Unit 10 Blog Assignment

Unit Ten Blog Assignment

 

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?

 

    How I scored myself in Unit 3:

 

I would have to say my physical well-being is at a 0, my spiritual well-being maybe a 4 and my psychological well-being definitely in negative numbers, like a -10.

 

    Scoring from Unit 9 Project:

 

The biological domain is another critical domain for me. I score myself as a two. My fitness, nutrition and ability to keep them regulated are really bad.

 

The psychospiritual domain is the domain in which I have been doing the most developing. I would score my wellness in this domain as a five.

 

I do not feel I can truly score myself in regards to the worldly domain. My best guess would be a three.

 

I raised my physical well-being score from a zero to a two because I am more aware of my physical health and am starting to incorporate healthier standards and actions into my life. I have great intent at this point and plan on following it through to becoming a physically healthier human being.

 

My psychological and spiritual scores I have somewhat lumped together. I'd say they are at an average of a 5. I have come a long way in this class but have a lot more to do. For me, personally the works I need to accomplish are very intertwined within each of these two realms.

 

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

 

    Goals I set for myself in Unit 3:

 

"The goal I want to set for myself physically is to lose weight."

"Psychologically my goal is to give my mind a break. "

"Spiritually I need to let myself and the world off the hook. I need to learn how to forgive."

 

I have not made very much progress on my physical goal to lose weight. I know what I need to do and want to do. I have not had much success with execution of this goal but, am continuing to work towards it.

 

I have done much better with my psychological and spiritual goals. I have learned the importance of quieting the mind and of forgiveness. I have had a lot of success with the loving-kindness exercise and with meditation and am starting to find a peace for myself. I am also building on my forgiveness and allowing for self forgiveness as well.

 

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

 

    Activities I set for myself in Unit 3:

 

"I am working on getting outside and walking for my physical activity."

"The activity I am going to work on for this goal is some positive feedback" (psychological).

"For this I am going to try some forgiving visualization exercises" (spiritual).

 

I initially in the beginning of term did very well with getting outdoors for walks. However, once I started working again and was assigned to the night shift this rapidly changed. By the time I get home in the morning, shower, get school work, house work, and errands ran I fall into bed exhausted. I live in a very small town where thing do not open very early in the morning and right now the weather is freezing. I need to be a bit more creative in getting my physical exercise in.

 

I have maintained the positive feedback since I started it and have been able to build a bit of self-esteem and confidence in myself. This is really helping me psychologically. I believe I can face things where before I met everything as a basket case.

 

Spiritually, the forgiveness visualizations I have been working on have really started to pay off. I find I feel as though I have made space inside me and in my heart. I have been happier overall.

 

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?

    I am extremely grateful to have been able to take this course at this time in my life. I learned things that I needed to have in my life. I learned things that can help me to take my life and work to the next level and then to levels beyond. I learned about living life, not just surviving it. I have developed and improved well-being, mostly psychologically and spiritually through the course of this class. My physical well-being is lagging behind the other two but it is improving and I'm sure will catch up. What I cherish the most about the class is that I learned the tools needed to create true healing in my life. I learned what I need to do to flourish. These are true gifts and I will continue to use what we've learned and keep learning for all my years to come. Through this I hope to become a guiding light for others seeking integral health and to help others in an integral manner.

Unit 9 Project

My Integral Plan

Unit 9 Project Cherie Cariou   January 15, 2011   HW-420-03 Prof. Maule

 

 

 

Why is it important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically? What areas do you need to develop to achieve the goals you have for yourself?

    I believe health and wellness professionals should develop psychologically, spiritually and physically in order to provide integrally competent care to their patients. In order to provide holistic care health and wellness professionals must be aware of the different modalities that exist. An understanding of these modalities and their benefits should exist so that the professional is able to introduce them as a potential avenue of care. Any health and wellness professional can read up on alternative care modalities and present them to patients. The benefits of the modalities can be read off like a laundry list. The professional can also easily provide a few pamphlets to the patient as well but, to truly immerse themselves in the patients care more must come with simply providing information.

