Unit 9 -Final Paper

Hello Fellow Health and Wellness Enthusiasts,

Here is my first attempt with my paper, it has not been proof read yet, from my husband.  He is a great proof reader, he tells me how it really sounds.  Maybe the rest of you can help me out as well. Thanks, Emily

When you look in the mirror, what do you see?  Many times we view our selves as having one dimension, the body.  “We’ve been looking outward toward worldly experiences rather than inward toward our essence” (Dacher, 2006, p.1).  There are three dimensions mind/body and spirit that we as professionals need to work on developing.  We must truly develop the psychologically, spiritually and physically for ourselves before we can fully help our clients.  “A far-reaching health requires the transformation of mind and heart.  We call this holistic and evolutionary transformation an integral shift.  The result is integral health” (Dacher, 2006, p.1).  We need to follow integral health because it is a path to human flourishing that not only benefits us as health professional but also our clients.  Why is it important, What do I still need to develop, how am I doing, and how will I achieve success in all three areas?  These are important questions that need to be asked but more importantly answered.

As professional every day working with clients we may find ourselves going through the motions, but sometimes we need to stop and ask why?  Why is it important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically?  We need to answer that question not for the client but for ourselves.  These three areas of our lives are so important to health, happiness and wholeness.  As health and wellness professionals we are role models for our clients, they expect us to provide them with the best we can offer.  Basic health, is not good enough, we need to take them to a deeper level-Integral Health, Authentic Happiness, and Genuine Wholeness. 

·         “Integral Health, self-generated and self-cultivated, that leads to a comprehensive, holistic, and far-reaching healing of body, mind, and spirit and that is immune to life’s adversities, including disease, aging, and death. 

·         Authentic Happiness that arises from within and is expansive, robust, passionate, and unaffected by the circumstances of daily life. 

·         Genuine Wholeness that experiences the interconnection of all life, a seamless existence and an uninterrupted oneness that is accomplished by ease, universal loving-kindness, and a lightness of being” (Dacher, 2006, p. 3).

As professionals we need to take our clients to these higher levels, and show them how they may be able to reach levels that they have never experienced.  To help a client develop a deeper inner life, we must first walk the talk.  We need to dive deeper into why and take ourselves down that path to human flourishing.  Once we have developed practices, exercises and techniques that can help us flourish we can then and only then better help our client develop their own path to better psychological, spiritual and physical (mind/body and spirit) well-being.

            As a future health and wellness professionals there are area in my life that have holes that need to be mended and worked on.  So before I can take a client down the path to human flourishing, I myself need to work to refine my inner life.  “For true flourishing of body, mind and spirit, we must go to the root of our mind/body ailments and permanently heal them at the source.  This requires inner development” (Dacher, 2006, p.19).  When looking at the psychological, spiritual and physical I would have to say I’m a work in progress.  I have not fully attained the highest level of any.  As a teacher I look at life as if we are always learning and developing and we do not stop till were dead.  There is constant growth that needs to be fostered in my personal life in each of these areas. 

When looking at each area (domain) and assessing where I am at and how I rate, there is a difference in each area.  The spiritual domain is the strongest one of the three.  If we were to use a scale of one to ten this domain would range at an 8.5.  When looking at the word spiritual it may take on many meaning to many different people.  It depends on the person on how they see their spiritual development.  For me personally I find spiritual wellness to be a strong relationship with my Lord Almighty.  I do not like it when people look at me and call me religious, I see myself as in a relationship with Jesus Christ.  He is my Lord and Savior.  To build a relationship there needs to be communication.  I pray daily and there are days that my prayer life is much stronger than others.  As part of my relationship I attend church on Sundays, there are a few Sundays that are missed but not many.  Church is a great place where fellow believers commune together in one accord which helps uplift and strengthen my faith.  As part of my faith reading the bible and studying the word could be looked at as a time to meditate.  This part of my spiritual development is where I lack in dedication.  The next one that comes in second on the scale for rating is my physical well-being with a 7.  There are several areas to physical to consider such as nutrition, physical fitness.  Being a physical education teacher these areas are very important to me.  Physical fitness is broken down into health related and skill related physical fitness.  The health-related physical fitness is the main focus when it comes to fitness.  It has five components that we all need to work on.  There is cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility and body composition.  When it comes to my domain of physical I have a couple of areas that I need to work on.  I’m in the process of trying to lose weight but most of all inches around my waist.  This involves eating right and exercising.  The last domain fairs worst then the other two and it is my psychological domain.  When having to rate this area it would be a 5.5 to 6.  “Each of us can begin to experience a flourishing of our health and life from the onset of our inner practice, much as we begin to notice growing physical fitness after only a few weeks of working out at the gym” (Dacher, 2006, p.24).  In my life mental stress and negative emotions tends to be rapid in my life lately.  There are days that I wake up with a head ache and go to bed with one.  The requirements of my life sometimes over whelms me, I’m a wife, mother of two boys, physical education teacher, full time student.  “We are familiar with the ways in which out-of-control stress, negative emotions, rumination, and anxiety can impact on our body, affecting almost all of our bodily systems” (Dacher, 2006, p.83).  My husband and I have been having a few disagreements which is causing anxiety.  This anxiety can sometimes lead me to negative emotions which can lead to more stress.  It is a never ending cycle of mental distress, which I need to work on overcoming. 

