Personal Assessment Unit 3 - Unit 10

In Unit 3 I scored my physical health as a 6.  It is still a six, because even though I am doing what I have planned to physically heal, it is a slow and steady process.  My doctor has to remind me that even though recovery from reconstructive surgery on my foot will take over a year or more, my progress has been good and right on target.  My psychological health actually fell from a 6 to a 4.  I think that is because I have had a lot of added stress in all aspects of my life lately, and I haven’t taken the time to implement my new health and wellness plan.  Once I do that, I know this aspect of my health will improve.  In Unit 3 I scored my spiritual health as a 4.  I am now up to a 5, because I have been putting some contemplative practices into my life.  I have not made a lot of progress in this area, because I am still working on making a commitment to put contemplative practices into my daily life.  My classes are over and I am ready to graduate, so I am going to take the time after the holidays to put the program that I put together into practice.

This course in health and wellness has altered the way I look at my overall health, especially my recovery from surgery.  Up until I took this course, I was doing a fairly good job of doing what I thought I needed to do to help with the recovery of my ankle and the rest of my body and mind that have been affected by over two years of chronic pain and mobility problems.  I began a yoga regimen, relaxation exercises and weight loss program about six months ago, which I thought was the best way I could become healthy again.  This course has shown me that I have neglected one of the most important parts of an integral health program – the spiritual aspect.  I never thought o myself as a person who could meditate or bring contemplative exercises into my life, but this course proved that I could.  I’m beginning to understand that bringing contemplation practices of loving-kindness and Asclepius into my life will make a huge difference in how I will heal.  I had a few courses in mind that I wanted to take during my last semester at Kaplan, and I am really happy that I chose this course on health and wellness.  It will definitely change my path to recovery in a very positive way.

This course has given me so very good tools to use, when I go into the field of substance abuse counseling.  I will now look at each client from all aspects of his/her life, and I will be able to help them put together a plan to help them heal and recover from the results of alcohol and/or drug abuse and addiction.  Even if my client can only take a few small steps with a very basic plan for health and wellness, I know it will make changes that will alter the way they look at themselves and their health.

Unit 9 Wellness Blog

Introduction:

It is important for a health and wellness professional to develop the psychological, spiritual and physical aspects of his life with the ultimate goal of human flourishing.  He cannot teach or lead a client toward integral health and health practices, if he does not appreciate what it has done for his own life.   Following these practices can also bring challenges that need to be experienced before a person can really teach anyone else how to meet them.  I also think the health and wellness professional needs to be as healthy in all aspects of his life as possible, so that he can personally show the client through his actions and well-being how much these changes can enhance all aspects of a person’s life.  And, most people do not appreciate someone telling them to “do as I say, not as I do.”  Actions really do speak louder than words.

In order to achieve goals that I have set for myself, I will have to develop some aspect of each of the physical, spiritual and psychological domains.  There is not one area that I can truly say is close to the ultimate goal of human flourishing, even though the physical domain seems to be developing more than the spiritual and psychological domains.

Assessment: I have assessed my health in each domain by looking at each area to see where I am experiencing positive feedback in relationship to my health, and where I am experiencing dis’ease or other health problems.  Spiritually, I score my wellness at a 5.  At first I thought it was higher, but I now realize that I have not put any contemplative practices into my life and am definitely still living in my outer most world.  Physically, I would say that I am a 6 even though I have a lot of work to do to continue my recovery from reconstructive surgery on my ankle. Psychologically, right now I would say I am a 4.  I have had a lot of stress in the form of chronic pain, and juggling my work schedule, classes and physical therapy treatments.  I am definitely much more reactive than intentional, and it shows by the high anxiety levels that I am experiencing.  

Goal development:
I have two goals that I want to set in the physical domain.  Both have to do with my recovery from surgery.  My doctor would like me to lose weight to reduce the stress on my ankle.  The other goal would be to strengthen my ankle, so that I can eventually do my job and exercise without pain or the use of pain medication.

I have two psychological goals.  I want to be able to relieve the anxiety that stress is bringing into my life and become less reactive to situations. 

Spiritually, I would like to be able to move from my current outer life with constant distractions and “chatter” to a calm and quiet inner life.

Practices for personal health:
The following are strategies to reach my two physical domain goals.  In order to lose weight, I am changing my eating habits with the help of a physical trainer who is employed by the college where I work.  She told me that she would sit down with me and develop and outline a personal eating plan looking at calories and food choices.  As soon as I get the okay from my physician, I will begin to exercise at my lunch hour through basketball games with my co-workers to help with weight loss.  If I strengthen my ankle, so that I can do activities to include my job without pain or medication, I know that a lot of the stress in my life will ease.  I will do this by continuing with my physical therapy treatments three times a week and working with my yoga instructor at least once a week.  The yoga instructor is already giving me exercises to help me stretch, strengthen and flex my ankle. 

