Unit 10

In unit 3 I rated both my psychological and my spiritual well being at a 9, and my physical well being at a 2.  In the areas of psychological and spiritual well-being I would still rate myself at a 9, I keep up with my daily spiritual practices and intend to keep both at a nine believing that we always have room to grow as a person and spiritually.  As far as the physical, I am going to rate myself at a 4 now, I have a weight loss of about 10 pounds now, and feel that I am on my way to my goals, I didn’t rate any higher because one of my goals was to exercise more every day, and because of the horrific weather here on the east coast I can barely get out of my house for a walk, and honestly I am feeling a bit depressed because of the weather so I haven’t done anything inside either, hopefully with spring on its way this will change right quick.  

I believe with this course that I have grown and improved.  I liked learning new applications like the loving kindness practice which will most definitely be of great use to me.  By keeping up with my practices and using new ones like loving kindness, I will be able to stay true to myself and be compassionate for others when I need to serve.

Unit 9 Assessment

Introduction

It is important for health and wellness professionals to develop because we must first be a role model for our clients, if we go into helping a client and our heads are a mess or we have no spiritual practice, we are less likely to be able to help those clients.  As the saying goes “practice what you preach”, if we are helping a client with the practice of meditation then we need to be meditating in order to be on common ground with that client.  Knowledge is probably the most important of all, know what you’re talking about, you just can’t go in cold with something like this.  If you’re helping a client change to a eating a healthy lifestyle you need to be living that healthy lifestyle.   Staying positive and living our lives in the present will enable ourselves to give our gifts to our clients as well as to ourselves.  The area that I need to develop is the physical.  I have struggled for some time to lose the weight that I need to and to get on a regular exercise regimen, however I am proud to say that I am doing it, it still needs work and a little tweaking but I have lost 8 pounds, it’s just the last piece of the puzzle that is being put into place!

Assessment 

As I previously rated myself spiritually and psychologically at a 9, this is the same rating that I would rate myself today.  I continue to use my spiritual practices that I have come to learn through my spiritual journey in the past couple of years and I think that those practices trickle down to the psychological for a healthy mind. I rated myself at a 9 because I believe that we are always growing as a person and that we are learning new things every day, whether it be in our scope of practice or about ourselves as individuals.  Originally I rated myself at a 2 for the physical, however because of recent turn of events, I am bumping myself up to a 5!  

Goal development for integral health

Spirituality ~ My goal for this at this point would to stay steadfast with the practices that I already have in place since they are working for me.  

Psychologically ~ I will incorporate the loving kindness practice to help rid some of the clutter in my brain.

Physically~ My goal is to stick with the strength training regimen that I created, and also to get out in nature more, of course when all the snow is gone.  

Practices for personal health

To foster growth for all three of these aspects I will try new activities for each of these.  

Physical ~  I would like to try Qigong.  The basis of this practice is to manipulate energy in order to promote self-healing, increase longevity, and prevent disease.  Wu Tao is another exercise that I had tried awhile back and I will try to incorporate this into my life again.  This is a dance based moving meditation that balances our vital life force energy and targets specific energy pathways to free blockages.  

Psychological ~ I have a friend who is studying emotion code using muscle testing.  This is a process of questions that is asked, silently in her head, and that our bodies answer.  Our bodies tell where there are trapped emotions lying.  After the emotion is discovered she pulls it from your body and sends it to Mother Earth for transmutation.  I do believe that I have some trapped emotions that need to be cleared so I will be working on this with her.  I would also like to try some hypnotherapy for my anxiety of test taking.  A hypnotherapist uses the art of hypnosis and their training in psychology to give positive beneficial therapy to the sub-conscious.

Spiritually ~ When spring approaches, and hopefully it will soon, I plan on getting out more in nature like taking small hikes to connect to my inner self in a different way as nature is very spiritual.  

Commitment

Assessment will be important if I want to reach my goals and continue to carry out my practices.  I keep a journal of every day happenings, but I think I will also keep a separate one for these practices that I have already implemented and for the ones that I plan on implementing into my life.  The strategy is to find something that you love and are passionate about to maintain those practices into long term practices. 