    To give holistic care to a patient is only one principle of integral health. In order for a health and wellness professional to provide true integrally competent care to a patient an understanding and knowing must come with it. If the professional does not understand what it truly means to treat the mind, body and spirit there is no way that the professional can provide such care. There will be no concept of what the patient needs to do, patience the patient needs to have, the ability of the patient to perform the modalities will be under assessed and the professional may not be open to hearing vital information from the patient which could further progress the level of care. I can tell you how to drive a car but if I myself have never driven one how much help can I really be?

     Another important reason for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically is that doing so will bring to them a sense of wholeness and happiness to their work. The professional will have a desire to listen to his/her patients and to treat the patient holistically, mind, body, and spirit. Many professionals simply meet a patient and start treating their symptoms rather than looking for the causes of them. I have seen this so many times just within my own family. It takes visit and visit to a practitioner to find out what is really going on.

A prime example is with my own daughter. As an infant she refused to sleep on her back. The "Back to Sleep" campaign was in full swing when she was young and I was so terrified of her dying of SIDS because she would only sleep on her stomach that I would sit by her cradle and crib while she slept. Even then her sleep was not good. For the first year of her life I barely slept at all. I was constantly taking her in for stomach problems to the physician who never really did anything to help me. One day, exhausted and having nothing left, I broke down. My husband at the time called the manager of the health care network outraged and at his wits end. The next morning the manager had us bring our daughter to the physician's office two hours before it was to open. She assembled three different doctors and my daughter's chart and we stayed until they had answers. They told us she had trouble digesting milk, even breast milk and needed a special formula. To compensate us for all we had been through the medical clinic would provide us with the formula. Yet even after a barrage of tests they could not tell us why our daughter could not digest milk.

    My daughter is 9 years old now and has always had digestive problems. Two weeks ago she had a dental appointment with a new dentist. He spent more time with my daughter than any doctor ever had and he was just giving her a dental check-up. He told us that she is tongue tied. The Dentist also mentioned that being tongue is common, often missed and is quite simple to fix. My daughter has been to the dentist every six months since she was two years old. I was actually very skeptical at first as not one doctor or dentist has ever mentioned this before. Then this new Dentist proceeded to ask about her eating habits and digestion. He told us that in infants being tongue tied can cause a failure or inability to "latch on" when breast feeding and causes digestive problems. I also found this out through research I did online after we returned home. Here after all these years I finally found out what was wrong. It was due to a Dentist who cared about his patient's total health.     If only one doctor would have cared that much when she was an infant we all would have been spared so much pain.

Health and wellness professionals whom truly care about their patients and their profession will only be able to provide the best totally integrated health care if they themselves are practicing integral health in their own life. Developing their own psychological, spiritual and physical aspects will guide them to fulfill their life and the lives of their patients in ways and professional who is not developing his/her inner self will never be able to understand. Their work will become their passion and how they contribute to themselves, others, community, country, world and to all of humanity.

I personally am very good at listening and am capable of noticing things others do not. However, I often lack confidence in myself and ideas. I most definitely need to work on my psychological development and build the belief that I can truly help people. I need to build my confidence. I need to believe that my thoughts and ideas are worth voicing and that they can help others. I think this will help when I have a suggestion for a resident's care plan at work. I often see or find things that work well for the residents and while I do mention them I stop myself before going to administrators and truly advocating the change or asking that it be looked into as a possibility further. This is definitely the most important areas as far as my work that I need to develop.

 

How have you assessed your health in each domain? How do you score your wellness spiritually, physically, and psychologically?

    Our integral health assessment is performed through four domains (psychospiritual, biological, interpersonal and worldly). Each of these domains consists of three lines of development. Each line and domain contains within it a level of mind, body and spirit which can be developed and reflect our outer, inner and innermost health. This assessment is a tool in which practitioners and individuals can use to target the areas of life which need the most work and which can lead to the greatest amount of human flourishing.