If I can begin to develop my spiritual domain, I know that it will also positively affect my physical and psychological domains.  I will begin by going to a site that was recommended in our book by Elliott Dacher.  The site is The Shambhala Centers at www.Shambhala.org.  They have videos and exercises on the site that can help the beginner start meditation.  After I go through these exercises, I will begin a daily routine of contemplative practices to include Loving-Kindness and Asclepius (the inner healer).  I will start with only 10 minutes in the morning before work and 10 minutes in the evening before I go to bed.  I will practice Loving-Kindness in the morning and Asclepius in the evening.  I think that the Asclepius exercise in the evening will help me to relax and sleep better at night in addition to bringing a healing presence in my life.  As I become more comfortable with these practices, I will increase them.  I will also get some input from a holistic practitioner that I work with, so that she can give me support and suggestions on how to stay on track.

My psychological goals are to relieve the anxiety that stress is bringing into my life and to become less emotionally reactive to situations.  I will already be working with my yoga instructor to help with the goals in my physical domain.  She told me that she will also teach me relaxation techniques through yoga practices.  During the two breaks that I have at work each day, I will practice these relaxation techniques.  I know that the contemplative practices that I am adding to my life for my spiritual domain will also help me be less reactive; however, I will also practice deep breathing each day that my holistic practitioner suggested.  This practice can take a person out of the present into a relaxing and rhythmic state of being, reducing or negating stress.

Commitment:
I will assess my progress or lack thereof within the next six months through the use of a journal and a wellness chart.  Each day or at least every other day, I will journal and look at each area noting progression, a plateau or regression.  I feel that this will help me to be aware of any changes that are happening in my life.  The wellness chart will help me to focus on my goals.  I will make a chart for each month with my goals written at the top of the chart color coded to indicate physical, social and psychological domains.  The rest of the chart will be a calendar of that month with enough space in each day block to make a notation for each domain by putting a check in the code color on the calendar to show whether or not I have worked on my goal that day through the activity I chose.  If I see too many blanks in a week, I’ll know that I am not staying committed to a specific part of my plan. This will also work in a constructive way, in that it will give me positive feedback, if each day has an activity or practice notation for each domain.  I can also evaluate my progress by the changes that I am experiencing in my overall health.

Loving Kindness & Visualization

Two of the practices that I found worked best for me are Loving Kindness and visualization of meeting Asclepius.  I would like to begin with 15 minutes of Loving Kindness in the morning during my break at work and take about 10-15 minutes the visualizing Asclepius exercise in the evening before I go to bed.  It may take me awhile, but I would then like to  increase these times until I can get to at least a half hour each.  I know that these exercises will help foster my “mental fitness,” but right now I am too caught up in my tight schedule involving a lot of overtime at work, physical therapy and doctor’s appointments and assignments for my Kaplan classes to be able to focus.  The fact that I have ADHD doesn’t help.  This is my last semester before I graduate, so I hope to be able to take the “down time” over the holidays to put my thoughts and plans into action.  I know that the Loving Kindness will help me to quiet my mind, and to deal with the way I tend to over empathize and “feel others’ pain.”  By breathing in a person’s suffering and pain and then letting it dissolve in my heart, before I let out my breath with happiness and peace directed at them, I know that I will do a better job with helping my future clients instead of being overwhelmed by their personal pain and sorrow.  

Since I am still healing from my summer surgery, I think the visualization with a healer or wise person guiding me from within will really help me to focus on how I can continue to heal myself without being so reactive to my pain and frustration.  I feel that both practices can be a very beneficial addition to my integral health and daily living.

The Inner Healer

I liked this practice of “Meeting Asciepius” the best of all the ones we have done.  I do well with visualization and found it easy to see the healer in my mind and begin to connect with him.  I know it will take a lot of practice to really appreciate what can happen, but it will be a good exercise for me.   I am still practicing loving-kindness, and I find that it has helped me to begin to be aware of others in my life in a different light.  I find that I am less reactive, which is a very good for my overall well-being.  I can continue to apply these practices by setting aside a daily time to practice these exercises.  Although I haven’t reached calm-abiding yet, these practices have really helped me to ease my anxiousness and stress.

A health and wellness professional cannot teach or lead a client toward integral health and health practices, if he/she does not appreciate what it has done to his/her life.   Following these practices can also bring challenges that need to be experienced before a person can really teach anyone else to meet them.  I also think I need to be as healthy in all aspects of my life as possible, so that I can personally show the client through my actions and well-being how much these changes can enhance all aspects of a person’s life.  And, I don’t appreciate people telling me to “do as I say, not as I do.”  I don’t think my client would either.  I can implement psychological and spiritual growth in my own person life by practicing contemplation techniques and loving-kindness as a part of my daily life and routine. 