Best of luck to all of you in your future endeavors!

Namaste

~Michelle

Unit 8

I chose loving kindness and meditation for my the two practices that are most beneficial to me.  Using loving kindness helps me to see everyone as one with myself.  For those times when some people are less than appealing to me for whatever reason, this practice really helps to put things into perspective to the fact that everyone has feelings, everyone has a soul, and everyone is going through something in their life.  This is a great practice to use when you need to forgive someone, keeps your mind clear when we are able to rid it of unnecessary clutter.  By practicing meditation it allows me to go deeper to connect with my inner and my higher self and helps me to see more clearly and gives me much clarity, in turn this enables me to stay present and focused. ~ 

Meeting Aesclepius

I became very emotional when I did the Aesclepius meditation.  I choose to use a dear friend of mine as the person of wisdom in the meditation.  Maryann has not only my dear friend but has been my spiritual mentor for the past couple of years.  I have a wonderful connection with her and our connection is one on a level of mother and daughter to a degree, I am grateful for her every day of my life.  Even the connection in the meditation was a powerful one.  Practicing meditation not only gives me much clarity in my life but I can also connect within and to my higher self.  By making it a point every day to meditate, even if it’s just for 10 or 15 minutes will raise our consciousness to foster health and wellness.  A clear mind is a sharp mind!

The saying “One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" means that we need to experience and have knowledge in order to pay it forward and teach the next person.  For example, if a holistic nutritionist is not eating and practicing holistically, how could they possibly teach someone else to live this lifestyle?  As wellness professionals we absolutely have an obligation to develop our mind, body, and spirit, it keeps us grounded and connected.  As a Reiki practitioner, if I did not self Reiki every day and only practiced when I had a client, I feel that I would be cheating myself first off and I value my clients to much not to stay grounded and connected to the energy. 
~Michelle

Universal Loving Kindness

The loving kindness exercise is a very powerful tool.  After reciting this for ten minutes, I was brought to a very peaceful place.  When my spiritual journey started several years ago, one of the first things that I learned is loving kindness, although this isn't what I called it, and I now have a name for it!  I found that when I realized that we are all the same and that we are all souls, forgiving comes so much easier, as well as health, happiness, and wholeness.  Because once you really want those things for yourself it is what you want for everyone else because in fact we are all one.  

After taking the assessment it was no surprise to me that I was lacking in biological flourishing.  I have struggled with my weight for most of my life and I have a hard time sticking with any kind of exercise regimen for long, and I can never seem to figure out why I fall off, I mean it isn’t brain surgery, its 30 minutes per day.  I once had chalked it up to boredom, but there are so many fun activities out there, I can’t see how that could be the case.  But I refuse to give up.  Maybe this is something that I need to tackle deeper with hypnosis or past life regression.  It isn’t a matter of not knowing what to do as far as eating because I do eat healthy and don’t buy processed foods or eat any kind of fast foods.   Just today I created an exercise regimen with strength training and a walking regimen.  I made this regimen a short term goal of 8 weeks and plan to reassess at the end to see where I am and how much better shape I am in!

Loving Kindness

I enjoyed this exercise, thinking of my daughters made me feel warm and fuzzy.  To love ourselves can be a difficult task.  It took me many years to love myself, not only to love myself but to accept myself; I feel that these two things go hand in hand.  We must have love for ourselves to love others, just as we must take care of ourselves to take care of others.  The second and third part of this exercise helped me immensely, I take in others feelings, hurt, sadness, and happiness and sometimes putting a bubble around me to keep out these energies doesn’t always protect me fully, but by learning to breathe a little more and sending light on the outbreath will be a new way for me to deal with this type of thing.  This type of exercise would definitely be beneficial to anyone who does it, our world needs more love, positive energy, and “loving kindness”!  If even half of our population made this a practice, consciousness would grow tenfold.  This in itself is a mental workout, it is a way of training our minds and by doing exercises like this we grow and flourish, do it for 21 days and see how you feel!  So love, love, love, and forgive with all you have.

Love on

~Michelle