Once I have identified my weaknesses and areas that need work it is time to focus on a goal.  These goals are going to be used to help me focus on my path to human flourishing.  Each area needs to have a goal, one for physical, psychological (mental health) and spiritual.  When it comes to the physical area I have two goals.  I would like to be four to five pounds lighter by the start of the next school year in September.  This will put me in the range I was when I was graduating from high school.  The other goal I have is to loose several inches (3 inches) around my waist.  I have a large belly region after having my two boys (older one is 5 and the younger on is going to turn two in two weeks).  They stretched me out and I have the stretch marks to prove it.  The abdominal region is my problem area that I see as a challenge that I need to concur.  “In this way, both the physical condition of our body and the character of our outer experience are strongly influenced and shaped by our state of mind” (Dacher, 2006, p.16).  Now I have identified my physical goal, next is the psychological goal.  I have already stated that stress is one area that causes my mental health to fluctuate.  My goal is to work on identifying the stressors in my life and use techniques, practices that have been taught to me to provide a positive outcome.  Many times in my life depending on the stressor it causes me to turn to negative vises, for me it is food.  When I tend to get stressed with family I turn to eating junk food, such as chips and chocolate.  I guess it is a good thing that I recognize it but I need to implement positive ways to deal with family stress.  By concurring this goal it will also help my physical goal.  “Going even further, if we could transform our mind in the direction of health, happiness, and wholeness, our body would also smile” (Dacher, 2006, p.17).  The last area for developing my goal is the spiritual area.  This is a goal that I have had before but have failed to concur.  I would like to spend about 10 minutes a day reading my Bible and another 10 minutes meditating on the word.  This goes along with the relationship I want to strengthen with Jesus Christ.  “Relationships, the third aspect of our experience, can be a living laboratory for interpersonal and psychospiritual development” (Dacher, 2006, p.87).  Prayer is an everyday occurrence for me and some days it occurs multiple times throughout the day.  I have found prayer to be such a great way to keep the line of communication open, but that is just half of what is required.  Reading my bible and meditating on the word is an area of my spiritual development that is lacking.  That is the other half of having a strong relationship and open lines of communication between Jesus and myself.  It may look like a small amount of time, but I find myself having many excuses and not providing the time.  I would like to increases it once I have concurred this small and realistic goal.  I know myself and if I set a large goal, I will never see success and be defeated before I even began.

The goals have been set and they are realistic, now comes the hard part.  How will I be able to attain these goals?   What strategies will need to be implemented to foster growth in each domain: physical, psychological and spiritual?  Knowing strategies for physical goal is easy being a physical education teacher.  My biggest problem is the dedication to do the strategies.  The first strategy is to develop a balanced diet, which starts with breakfast.  I do not eat breakfast.  I’m the biggest hypocrite when it comes to that, I tell my students all the time that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  By eating six times a day that would cause the tendency to over eat during meal to disappear.  I should eat something for breakfast, then a small snack mid-morning, lunch, snack after school, dinner and then if need be at night have another small snack.  Snacks need to be healthy choices.  Exercise goes right along with a balanced diet.  In the goal for physical I also wanted to not only lose weight but also inches around my waist.  I need to pick up my cardiovascular endurance, instead of the 30 minutes that I have been doing it would be good to go to 60 or just increase the intensity of the activity.  I also need to start to target the problem area.  This is where I can increase my crunches but that is not fun for me.  So instead I like to do work-out videos.  I can do videos that target the core.  These videos tend to not only have core work-outs (abdominals) but also have a great cardio piece attached to the work-out.  These videos can give me the best of both and I get more out of them.  Many times we only see that physical impacts physical.  Until this term I did not focus as much on the psychological impact to my health.  Earlier I talked about mental stress and the impact it had on not only my mental state but also my body.  “We know from medical research that mental stress can cause an increase in blood pressure, pulse, heart arrhythmias, and diminished blood flow in already damaged coronary arteries” (Dacher, 2006, p.84).  If this can be some of the effects of mental stress I need to start strategizing how to curb the outcomes and obtain my goal.  I stated in my goal that I need to develop ways to handle my stress and stressors that lead to a positive result and not destructive.  One big stressor in my life is work.  Dacher talks about transforming our outlook of our work.  “Regardless of the nature of your work, they say to let go of our usual outer self with its ambitions, striving, and judgments and focus only on the service and good you provide to others” (Dacher, 2006, p. 97).  This is putting myself second and looking into how I can serve others.  How can I get to this point of service?  The exercise that involved Loving-Kindness is one that I really liked.  I need to take this love I have for myself, and loved ones and remember even the difficult people at work need that Loving-Kindness.  The more I do this exercise the easier it will be to see everyone with that loving-kindness.  “Loving-kindness opens the heart and ensures the help and cooperation of others” (Dacher, 2006, p.50).  This in turn can help reduce the stress at work.  That may help that stress but what strategy can help me with my family stressors, which leads to destruction of my physical goal of losing weight.  “With proper guidance, inner inquiry, and contemplative practices, we can gain needed insights, learn to freely open our heart, and reconnect with our inner home” (Dacher, 2006, p. 90).  I need to work on calming my mind and focus on silence and stillness.  “But when our focus shifts from outside to inside, many activities [chips and chocolate to deal with my stress] we once cherished and deemed important will gradually lose their appeal, and in time they even become undesirable” (Dacher, 2006, p. 55).  The activity of contemplative practice would work very well when dealing with my family (loved ones).  There are three ways that it can be used. 

