Assessment- Unit 10

After reviewing my Unit 3 Health assessment and comparing it to now, I see a few differences here and there. My physical health and fitness is pretty good. I rate it about a 6, compared to 4-5 back then. My psychological wellness is rated about the same as before, an 8. Also my spiritual wellness is rated the same around and 8. I think this is because I focused a little more on boosting up my physical daily activities with my son. We walk around, play outside when he wants to play, and we spend more quality time together stretching or doing silly things that he likes around the house.
My main goal back then was to excel in all three areas of my health to balance them out more and involve my son into them as well. I did achieve my goal in some way, but I know it could have been a little better. I like how my son learns from what I do and I know that it's healthy for him. I even got my sister and mother into doing relaxation exercises and focusing on making themselves healthier within all three categories.
I still want to implement new hobbies into my life for my spiritual and psychological well-being and make more time to do my exercises. I know it's hard being in school and being a full-time mom doing loads of stuff everyday, but I have a feeling I will have more time later on.
I would have to say that I enjoyed this course. I learned a lot more than I thought I would. I enjoyed the experiences and I plan to keep up with all the stuff I learned and learn new ways of keeping myself healthy. My health has boosted a lot. I have noticed my mood changes, my way of thinking, and just the more positive outcomes of viewing my everyday activities. I feel more accomplished at the end of the day and I think that's very important to me.

Unit 9

I.                        Introduction:
It is very important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically because they all work together as a unit in helping achieve overall health and wellness. All aspects of them help in maintaining an effective and healthy person. A professional in health and wellness will definitely see the link such as how the body needs certain chemicals from the brain to function efficiently, and how the brain benefits from spiritual practices like meditations, breathing, mind games, etc. They all bring a much positive vibe to a person and continue to bring a health and wellness efficient atmosphere to others around them as well.

Some areas that I, personally, need development in is a more spiritual and psychological awareness for myself. I find it hard to make time to be myself and enjoy my own thoughts and relax in a stress-free environment. I also lose my spiritual guidance and find it hard to find the motivation to do anything for myself. So, getting myself into a concrete routine would be the best plan for me, such as meditating in the mornings to relax and start my day out right or finding time to pray and rekindle my soul with daily activities. I think if I did more activities to benefit my mind and soul I would be healthier on the inside and out. I have a couple hobbies to get into that I think will help also, such as painting/drawing, just being more creative and artsy. I also want to start walking and finding alone and quiet time to myself and stretching and practice breathing more to relax myself and get more energized.

II.                        Assessment:
Since learning more about overall health and wellness I have measured my expectations with reality. Physically, I expect to be active and do physical activities or workout daily (at least 3 times a week). However, I find myself unmotivated or too busy to keep those minimum requirements. But, I walk around and spend more time with my child outside and either walking or playing with him. I would like to enjoy more fitness exercises like walking/jogging for 30 minutes or doing simple at home weight lifting exercises to keep my muscles toned and working. I would score my physical wellness as better than I was last year. I grade myself with my overall wellness over time. Last year I didn’t have that great of physical fitness, but now I am getting much better at it. I try not to compare myself with others but with just myself.

Psychologically, I spend too much time thinking of the past or stressful events. I don’t give myself time to quiet my thoughts and enjoy meditations or visualizations that are healthier for me. My expectation for creating a healthier mind is staying stress-free, not worrying, and giving myself time to do some brainwork- such as doing crosswords, spelling, learning new words, reading, practice breathing exercises and relaxation. If I have not at least completed one of those brain exercises twice a week then my health is not looking that good. I found that enjoying some math time to keep my math skills up does the trick every now and then too. It helps me feel like I accomplished something. My psychological health right now, would be scored as better before I knew about psychological health. I think as long as I keep measuring my psychological health with my past and I excel from where I was then I will be doing just fine. However, I know there’s always more I can do.

Spiritually, I like to measure up to how my mood is at the end of the day. If I feel positive, happy, friendly, or exceptional than my spirits are great. The different ways of keeping my spirituality healthy are providing myself with the right nutrients during the day, keeping myself doing the right things and being honest, treating others the way I want to be treated, and helping them. Being a kind, loving, and caring person is the way to keep myself thriving spiritually. I try to make this a daily thing but at times, I need a push or it won’t happen as much. I tend to me selfish at times, but I understand what needs to be changed and accepting myself as who I am is better than what others think of me. To score my spiritual part of wellness, I would say it’s a bit poor but I am on my way on planning and making an improvement for myself. It’s going to be a little hard at first, because I am not much of a giver at times and I tend to hold my anger or frustration on past events. I also tend to keep the past to learn and make sure it never happens again, but I think as soon as I let all that go it would be a lot easier to move forward and let others in and treat them as equals.

