Unit 10

In my Unit 3 Blog I had rated myself at a 5-6 physically I would say that now I am probably at least at a 6 or 7 I do feel more physically fit, and have continued to get closer to my goals of continuing to lose weight although I do still have a good ways to go to be where I want to be. Emotionally, I rated myself at a 7 then and am not sure that has changed much yet I am definitely still working on my self-esteem and do feel better about myself now that I have started losing some of the weight but still have a long way to go there as well. As for spiritual I rated myself at an 8, I would say this is probably still true I still need to let things go and provide more time for me and time for god.

I have truly enjoyed this class and would recommend it to others. I have felt that I have learned a lot and could really use a lot of these experiences in not just my professional but my personal life as well to help me to reach my goals. I look forward to reaching my goals and getting to the numbers I want to be at.

Final project

Introduction

                For my personal and professional health it is very important for me to grow physically, spiritually, and psychologically. As a health professional these are important steps for many reasons, for example physically it is important in order for you to be able to care for others you must be well enough in your personal care. If you are sick or overweight for example it may slow you down to where it is harder to care for others in the way you should be. Psychologically, you will be exposed to many different cases and you need to be able to help them without getting in the middle of what they are dealing with. You will have some patients that you love dearly, and although it is ok to have empathy for them you should try not to sympathize for them. One, because you may only know their side and two, because most patients do not want to be pitied it makes them feel as though they are not able to care for themselves and give up. Spiritually, I believe it is important to remember that although it is good for you to know where you stand you need to be careful not to push your beliefs on others either. All of these things working together if handled in a healthy manner can help you and your patients to do the best you can and heal quicker.

Assessment

                This is a little harder than you would normally imagine, for most of us it easy to judge others health and think that is unhealthy but when you have to look at yourself sometimes it is a little harder. I am sure each us have been there when we see someone doing something unsafe or unhealthy, we think why they don’t stop; however, sometimes it is a lot harder than you may think. For me, I believe spiritually I would score myself pretty high. I have a great relationship with god, and am very happy and blessed for the way I feel about all that he has given me. Psychologically, I also feel that my health is pretty good. Although, maybe around a 7 because honestly I do not think the highest of myself. I think I am a good person that would do anything for anyone, but I allow stress to control me at times and need to learn to view myself in a more positive outlook. Physically, I would only rate myself at a 5 or 6. My overall physical health is pretty good; I don’t have any life threatening diseases or any diseases that cause me to not be able to do what I want to do for the most part. I do have hypothyroidism, anemia, and frequent migraines but all of them are nothing compared to some of the diseases that you see today. However, the one thing that physically and psychologically brings me down is that I am overweight. I have lost some weight but still have a ways to go; I am still at about a BMI of 29 which is still too high. As well, as the fact that I do not feel my endurance is at a healthy place for exercising either.  

Goal Development

                My biggest goal is to become more physically fit. I want to not only lose weight but to be healthy also, so I want to make sure I am making a lifestyle change not just diet. I have been one of those people who have tried yo-yo dieting and have always gained it back. I want to eat healthier and exercise frequently so that I won’t only lose the weight, but keep it off as well. Psychologically, my weight loss journey will help me greatly in this department as well. However, my goal here is to think highly of myself overall and not let stress bring me down. I need to learn to accept things that happen as a way to understand and accept them, not let them bother me and never be able to do anything about them. Finally, the one thing I guess I would change spiritually would be that I would want to be able to feel like I do more for god. I feel as though there is never enough time in the day, and would love to be able to take more time for him and to show my kids how great he is. Also, I would really like to take more time for myself to just stop, breathe, and realize how lucky we are.

Practices for Personal Health

                In order to implement my goals, I must first start by making a plan to do so. Otherwise, I will not stick to it and I will fail, which would make me not want to do stick to it. Physically, my goals would to be able to run a 5k and to have a BMI below 25. I have already been working towards both of these, but I still have to continue my journey in order to get there. I will need to continue to exercise and train to reach these goals. Psychologically, my goals are to learn to handle my stress in a more positive manner, and to build a higher self-esteem. These are things that are a little harder to get to, in order to help with both though I believe taking time to see all I do have and appreciate it by meditation or goal setting can really help me to reach this goal. Spiritually, my goals would be to take more time to worship god and to give more back. In order for me to do these I think I would need to schedule time in so that I know this will happen.

Commitment

                Over the next six months I will have to monitor my goals by tracking them and seeing how effectively they are working. Again for the physical part it will be easier to see the results since I will be able to weigh myself in order to see what I have lost and will be able to track my runs to make sure I could run in a 5k. Psychologically, I will have to see if my stress level decreases by paying attention to the way I deal with it and how effective that is. The self-esteem issues I believe will get better as my physical health gets better. Spiritually, I need to just make sure these things are put into my schedule so that I can track how many hours I am doing this. I believe that overall my health is progressing to a very positive holistic place that I can be proud of, just like everything in life it will take time and work in order to get to where I need to be.

Unit 8 Blog

The two excercises I found to be the most beneficial I suppose would be the loving-kindness and meditation. The loving kindness excercise I found to be soothing and it did make me realize how lucky I was. I suppose the two ways I could use this in my own life would be to make sure that the people around me knows that I love them no matter how bad things may seem, and also to use it at work to show the patients that kind of love and support they may need. As for meditation, I found this one to be way more beneficial for me than the others. It was easier for me although still somewhat distracted to get into it. I think I would use this when excercising and when overwhelmed more than any other time.