    The psychospiritual domain is the domain in which I have been doing the most developing. I would score my wellness in this domain as a five. I am currently doing most of my developing on the emotional line which for me, is going to take years to develop. The reason for this is due to the extent of the emotional scars that I have. I have years of traumas to face and find peace with. I recently found a mental health practitioner that will be able to help me but, is waiting for me to be out of this class to start working with me with meditations and visualizations because he knows I have been doing exercises for class. He will be using the same techniques but asking me to do some very specific work.

    I have turned inward and become extremely introverted over the years. I rarely can get the ideas and thoughts from my mind out verbally. I write much better than I actually speak and that has really affected my outer environment as my ability to communicate verbally is seriously damaged. This leads me into the Interpersonal domain. While I considered the psychospiritual domain to be the domain in which I need the most healing I consider the Interpersonal domain the domain in which I can develop the most. I perceive my interpersonal domain health to be a four. The reason I score it lower than psychospiritual is because while I am probably a six on the inside I cannot portray that out into the world. There is no way for me to benefit my family and community and there is no way for them to truly reap any of my benefits because of my inability to portray on the outside what is inside me.

    The biological domain is another critical domain for me. I score myself as a two. My fitness, nutrition and ability to keep them regulated are really bad. I have been for many years trying to heal myself from outside in and have failed time after time after time. This time I am working on healing myself from the inside out and have chosen to first concentrate on my psychological and spiritual health and am hoping that as I develop them I will begin to develop a drive and ambition to deal with my physical health. I have started to do small things here and there but am not consistent enough to derive true benefit and healing from any of my actions. I have been exploring the possibility that the reason in this is embedded in my inability to get what is inside me out. I want to exercises, eat right, etc… I feel it inside my very core but am completely incapable of really executing the actions in my life. This is a domain that needs developing and healing and I believe will benefit the most from my work in the two previous mentioned domains.

    I do not feel I can truly score myself in regards to the worldly domain. My best guess would be a three. I have done a lot of developing in the work line of development. I think I chose a good career path in order to develop this domain. As a CNA my work is challenging every day. The range of emotions you experience in a day is truly its own private roller coaster. I stop several times a day to clear my mind, tell myself I can do it, and try to bring a pleasant open mind to each resident as I help them with whatever their need is. I have done most of my, in the course of the day, work in this line of development. It is at work that I am learning to switch my mind to a calm state, clearing it, and filling it with love and then proceeding. I have learned a lot from this line of development about what I need to specifically work on in other domains to be able develop to the point where I am a flourishing human being in the worldly domain.

 

 

List at least one goal you have for yourself in each area, Physical, Psychological (mental health) and Spiritual.

• Physical goal: My physical goal is to have better nutrition in my life. By creating a healthy diet I believe it will be a stepping stone in my ability to work on other physical aspects of my life, such as weight loss.
  

• Psychological goal: My psychological goal is to increase my mental health and begin to communicate the things inside me to the outside world.
  
• Spiritual goal: For this goal I choose forgiveness. I would like the ability to forgive many things and people in my life but, most of all myself, for my mistakes.
  

 

What strategies can you implement to foster growth in each of the following domains; Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual. Provide at least two examples of exercises or practices in each domain. Explain how you will implement each example.

• Physical: In order to foster my physical growth I would like to develop one strategy that will help increase my nutrition and another that will help to get me exercising on a more consistent basis. The most important thing I need to do for my nutrition at this time is to stop drinking so many carbonated drinks. I need to drink more water. I believe I can work this into my life by first having a glass of water for every soda. In regards to exercising I am going to implement stretching when I get up in the morning and before I go to bed at night. Once I have attained the ability to keep the stretching going on a daily basis I can start to replace it with actual exercises or walking.
  