III.                        Goal development:
I have different goals for myself involving the different areas of wellness. For my spiritual wellness my goal is to do more things for others so that I can feel better about myself. I want to practice Love and Kindness to others that are strangers and include more of my spirituality in my overall health. My psychological wellness includes goals that will better my mind and thinking. It includes adding time for myself to cherish my well-being as a person (my “me” time) and relaxing and thinking things through before acting and becoming stressful. I would like to diminish my anger and negative issues of my past and present and work on being in the present moment. I also have goals to empower my creative thinking and bring on more hobbies to enjoy. My physical wellness has a few goals that I would like to share as well. First, I want to enjoy new activities that I can do with my son and that are safe for him to get into. I also want to make time for myself to do exercises that I like to do alone, such as breathing and stretching and focusing more on the moment of bliss. The last goal is to stay strong and committed to being healthy physically. I don’t want my muscles to get drained and bored from not working so much.

IV.                        Practices for personal health:
There are some strategies that I intend to apply to help further my healthy growth physically, mentally, and spiritually. They would have to be stretching and doing easy muscle toning exercises every other day (physically), think before I act to minimize stress every day (mentally), and doing random acts of kindness for others whenever I possibly can (spiritually). My physical plan will include waking up and stretching for 10-15 minutes before starting my day and during the day do some squats, lunges, push-ups, etc. for about 20 minutes to keep myself lean and toned. I think doing these simple exercises will definitely help keep me moving and keep my muscles working. It’s good because I hardly have time to do anything else with being a full time mom and not having time for myself to do any running yet. It will also work with my pregnancy as well, because I know intense exercises are not recommended for me anymore.

As for my mental practices, I like to focus on stress-free practices to help with my thinking. I understand stress is not that healthy for me and keeping my thoughts focused on the positive things will help fight that. Just by reminding myself I don’t need the stress every day and remembering what pleases me more will help. Anything else that is hurtful or negative, I would prefer to stay away from. I can always control my thoughts and way of living but I can’t control things out of my control. With my spiritual practices, my plan is to keep my heart open and do good things for others and myself. It could be hard but I think doing small things like giving nice comments to people, giving hugs, giving gifts, or such will help someone in the long run. Even giving a person a ride or feeding the hungry will help as well. I think if I feel a little down or not feeling much love from myself as a person, it would help to love myself and love others by doing kind acts like this.

V.                        Commitment:

Assessing progress in these areas of health and wellness will be simple. Physical examinations could be done for my physical plan. If I see toning and progress in my muscles or notice the size of muscle increase or nothing happen at all  in the next six months, I will know whether I achieved my goal or not. By assessing my level of stress and positive thinking at the end of the days or how I imagine my life going somewhere in six months will help assess my plan. If I notice my mood or my stress level worsen or still the same, I know I wasn’t trying hard enough. Also that would be a great indicator of how well my spiritual plan is going too. Lack of love and determination in myself will be an indicator of how low my spirituality is. All these come together in assessing my overall wellness and health. If one of them is knocked off balance, there’s a good chance that the others may be knocked out as well. They all help each other progressing and implementing health and wellness in myself. If lack or progress occurs in any of these areas, there are always new and different strategies to undergo. Maybe a different activity or practice could be done or a mixture of other tactics to keep things fresh. Long-term practice of any method would be healthy and it wouldn’t be going to waste.

Exercises and Practices- U8

I found that the visualizations, and the meditations exercises are the best ones for me. They help me focus and regain energy for my tasks. I find they give me time out of my days to enjoy my own self. I find listening to soft music, laying and meditating for a couple minutes a day and mostly quieting my mind helps me move along to my next task. It calms me down and makes everything else less stressful. They also help with my imagination and keeps me psychologically at ease.
Doing the practices and exercises also help in teaching my son how to calm himself down too. Which I think is great since he is already a handful at times and is always energized. I think its great he also learns this early on. It helps him get his emotions out at times and stay healthy in his mind.
I think giving myself a few minutes each morning helps me out with starting my days. It gathers my thoughts and puts me at ease. They also help me think positive and benefit more from my days than anything else. My mental fitness is very important so, starting it off right in the mornings also gives me good judgment on my nutrition. I think this practice will certainly be hard at times when I move forward on to others but, for now I think its best to start out slow.