Subtle Mind

During this exercise it started out really nice, I was able to finally get into one of our meditation exercises and relax. Actually I was so relaxed it was nice and calm, but then I lost it when it got to becoming one with the person you picked as the wise one. For me, the person I had chosen was someone I was very close with and looked up to but I lost my train of thought because then I started thinking of all the things I would have possibly done differently if I could redo it.

The statement about not leading until you has gone yourself I found to be interesting because this is something you see all the time. For example, I know someone who is supposed to teach others to be healthy but is not healthy at all herself. No one is going to take advice from her if she doesn’t even follow any of her own advice. If you want people to listen to you and respect what you are saying you first must follow or believe in what you are saying.

Unit 6 assessments

I felt as though the loving-kindness excercise was kind of boring, for me it was hard to stay focused on just repeating those sentences over and over and I did not feel any different after repeating them. This excercise I felt was not beneficial to me feeling love and warmth towards others I just felt it to be like I was reading.

The integral assessment although I had a hard time staying focused with it as well, I did feel that this one was more about self realization and it did seem somewhat beneficial. Still not sure this is something I would use very often, but definitely something interesting to make you think about who you are, who you want to be, and how to get there.

I chose the biological flourishing for my growth and development because I felt that these are areas I am trying to grow in and still need a lot of focus. Things such as nutrition, excercise and self-regulation are important in this category and I am doing these but also still learning them as I go, so I felt this one was very important to me. Some examples of these would be learning the right foods to eat, when to excercise, and what we can handle. Each of these answers are going to be very individualized since no two people are going to have the exact same goals and needs.

For me the subtle mind excercise was a little easier to get into. When listening to someone else talk I have such as hard time calming myself and staying focused. However, I felt that using breathing as my main focus allowed me to be able to calm myself and to truly focus on just breathing. I did try the loving kindness excercise again I was able to use the skills learned in the subtle mind exercise to actually focus for a good while on my relaxation technique.

 

With spiritual wellness you are able to reach a deeper part of ourselves and can reach a higher concept of overall wellness. This is just as though you are taking a holistic approach to healing with all three are in conjunction with each other they can reach a better overall health. This can be manifested in my own life as for prayer. If I am having a difficult problem whether physical or mental I am able to calm myself and focus on a true healing. My physical problems dont seem that bad when I feel more comfortable in my emotional and spiritual healing.  

Loving Kindness

I felt as though this was a good excercise, but I still find it hard for me to stay focused for extended periods of time. However, it was relaxing to some degree. I really thought the girls voice was calming and the ocean music was nice but I just feel like I need to start out with smaller time frames like Dacher said and work my way up in order to train my mind to do it. I would probably still recommend this to someone else though because like I said unlike last weeks excercise I did find this one beneficial just a little too long for me.
The concept of mental workout is basically training your mind to be able to meditate or calm your mind into a different thinking. These are broken down into two groups that we learned about including loving kindness and the subtle mind. Loving kindness is more calming the mind and subtle mind in more stilling the mind. Research has proven that you can train your mind with continuous excercise and training. You can implement mental workouts to help build a psychospiritual relationship by training your mind to calm yourself so that you can relax and think about your well being in a happy and healthier light.

My physical, spiritual and psychological health

When I think about my health it is common for me to automatically think about my physical health and maybe sometimes my emotional, but not really my spiritual at all. As for my physical health I would probably only rate it at a 5-6 I am actually fairly healthy as far as I dont really have any diseases other than hypothyroidism. However, I do need to lose weight before my weight does cause my health additional problems. I am doing a lot better now though and have already lost 15lbs this last month so I am starting to feel a little better and with the workouts I am doing I know physically my body is also getting stronger which is great! Emotionally, I would say I am around a 7 other than my appearance and how it effects me emotionally I really have a pretty great life. I have a wonderful husband, 3 beautiful kids, and a great sister and mother who I am extremely close with as well as my best friend who is also a very important part of my life. The only other thing that ever seems to make things hard emotionally is money, but really we have what we need it would just be nice to have the things we want too lol. Finally, my spiritual health is where I believe it needs to be I have a good relationship with God and I believe I am able to relax and take comfort in my life and where it is, so I would rate it close to 8 or 9.
My goals would have to be to physically lose the weight that I feel is dragging me down, which would actually help with all three of my goals. So, my physical goal is to continue to eat well and to excercise so that I may continue on with my weight loss journey. My emotional goals would be to find the small things that I like about myself and focus on those so that I may eventually have a better self esteem. Finally, my spiritual goal is to start to let things go that dont matter. Sometimes I feel like I let the little stuff bother me for to long, when really I should just lay it out for God to help me deal with.
The relaxation excercise for me this week was kind of pointless, although he did have a deep calming voice I felt myself not able to relax at all. I dont know if it was him constantly saying imagine a light, or the fact that he kept pausing while speaking but I was definitely having a really hard time relaxing. So, for me it was not beneficial at all.
Have a great week everyone and good luck with your goals!

Over the years I have struggled with losing and gaining weight over and over, it feels like a neverending battle which only got worse when I got diagnosed with hypothyroidism. A few years ago I was able to lose a lot of the weight I had been struggling with and then between having kids and constantly being on the run (too much fast food) I gained most of it back, then that was when I was also diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Now for the last 2 years no matter how many diets I have tried I just get stressed and worn out after only losing a few pounds a month with a whole lot of work. I feel like a lot of this stress comes from whats expected as our publics views. For example, if you have ever watched the biggest loser everyone who is overweight would love for it to just be as easy as they make it look. I mean yes they are working hard but they lose the weight in no time, but they also have no real lives there when they go home it gets a lot harder. Which is why for the rest of us it is so difficult. I have found ways to relax and use excercise to help myself concentrate on just me and this has helped me tremendously in my weight loss journey and just on the overall journey of being the me I want to be.