• Psychological: Meditation is going to be very important to my development of this domain. I am going to be implementing relaxation techniques to help me fall asleep with a clear mind and will be trying to increase my meditation time from the current ten minutes to twenty minutes. I plan on meditating on things I want to develop in the other domains.
  
• Spiritual: I will be continuing the loving-kindness exercise in order to help me develop my ability to forgive myself and others for wrong doings, mistakes, and painful happenings in life. I am also going to try doing one thing just for me each week. I need to build love and appreciation for myself. I believe if I take the time each week to retreat or do something nice or fun for myself I will be able to foster these much needed spiritual aspects.
  

 

How will you assess your progress or lack of progress in the next six months? What strategies can you use to assist in maintaining your long-term practices for health and wellness?

    In order to assess my progress over the next six months I have decided that journaling would be the most effective. Through journaling I can keep track of my successes, my troubles, what things are working and any roadblocks that I am having trouble with. I also think it will be a good way for me to keep track of my thoughts and motivations I can use if I find myself faltering. Over the long-term I think mindfulness and allowing myself to feel good about my achievements will help me to maintain my practices in the long-run. There is much work for me to do and through journaling, mindfulness and a having a skilled teacher I am looking forward to becoming healthier and seeing my whole life flourish through my efforts, growth and development.

 

    

Unit 8- Exercises Review

Hello everyone,

I have to say that my favorite exercise is the Loving-Kindness.  I have worked with it a bit more than any of the others and I find it helps to keep me focused on people and not necessarily the way they act or treat me. I am definitely not forcing myself into accepting people in my life that I feel are rude, abusive, etc... but, I am learning that I do not have to let them affect my life, like my emotional state, as I have always let them.  I actually spend a few sessions a week just working with the Loving-Kindness and sending loving kindness to my father.  He can be very verbally and emotionally abusive and I have noticed that my ability to deal with him and not let his negativity invoke my negativity is getting much better. 

The other set of exercises I like the most were the visualization exercises that were presented in chapter 14.  I think I was so excited by these because I was able to achieve them. While I did not always get the expected result I got a result where with some of our other exercises I had trouble falling asleep, or being able to do what was asked. I have been working on these visualizations as well and I am getting better at it and learning to let emotions I feel move through my consciousness just like the cluttering thoughts. These visualizations have been good in helping me keep in mind what it is I am working towards as well.

Leading another

Dacher states "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" on page 477.  I think this is important to health professionals becasue of how much healthy advice they must give each day.  How can a doctor who smokes really sympathize with someone who is trying to quit. I think recommendations that come from practitioners who are striving for health have more weight behind them than a practitioner who is simply doling out the latest literature that is available. I think each person has an obligation to develop their own health and this would go for those in the medical profession to. I'm not sure if one doesn't that will directly hurt their clients but, I do think that if they are striving to develop their own health than they are capable of helping not only themselves but their clients as well. I believe their rewards are greater as they would be able to see results in themselves and others. For my own life I am continuing to take steps toward better health. I am managing small steps at a time so that I progress and deal with each thing individually, one at a time. I try to choose one psychological and one physical aspect to work on at the same time.

Meeting Asciepius

This exercise didn't go very well for me at all. I didn't have any real person in my life to visualize that I considered really wise and found myself jumping between made up images and movie characters. I really just couldn't settle into it all.  I think I need to really sit and create a visualization of a wise one before I try again so that I can have it to visualize. I am still working with the loving-kindness and other meditations. They are getting a bit easier to get into and I do feel better during and after them. I think this one like all the rest will take practice.

Unit 6 Blog Assignments

Hello everyone. It has definitely been a difficult morning. I must say to begin, that life brings to you what you need when you need and although I have never truly believed in saying like that I do now. This class has done so much for me in opening me up and my exercises this week really culminated with a test that proved to me beyond any shadows that the teachings and lessons we are learning are truly the path I need to be on.  I started the universal loving-kindness early in the week and have gone through it a few times. I did find that it was easier for me to take one line at a time and spend a meditation session with it and then the next session take the next line into thought.  My first session with the exercise was really broken feeling as I kept looking in the book for the next line and I couldn't really stabilize my mind going back and forth from the stillness to what to do next. 