Aesclepius Exercise- U7

The Aesclepius Exercise was very interesting from the start. When I think of someone wise, I tend to think of my own father. He has always been the person of my life to turn to for help, for love, for patience, and understanding. He also has the hardworking characteristics I always thought made him wise and a leader of my family. Going through the exercise allowed me to go into a more in-depth assessment of who he is as my father. I got a chance to overlook his actions, his way of thinking, his actions and awareness, and also the person he is and how/why he is that person. I have always looked up to him and wanted to be like him. When I have the chance to be like him, I welcome it and feel that as his daughter already, I am taking in the next role as a wise and loving healer. I like this exercise because it helps me regain myself on who I want to be and who my role model is. It brings me back to why I am who I am and who I could be and much more. I can definitely see that going through this exercise and many others, they will help with integral health and help me gain more of my inner being than I thought possible. I can already see an increase in my spiritual and psychological wellness. I find the energy and willfulness through my daily tasks. I find it best to meditate and put my mind at ease to give myself rest daily to improve my judgments and my attitude towards things I can’t change.

“One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” is a saying that I find true. It simply states that a person cannot just simply give advice/direction/advice on an event or issue without themselves being there first. It’s the same with asking for directions in an unknown territory. A person won’t just go to another traveler and ask for directions. They go to a local person and ask. This is the same for people who need or ask for advice on their health. They want feedback and facts about what they are getting themselves into. They want to talk to someone who really knows and has gone through the same thing. Health and wellness professionals need to know this and understand that their clients need more feedback and reassurance on what they are getting from their professionals.

Integral Assessment - U6

I feel like a new baby soul running wild, free, scared, and yet confident. It's like a peeled back a thick layer of rubber attached over my soul and I let it breathe more cleansing air than ever before.
I find that these meditations and exercises help me gain a piece of myself that I lost from distractions. I enjoy each exercise after repeating them over and over daily. My mind is refreshed and at ease. My breathing is more important to me than anything right now. I feel like gliding along everyday in serenity just letting my stress bounce off me.
Even though I feel this way and it's the only way I can describe it, I find that I still need to grow and form myself more. I find that negativity in my life needs to be pushed away and let my need for life flourish. As, most of you know I am pregnant and just going through these meditations I feel that my child inside me is also benefiting from these too. It's important to me as a mom to provide what's best for my child and I really wish I could have done this sort of relaxation and meditation while I was pregnant with my first child. It helps me appreciate what I have more.

Subtle Mind - U5

I personally love the Subtle Mind exercise more than the Loving Kindness exercise. It gets me focused a lot faster. I relax and I breathe making sure my mind if still. Although, I had to repeat both exercises a couple times to get myself to not listen to the instructor, and listen to myself and sometimes nothing at all. The Subtle Mind exercise is more beneficial for me, I enjoy my mind being at ease and practicing my breathing.

Spiritual wellness is more believing in myself and other things out of this world. It’s having faith in the impossible at times and just knowing something with no concrete evidence. However, even though it is not concrete, it is there just like how my mentality and my physical well-being is. They all help me live and help me further my existence.

I find that my spiritual wellness effect my everyday choices. Whether I want to be at peace and serene or be active and confident. The connection between my spirit with my mentality and physical well-being is a circle. One cannot work without the other. If one is thrown off, then they all become unbalanced and it takes more healthy ways of exercises to bring them back into balance.

I tend to imagine these components as a ball:

The rubber of the ball- physical

The air inside the ball- spiritual

The way the ball moves and rolls along- mental

Loving Kindness & Mental Workout - U4

My experience with the Loving Kindness exercise was interesting. I don’t know how to say anything else about it. I don’t want to be too superficial about it. But as I was listening to the lady, I felt a little awkward; mainly because I didn’t know what to do or think at times. I didn’t know what she meant by certain phrases on how to feel or how to go through the steps.

I tried this exercise twice already. I tried getting relaxed in a chair and laying down, but the start of the exercise was always hard to grasp. It wasn’t as beneficial as I thought it would have been. I guess I expected something different. If I knew anyone that was more in tuned with their inner self, I would recommend this. However, if a person doesn’t meditate or reflect on their thoughts and such, I wouldn’t recommend it for them at first. I would recommend something easier and understandable to undergo.

Mental workouts are exercises to work your brain. To help it think and move along swiftly with ease and at times question and complicate things mentally in order to solve the dilemma. Some mental workout benefits are keeping the mind healthy and working, keeping it guessing and fresh so that it doesn’t get bored or die. The mind is very powerful, therefore to keep it powerful, we must exercise it. Some easy exercises would be spelling, mental imagery, crosswords, puzzles, etc. These all help relax and work the mind to keep it healthy.