Review the exercises and practice sessions you have completed in this course. (Loving Kindness, Subtle mind, Visualization, meditation etc.) Choose two practices that you have determined to be most beneficial. How can you implement these practices in your personal life to foster “mental fitness”? Provide specific examples.

Throughout this course we have been practicing the meditative exercises and practices, some I enjoyed more than others. Visualization and the loving kindness practices were the ones I was able to identify with the most. This is because I could definitely see these as being valuable to my well-being. The loving-kindness exercise encourages me to simply love others and myself…for I am not perfect nor will I ever be. At times I become so hung up on “if only I were this way or that way maybe my outcomes would be different”. I do know this isn’t so, sometimes I let the self-defeating thoughts get the best of me. However, through I am learning to be kinder to myself and to love myself as I am. The visualization exercise is also very beneficial because it allows me to visualize what and where I want to be in my life. I feel without a vision I would be nowhere. So, I visualize what and who I want to be in hopes that I will make it real little by little within my life. I am convinced these exercises are and will help me form the vision of whom and what I want to be.

I have been implementing these practices approximately 2-3 times per week, sometimes more. I tend to do the loving kindness exercise more because I feel I need to love myself before I can blossom into the vision of my fullest potential.

 Simply just closing my eyes and breathing is more beneficial than I ever imagined it would and could be.

Breath in and out..

1.       Complete the Meeting Aesclepius mp3 (located in the Doc Sharing area). Describe your meditative practices for the week and discuss the experience. Explain how mindfulness or meditation has fostered an increase in your psychological or spiritual wellness. How can you continue to apply these practices in your life to foster greater health and wellness?

After completing the meditative practices for this week, I find myself finding other ways to incorporate mental fitness into my life more.  Just taking a few moments to breathe in and out throughout the day really helps and does wonders for my mood. I never knew how much mental fitness could have such a positive impact in my life. There definitely has been a noticeable change.

2.       Describe the saying: "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" (p.477). How does this apply to the health and wellness professional? Do you have an obligation to your clients to be developing your health psychologically, physically, and spiritually? Why or why not? How can you implement psychological and spiritual growth in your personal life?

I believe this is implying that, you cannot teach someone something that you have not done for yourself.  In regard to my profession, it would be hypocritical to teach someone health and wellness principles when I have not learned all of the principles myself. In order to teach others how to develop health and wellness in their life, I need to apply what I have learned to developed health and wellness in mine.

Am I forgetting someone?

Describe the exercise and assessment process.

For this exercise we were asked to practice the universal loving-kindness exercise and complete the integral assessment from our reading this week.

What did you discover about yourself? What area have you chosen to be a focus of growth and development? Why? What are some specific exercises or activities that you can implement to foster greater wellness in this area?

This past weekend, I have had sometime to reflect and what I am realizing is that I do not take very good care of myself. I take care of everybody and everything else before I even think to take care of me. I find it hard to take care of myself when I have two kiddos (7 years old and 12 months), full-time job, school, etc. I make sure my children's needs are taken care of (school, childcare, homework, snacks, lunch, extracurricular activities, etc.). I make sure the housework is done each and everyday. I make list of all the things that need to be accomplished and I work hard to complete them. However, upon reflection during meditation I came to the realization that me and my needs are nowhere to be found on these lists I make and live by.

So, I have decided to lighten up my list load not so much with the kiddos, but specifically around the housework and take sometime for myself 1-2 times per week to go for a walk, take a bubbe bath, a massage or give myself a manicure or pedicure.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestion please feel free.

The Subtle Mind vs. The Loving Kindness

1. Compare and contrast the Loving Kindness exercise and the Subtle mind exercise. Explain your experience including the benefits, frustrations etc.

In contrast to last week, I found the subtle mind exercise to be not as helpful as the loving kindness exercise. Unlike the Loving Kindness exercise where there was more guidance from the speaker throughout, I found this exercise to have rather long wait times in between speaking.  I guess, I would of preferred to have more guidance between each of the level, as I did not find it easy to focus my mind for that amount of time, so much so that I wanted to speed up the recording to get to the next speaking part. I even found myself forgetting what level I was on given the long intermission between each level of the psychospiritual flourishing method. With practice I am sure my untrained mind would perhaps be better and not so anxious but as is I would have preferred to listen to the loving kindness exercise over this one or perhaps a cd of just some relaxation music.

2.Discuss the connection of the spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness. Explain how the connection is manifested in your personal life.

Progressing through the subtle mind three levels of the psychospiritual flourish: witnessing consciousness, to mind of calm-abiding, to the unity consciousness. Since I have started this class, I have found myself taking many breaks throughout my day to just breath to tame and stabilize my mind more, especially at work as the pressure of work tends to be stressful for me.  I know this is going to sound silly, but I tend to get really sad when I see dead animals on the roadways, so much so that I have incorporated from the loving-kindness exercise  breathing in the pains and sufferings of these deceased critters and breathed out wellness and good-will.