Unit 10 Progress and Reflection

1. Review your unit 3 personal assessment of your psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being. Reflect on these areas . How did you score yourself on a scale from 1 to 10 in unit 3? How do you score yourself now? Has the score changed? Why or why not?

     In unit three, I scored myself a 6 on my psychological wellbeing, a 5 on my physical wellbeing, and a 5 on my spiritual wellbeing. I would now  score myself a 7 in my psychological wellbeing, a 6 in my physical wellbeing, and a 6 in my spiritual wellbeing. My scores may not have gone up a ton, but that’s because I have set high goals for myself. The fact that my score has changed at all in this short period of time, shows me that I have been working very hard at sticking to the exercises I have set for myself during the week.

2. Review the goals and activities you set for yourself in each area. Have you made progress toward the goals? Explain.

    In unit three, I set a goal to workout at least twice per week, while mixing cardio and strength training together. I am now finding myself doing some sort of workout three times per week, sometimes four. I was also able to combine strength training and cardio by doing things like yoga, and tae bo. I set myself a goal of not giving up on meditation for my spiritual wellbeing. I still have not given up and actually find it more invigorating and much easier that I did in unit three. I set a goal of  finding a way to step back, think, and observe my thoughts for my psychological wellbeing. I wanted to be able to decide which ones I wanted to focus my energy into. I have made a huge leap in progress with that, just but studying the witnessing mind and doing things like the subtle mind exercise.

3. Have you implemented the activities you chose for your well-being in each of the three areas? Explain.

  I chose yoga, pilates, and tae bo to help boost my physical wellbeing and I surprisingly stuck to them, and was able to implement them into my busy schedule. I chose continuing to meditate for my spiritual practice since I was so new to it. I tried to do some sort of daily exercise regarding meditation. I was able to do this as well, and plan on continuing. The activity I chose for psychological wellbeing was flat out practice, and acknowledging the situations I was in. That was something I easily implemented by doing witnessing mind activities. I progressed from witnessing to learning what to do with the good thoughts I invest my energy in.

4. Summarize your personal experience throughout this course. Have you developed improved well-being? What has been rewarding? What has been difficult? How will this experience improve your ability to assist others?

    As you can see by my increased ratings on myself, and the fact that I was able to implement the activities I planned to, my overall wellbeing has increased. I may have not reached my goals yet, but I plan to! So many things have been rewarding. The increased inner peace is the biggest one for me. I feel like I woke up from a bad dream and finally started living an amazing life. My life wasn’t bad before, but the negativity and unnecessary self torture made it seem so much worse than it was. It has been difficult for me to fit all the exercises in that I want to do, but I keep doing it because I know it will continue to pay off. My experience in this course will give me the ability to understand the journey and hard work it takes to reach integral health. This understanding will help me to better guide and assist others on their own healing paths. Not only that, but this course has given me the ability to do it with joy, love, and a positive outlook. Good luck to everyone on your journey and I hope you all reach your integral health goals! :)

Unit 9 Final Project

     It is important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually

and physically because, without this personal development, they cannot effectively help current

and potential clients or patients. If the professional does not understand the journey it takes to

reach the spiritual, psychological, and physical goals of a particular patient or client, then they

are not able to be a true guide. The areas that I need to develop for the goals I have set for myself

are all of them. I plan on spending the rest of my life trying to become as integrally healthy as

possible. The short term goals I have for myself, that I have been recently working on, are the

biological aspects of myself and the worldly aspect.                                                                             

     I have assessed my health in the biological aspect by learning from the integral assessment. I

have asked myself questions like, what drives my life? What motivates my actions? Have I

mastered fitness, nutrition, and self-regulation to the level I want to be at (Dacher, 2006). I have

assessed my health in the worldly aspect by asking myself similar questions. I also ask if I am

where I want to be at with work, social activism, and generativity. I meditate on each individual

aspect in each category, and rate myself on a scale of where I feel I am. I score my wellness

spiritually, physically, and psychologically by measuring where I currently am to where I wish to

be in however long of time I wish to be there. Spiritually I score my wellness at about a six, on a

scale of one to ten, ten being where I want to be. Physically I would score myself a seven, and

psychologically about a six.

     One of the goals that I have for myself in the physical area is to master a healthy diet. I seem

to know what is healthy and what is not, but I have had a challenge with putting it all together

and actually doing it. I always seem to have some sort of mental block or excuse preventing me

from doing it. A goal I have for myself is the psychological area is a combination of slowing

down all the mental chatter and stop worrying so much. A goal in the spiritual area that I have is

to become more in touch with the real me, my inner self, and master becoming a person full of

loving-kindness. Life is too short to be full of negativity.

     Some strategies to help foster physical growth are doing different types of exercises. I

personally have chosen to do yoga, tae bo, and pilates. The way that I implement yoga in my life

is by setting aside a time in the morning twice a week to practice it before work. I implement tae-

bo and pilates once to twice per week on the mornings that I am not doing yoga. I give myself a

day or two break, at least, per week to allow the muscles to re-build themselves. Some strategies

to help foster psychological health are doing the subtle mind exercise and visualization exercises.

I implement the subtle mind exercise by practicing it every morning that I have the extra time,

and at night as well. It helps to prepare my mind for the day, and for sleep. I implement the

visualization exercise by setting aside time once per week to practice a visualization, like

meeting aesclepius. Even that once per week has made a significant difference. Some strategies

to help foster spiritual growth are meditation and silence. I say silence because it requires

strategy to find it in our busy lives. I have a specific time and place that I have found I am able to

go and be in almost complete silence. The therapeutic effects I found silence to have on me

spiritually, have been amazing. Silence alone was able to remind me what is real, and what is

most important in life. I implement meditation by doing the loving-kindness exercise, along with

other exercises as many times per week as possible.

      I have already been assessing my progress, or lack of it, and I will continue to use my current

strategy over the next six months. I have created a chart with all the different exercises and

meditations that I do. I mark which ones I do on which days. At the end of the week, I assess

how I feel and whether or not I have progressed or regressed. If I regress, I change up my routine

to something that fits me better. Learning the dynamic principle really helped me with this.  I am

a visual person. I learn better visually, and am motivated by seeing my progress in front of me.

The chart I have created will help me maintain my long-term practices for health and wellness

because just seeing how far I have come, and having that match with how much better I feel,

motivates me to not give up. In fact, I have found myself asking myself recently why I did not

start this sooner. It all has been such a big help and has turned my life toward many positive

directions. It has given me hope that I will someday be developed enough to help others on their

journey to integral health.