Unit 9 Final Project

                                                                 Final Project



      In life many obstacles will be faced. The biggest of these obstacles is life itself. The human experience has for centuries been something unique to each individual. However, the fact that the human experience goes far beyond the physical manifestation of man, woman, and child. The mind and the spirit can and should never be overlooked. Everything begins in the mind, so there is no way imaginable to conceive that the mind is separable from the body. When it comes to healing the same philosophy must be adopted.
    
     In order to completely heal anything wrong with a person the areas of mind, body, and spirit must all be addressed equally. It is for this reason that health-care practitioners need to change the method in which healing is practiced. In order to truly become a healer, in every sense of the word, a health and wellness professional has to develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically. However, this can only happen once a health and wellness professional understands that healing goes far beyond treating the human body. A friend of mind was recently shot four times on the right side of his body. Due to his injuries majority of his right side is disabled. Being that I see him very often I have been able to assess the extent of his injuries. The physical damage is evident to anyone who sees him, but beyond the eye there are the mental and spiritual issues that are only visible after spending some time with him. Mentally, he suffers from depression and a somewhat false hope that he will one day return 110% back to normal. Spiritually, he is a broken man. He will not leave the car when going out for any reason whatsoever. The sad part about it all is that all of the therapists and doctors he visits never address these issues. All they are concerned with is his physical handicaps. More than half of his human experience is not being healed. This leads to delusional thoughts and difficulty accepting reality. This was just one example of why it is extremely important for anyone in the health-care field to develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically. Another reason is a health-care practitioner may be fine physically, but may be suffering from some type of mental issue. How can a person who is not healthy mentally ever try to address or heal another person? It is not different than a person who smokes try to tell someone else to quit.

     As for me I need to work on developing my mind and my spirit. Truth be told, I have only began to discover my inner mind. It was only until the start of this course that I found and took an interest in meditating. In fact, I still find it difficult to shut out all the external noise when I am meditating. If I was shown how to unlock the inner mind long ago I am sure I would be much better at it than I currently am. Furthermore, I need to work more on developing my loving kindness towards those I don’t know, and more importantly towards those I do know. I find it very difficult to realize that everyone is unique and it takes love and kindness to understand and accept everyone for the persons they are. I have confidence that this will all develop over time and as long as I continue striving I will make way.

     When looking at and assessing all three (mind, spirit, and body) I would honestly say that none are perfect. I would have to say that physically I am the most developed. In that area I would rate myself at an 8. I exercise in the gym 5 times a week, and have been for over 15 years now. In that regard, something about that type of discipline speaking volumes about my mind because there is no way the body can perform at that level for that many years without having a strong mind. However, I have never tried to reach into my essence and see what my subtle mind was all about. The reason for this is simply because I never knew there was a way to get there. In that regard I would have to rate my mind at a 7. As far as the spiritual aspect of my life I would have to say that it is the most underdeveloped part of my life. Since my mind is only a 7 and in order to reach the spirit I must go through the gateway of the mind I would have to rate my spiritual at a 5. I am not one for religion or that avenue of spirituality, but I am interested in developing my inner most mind, which I consider to be the spirit.

     Although I am not 100% in any of these areas, and I doubt I ever will be, I have goals that will help me with my development. When it comes to my physical I plan to watch my diet a lot more closely and continue to exercise the way I have been doing. With my mind, I plan on meditating a lot more and increasing the time I spend meditating as I get better at it. My goal for my spirit involves making it to a state of meditation where I have become so proficient at blocking out the outside chatter that I can reach the spirit. Essentially, the goal I have for my spiritual development walks hand in hand with my mental development. The better I get at meditating, the closer I can get to reaching my spirit. These goals and my development in all of these fields will be a lifelong commitment and work in progress.

      In order to foster growth in my physical, psychological, and spiritual domains I have come up with a strategy. As mentioned earlier I plan to watch my diet. I am going to eliminate processed foods and remove fast foods from my diet. In addition, I will add more cardiovascular exercises to my workout regimen. As for my psychological strategy, I plan on experimenting with different types of meditation exercises and, most importantly, I plan on giving my all towards loving a new person in my life as often as possible. This leaves the spiritual aspect of my life. My strategy here is to reach a point in my meditation where I do not break concentration until I have reached the spiritual plane. Another strategy is simply developing a desire that is unwavering in regards to finding my soul.

      In regards to a commitment for the next 6 months, I plan on taking before and after photos to monitor my physical development. For my metal development I plan on keeping a diary of how long I can stay under meditation and of how many different meditation techniques I have tried. As for my spiritual commitment I plan on rating my level of focus at the present moment and then revisiting that rating in 6 months. In the long-term commitment I plan on using my children as a benchmark and inspirational tool to keep me committed. I know this world is theirs and I will use that notion to fulfill my promise to making it the best world possible for them.

      Although there may be nothing harder than living a time must come when human flourishing has been reached. In order to reach this level each aspect of the human experience must be addressed and developed. Developing these areas will take more than a lifetime, but in the process peace can be achieved. This is why it is extremely important to keep in mind and know that the human being is much more than a sum of its parts.