I also started working on the assessment process early in the week and I found it to be quit difficult. I think mostly because truly assessing ourselves involves really facing ourselves and being honest about our weaknesses and things perhaps we might do that we are not ready to face.  I believe that the area I need to grow in most is Interpersonal and that the personal and family levels are where my focus needs to be at this time. While I hope to working on all the levels and aspects Interpersonal and then Biological are my weakest areas and I've decided to start with the Interpersonal as I believe my need for development there outweighs all the others and also that the benefits of developing Interpersonal will affects Biological as well.

I need to develop a confidence personally that can be used to strengthen my inner life and so that I am not so naively moved or affected by the wants and thoughts of others. I want to be a loving and compassionate presence to others but, I also want that to be in a healthy manner and not feel obligated, guilt ridden or controlled by others as well. I need to be able to know and have confidence that I am sending to other spiritual through loving kindness is what is proper for all and understand that they may not perceive it that way as they are most likely not doing the integral work that I have started with this class.

Back to this morning. I picked up my two girls this weekend for their Christmas break. I am so grateful, happy and blessed to have them back with me for any amount of time. Having to relocate to find work and leave them behind has been the hardest thing I've ever had to live through.  My youngest is quit emotionally driven as I am and this morning she had an extremely debilitating panic attack.  It got to the point where all she could do is scream and was unable to move any part of her body.  I noticed as a panic attack early on and was able to get her sitting in a comfortable chair before it completely took over but, it was terrifying to see my baby like that and at first my mind was everywhere and tears were welling up inside me and in my confusion which was about the longest 20 to 30 seconds I think I've ever experienced I was able to quiet my mind and refocus on only her and the attack.  I used the lines of the universal loving-kindness exercise and change the "all individuals" to "my daughter".  I rubbed her neck and shoulders, talked softly to her and while her sister and I both held a hand I told her to send all her pain out her arms to us, that we could handle it and it wouldn't hurt us. Then I clear my mind again and kept my thoughts on the universal loving kindness thoughts that I changed and although it took about a half hour total we made noticeable incremental progress every few minutes. it was very hectic because I had her sister, my mother and had started cooking breakfast before her attack began. The amazing thing to me is how I was able to manage my surroundings while keeping my focus on her and with an utter state of calm because I wanted her to feel peace and calm from me. The exercises worked and about 20 minutes in she stopped screaming and started talking and asked me when it would stop and I looked her in the eyes and told her that it would stop when she wanted it to.  This really helped her. She went back to sending us her pain for a few more minutes and then made the statement that she wanted to move and she did so. We got her to the table, and she ate a bit of breakfast, then she showered and laid down for a bit of a nap. So now, I can sit here and cry because she can't see me and the emotion of all that happened and the release I feel from knowing I handled it, handled it well, helped my daughter and was able to use the practices in a scary situation is just quite a lot. I am truly grateful to life for guiding me to this class, our professor Mark who am I incredibly grateful to for all he is teaching us and to all of you whom have talked with me in the boards and blogs and who have shared your experiences.  Today was the first day I truly felt inside I could make my life and the life of another better, happier and less painful.
I am going to be a good amount of time this Christmas weekend out on the lawn on blankets with my girls teaching them the loving kindness exercises and getting them started on their own integral path. I hope that learning these concepts young will help them balance their own lives as they grow.

Love to you all and Merry Christmas
Cherie

Can Not Get into Class Tonight!!!!

Hi Everyone, I can't get into class tonight.  My log in screen loads but nothing after that. I'm trying to get through to tech support right now.  Does anyone know if the server is down for class tonight????