·         “At first we use it to tame the mind’s ceaseless mental activities that obscure higher states of awareness. 

·         Then, through mental training, we gain access to the more subtle levels of the mind-witnessing consciousness, the mental state of calm-abiding, and the pure awareness of the unity consciousness. 

·         The fully developed mind is a precise and sensitive instrument for inner inquiry, mind/body self-regulation, and the cultivation of the qualities of human flourishing-health, happiness, and wholeness” (Dacher, 2006, p.62).

This leads me into the strategies for the spiritual domain.  My goal was that I wanted to strengthen my relationship with Jesus by reading my Bible and meditating on the word.  The practice of the subtle mind I feel would help me focus better on what I was reading and studying.  The process of breathing to calm the spirit would open my mind to the message.  “Peaceful breathing patterns lead to a peaceful mind” (Dacher, 2006, p.75).  This breathing calms the mind so I can then focus on the material that was read.  “Our mind is clear, quiet, stable, open, alert, and all-knowing” (Dacher, 2006, p.76).  The other strategy that could be used is the use of visualization.  I could take what was read and try to visualize the situation, individual’s feelings-happiness, wholeness and health.  Visualization is a great exercise that allows you to dive deeper into the full experience of what was read.

              The strategies have been laid out, but how will I know if they are working for me.  This is where assessing my progress or lack of progress over the next six months is an important key.  With the physical I will keep track of my weight and inches lost by doing a monthly measurement.  At the beginning of each month I will record my numbers and this way I can track if my strategies are being implemented properly.  Psychological assessment I find a little more difficult.  In six months I will be at the end of my terms with Kaplan, so a lot of stress will be behind me, in four months I will be done work for the summer, till them how will I be able to assess my mental stress?  I could keep a journal and record the moments that cause me excess stress and how I dealt with it and the outcome.  At the end of the month I can look back and see if my strategies have worked and if the amount of incidents has gone down over the next six months.  The last area to assess is my spiritual growth.  I find this very hard to assess, how do you assess a relationship?  I can keep track of the days per month that I read my bible and meditated, this can be done by checking off a calendar.  The only other way of being able to assess how the strategies are working is to keep a journal.  So, as I read and meditate I then can write down after what I have learned and what was shown to me and if it relates to what I’m facing in my life at this point, then review the journals at the end of three months.  Now I know how I will keep track for the next six months, then how can I transfer this to a long-term practice for health and wellness?  I have found that the best success for long term goals is to have someone keeping me accountable.  If I can find an individual in my life that can keep checking in with me I do much better.  Being kept accountable is a way that has worked for me in the past.   When I have this big brother/sister individual knowing what my goals are and checking in with my progress, it drives me to be good and stay on course.  I’m also taking a stress management course this next term that can help continue the process that I have started.  This class may take some of the practices/exercises that were learned this term and expand on it or maybe even give more strategies to deal with stress.  I’m looking forward to this class, especially after what I have learned this term.

            My own physical, psychological and spiritual well-being is not only important for me personally but also helps to expand my professional knowledge for future clients.  These goals and strategies will help me take this life that I have now and help it blossom into something more.  It will help take me down the path to human flourishing, with a true meaning of happiness, wholeness and health.  Dacher has a statement I found in the book that seems to sum up our time in this term and our personal plans we have just developed.  “We are of the extraordinary, and yet each day we settle for the ordinary” (Dacher, 2006, p. 8).  I’m done with the ordinary and want so much more for me but most of all help my future clients to see this in their lives as well.

References: 

Dacher, E.S., (2006). Integral Health. The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health