Unit 8 Blog

During this course I have learned a great deal about exploring the inner mind. I have learned how to reframe my thoughts, take my time with things, and most importantly how to meditate. The two most effective exercises for me have to be the loving-kindness exercise and the subtle mind exercise. With the loving-kindness exercise I begin by thinking of my grandmother, who past away when I was only 13 years old. I remember how she would make me feel and the love she expressed for me. I envision going with her to the hair salon and afterwards her buying me a video game. Once this feeling consumes my entire body I start to envision parts of my body that would benefit from this feeling and I then try to send it there. I come out of this exercise feeling as if all is right with the world and that I am a very lucky person just to be here. The second exercise, which is my favorite, is the subtle mind exercise. I lay down in my bed and put my arms to my side. I make sure every muscle in my body is totally relaxed, I do this so nothing breaks my concentration during the exercise. I then begin to breathe deeply, then I begin to slow my breathing down. The entire time I am focused on my breathing. Then out of nowhere, sort of like those Magic Eye images that after staring at for some time turn into something else, time seems to slow down or freeze and all the outside noise fades into the background where it belongs and I have a chance to explore my essence. After this exercise I feel as if I have taken a journey through myself. I implement these exercise throughout the week at night and they allow me to heal my mind from the troubles of day to day life. My stress levels seem to lower and I am able to focus a lot more. Not to mention I feel much more motivated to exercise my physical.

Unit 7 entry

In this week's exercise we listened to the Meeting Aesclepius audio. During this exercise I envisioned my grandmother that I lost when I was only 14 years old. I saw myself sitting beside her and the entire time I felt a warm protective feeling surrounding me. It was almost as if this exercise took me back in time. The longer the exercise went on the more clearly I was able to see my grandmother. Everything about her seemed as if it was real. I was able to smell her scent, see the gray in her hair, and hear her voice. I will say this exercise has been the most difficult one yet. This week I have been sticking to the subtle mind exercise and it has become a tad bit easier to get the mental chatter to fade out. It has given me an outlet to relieve stress that comes with everyday life. I now feel that life as slowed down and that I know now how to escape from the constant noise that is often what we all call life.

The saying "one cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" simply means how can you guide a person towards a goal or an objective when you have never reached that same objective. It is sort of like a car mechanic who drives a lemon. Or better yet a person who smoke cigarettes trying to promote healthy lungs. In order for anymore to be taken seriously or to be a true role model they, themselves, need to lead by example or from the front. If a person is thinking about leading a group of people towards true health and well-being they need to first know what true health is all about. They need to have every basis of health covered first before they can begin to show others how to reach that path. The only way to do that is by practicing an integral form of health. One must have the mind, body, and spirit in a healthy place by exercising physically and by meditating. It is only then that one can show others the path.

Unit 6 Blog Entry

Hello all.



This week we were asked to complete the Universal Loving Kindness exercise and the Integral Assessment. With the Universal Loving Kindness exercise I began to say to myself "May all individuals gain freedom from suffering, may all indivduals find sustained health, happiness, and wholeness, may I assist all individuals in gaining freedom from suffering, and my I assist all individuals in finding health, happiness, and wholeness" (Dacher, 2006, p. 93). After telling myself this for about 5 minutes I began to feel as if the words were healing me at the same time. After 10 minutes it began to have a calming effect. With the the asessment I interpersonal need for improvement. I say this because I believe if I start there I can work myself up to the higher levels. There is always room for improvement. By focusing on myself I can become well or whole enough that I can venture into my spiritual side and ultimately get to adjusting my worldy side. I will attempt to use meditation in the form of the subtle mind exercise to gain a better understanging of my mind. Hopefully this will allow me to change the other aspects of my being.


Referecnes:

Dacher, E.S. (2006). Integral health: the path to human flourishing. LaGuna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publishing, Inc.

Subtle Mind

Hello all.

This week we were ask to compare the subtle mind technique with the loving kindness technique. To be totally honest I enjoy them both a great deal. I will say this the subtle mind technique is a bit harder to accomplish. Focusing strictly on my breathing in order to reach the inner mind is much more difficult than thinking or envisioning somone I love very much and honing that feeling of love in order to heal myself. With the loving kindness technique it takes less time for me to get involved than it does with the subtle mind technique. With the subtle mind technique I find myself fighting to force my mind to abide. I am constantly having to pulling my mind back to focusing on my breathing. However, once I am watching the inner mind both techniques leaving me feeling fulfilled.

As far as the connection between the spiritual wellness, mental, and physcial I am not totally sure how the spiritual relates to either. This is because I am not totally in the know about the spiritual aspect of human experience. On one hand I see it as a general attitude, as if saying he is in good spirits, but then I look at that as just part of the mind. Therefore, I am under the impression that the spiritual is nothing more than the inner mind. After all isn't it through the mind that we reach the spiritual? As far as the mental and physcial connection, they are inseparable. The mind controls the body and it is the mind that will always quit before the body. I remember when I was in the military and we would be forced to jog for miles on end. One of my commanders would always tell us how the mind will always quit before the body, so keep a strong mind and your body will follow.