The Mind-Body Connection

Our assignment for this week’s blog post was the rate our Physical, Spiritual and Psychological well-being on a scale of 1 -10 (ten- being optimal well-being).

I rate my physical well-being as a 7 because I am in over-all good health other than being overweight. The reason that it is only a seven is because I have not had a complete physical in at least four years. Our insurance does do a health screening each year which includes blood tests and tells us what our risk factors are, but I have not followed up with our doctor on these results.  Also I have not had a Pap smear or mammogram for quite a few years and at 66, I have not yet had a colonoscopy.  I rarely get sick, so I rarely go to the doctor.

I rate my spiritual well-being at a 7 also because even though I go to church regularly, I do not feel connected to God or Jesus. I think that the problem there is that I do not pray regularly therefore it is hard to feel connected when I don’t communicate with them. 

I rate my psychological well-being as a 7 also because even though I feel that my mind is mostly clear and sharp, I do suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and can become quite depressed and despondent when the weather is gloomy.  Also since I am retired and often alone, I often feel disconnected from the world. Although, this has gotten a bit better since my youngest son (28) came home to live for a while this December.

I set some goals for myself at the beginning of the month and have been meaning to write them down, but had not gotten around to doing it yet. So I was glad for the assignment to do so.

My main physical goal for this year is to take the results of the health screening that will be done on January 31^st to my doctor and get the test that I have not had this year. In addition, I will walk at least a mile a day 5 or 6 days a week and eat more fruit.

My spiritual goal is going to be the hardest for me, but I think that the way to begin is to commit to pray at least once a day.

My psychological goal is to make sure that I get at least 15 minutes of sunshine a day, in order to alleviate any symptoms of SAD and to attend church activities more often, so that I don't feel as lonely.

Before I go on to the relaxation exercise, I would like to discuss something that really touched me in our reading this week.  When I was reading the Meeting Asclepius visualization, I was really touched.  The personal that I visualized was my maternal Grandmother as I feel that for me she embodied the characteristics of peace, wisdom, compassion, love and joy that were mentioned. I was so touched when reading this visualization and imagining her that I was brought to tears. After I finished, I thought well Jesus also embodies these characteristics and wouldn’t it be nice if I could visualize him with the same clarity as I did my Grandmother and let him by my Asclepius. This is a goal I would like to achieve. 

The “Crime of the Century” relaxation technique was a little more successful for me than the one from last week.  Even though I was able to imagine the colors, I was not able to imagine the beams of light, but I liked the affirmations that accompanied the colors and can see the benefit of repeating them on a regular basis. The breathing also was very relaxing and so was the speaker’s voice. 

HW420 Journey On Activity

I have tried relaxation techniques in the past and I have to say that it is not something that I am good at. That said, I did have some success this time.  It was nice just to take the time to relax and become more mindful of my body.  Focusing on my breathing did help me. In fact, I found that when I have trouble falling asleep that just focusing on paying attention to breathing in and out relaxes me so much that before I know it I am asleep. This is something that I know I will have to try several more times in order to master it.

HW420 Unit 2 Introduction

One thing that I didn't specifically mention in the about me section of the blog is that I love to write, but you may have figured that by the fact that I have several blogs listed. I have a total of five blogs and each one reflects a different aspect of my personality. I created this blog for my intellectual writing, so rather than create another blog for my HW420 class, I asked the professor for permission to use this one. I have a blog which I use to review movies that I like and talk about places that I have been: http://agalavantinggrandma.blogspot.com/

I like to cook and experiment with recipes and the blog that I created for that is: http://cookingfasteasy.blogspot.com/

Another one of my interests is crafting especially knitting, crocheting and jewelry making and the blog that I created for that is: http://craftygrandmajune.blogspot.com/

I also have a blog that reflects my interest in Health and Wellness at: http://nutritionfitnesseducation.blogspot.com/ 

As you can imagine, it is hard keeping up with all these blogs, so if you check them out you will see that postings have been kind of sporadic.  I have a lot of writing to do for school, so that makes it hard too. 

The assignment also asked us to write a reflective statement and one that is the motto for my life is: "Life is a journey to discovery".  My blogs reflect this because as I stated before each one reflects a different aspect of my personality.  If I had to sum up my personality, I would say that all in all, I am very creative and I like to think outside the box.

The next 9 weeks

For the next nine weeks this blog will be dedicated to my journey toward integral health and will be used for my Creating Wellness class (HW420) at Kaplan University on-line.  Please follow my journey and feel free to subscribe.