Loving Kindness and Integral Assessment

I am better able to get into focus during the loving kindness exercise than I was at the beginning.  It is starting to open me up to expanding my concern for others and being less self-centered.

When I did the personal assessment, I looked at each of the four lines of development to see where my strong and weak points were in the areas.  Right now I am very strong in the interpersonal area with good relationships within my family, friends and community.  The biological aspects of my life in relationship to nutrition and fitness are doing pretty well.  I am doing exercises to help bring me back from a reconstructive ankle surgery, and I have a nutrition plan that has resulted in me losing around 50 pounds since the summer.  My worldly aspect of development is average, but I do reach out into the community with a few activities.  Right now the area that I really need to work on is the psychospiritual development involving the emotional area.

As I did the assessment, I was surprised to find that I am doing pretty well in most of the areas of the four quadrants.  It is obvious to me that the area that I need to focus on is the emotional aspect of my life.  Right now my stress level is pretty high due to trying to juggle doctor appointments and physical therapy with work which involves a great deal of overtime, in addition to taking two courses at Kaplan U. this term.  I am constantly tense and tight and tend to be very reactive.  I am doing Yoga, so that is one exercise that is helpful. I know that breathing exercises and doing the witnessing mind exercise will really help to make a change in my stress level.  However, I still haven’t committed to a specific routine during the week to do these practices.  And, I know that until I do, my stress level is going to remain high and reactive.

Loving Kindness: Practing Mental Fitness

I thought the both the loving kindness and subtle mind exercises concentrated on loosening my grasp on the happenings around me, so that I could just observe rather than react.  They both asked me to find a focal point and gave me time to move from my outer mind into my inner self.  Both exercises focused on specific goals and took the listener through the process one step at a time.  However, the loving kindness exercise helped me to reach out with loving kindness toward not only myself but to others.  The subtle mind exercise, on the other hand, worked specifically on using my breathing to help me calm and still my mind and bring me back into focus when my mind wandered.  Ultimately I will be able to maintain the stillness and focusing so that I can release my mind to unity consciousness.

I think this is a good exercise, but I have trouble with focusing, so it took me awhile to really focus on my breathing.  However, focusing on my breathing eventually helped me to bring myself back from distractions.  It was a little frustrating, because my mind is very busy, and I found that I really had to focus on my breathing in order to get back on track. For awhile it was a constant back and forth process.  Eventually, I was able to calm my mind for awhile, but it never lasted very long.  I have to say that when I was able to get to the point where my mind was calm, it was a very restful feeling.

Spiritual wellness completes our integral health by complementing our mind and body health.  It has been proven that praying for someone can make a difference in his/her recovery.  It is also the area that is opened up to us, as we are able to work though the levels of the subtle mind.  I have been involved in formal religion off and on in my life, but I have always maintained a spiritual connection through prayer.  It’s interesting for me to have a better understanding of the spiritual side of wellness, because when people have said that they would pray for me, I really didn’t understand how powerful that could be in my life.

Loving and Kindness

I found that the background sounds of the ocean helped me to relax and concentrate on what the speaker was saying.  Breathing in the pain of other person or people was a hard concept for me at first, but as I grew with the exercise, I found it easier to put the suffering into my heart and then breathe out peace, health and happiness to the person.  I have been working overtime all week and am pretty exhausted.  This could be the reason why the CD relaxed me so much that I began falling asleep.  I think it was a good first try for me, but I know that I will have a better experience, if I try it again when I am more alert.

I would recommend the CD to others, because it helped me to experience each step for a period of time rather than rushing to the next part of the exercise like I did when I just followed the instructions in the book.  The exercise also helped me to open myself up to not only loving others but to actually understand how important it is to love myself before I can reach out to others.

A “mental workout” is using practice of contemplation to calm our minds, so that we can further develop our ability to be more aware of our inner selves.  As we would work a muscle to make it stronger and more useful, we can also exercise our minds through contemplative practice, so that eventually, we can know and experience all levels of our inner selves.

Research has shown that the benefits of a mental workout are that it can reduce our negative emotions and boost our positive emotions.  This in turn affects the mind and body which helps us to fight disease, and defend against distressful and negative emotions, which work to give us the ability to be healthy and well.

I can implement mental workouts by first making them a part of my daily routine.  It is important to set aside a specific period of time to devote to getting to know our inner selves.  I would start slowly allowing between 5 and 15 minutes for my “workout” until I am more comfortable with longer periods of time . I would then find contemplative exercises to use to help me go into my inner self.

Ratings Goals Activities Exercise

RATING

Right now my physical well-being is a 6 out of 10.  I had reconstructive ankle surgery in June and am still recovering.  I have gone from a cast to at boot to supportive shoes, and I have found that this has put my foot, back and knees out of alignment ,which has caused a lot of pain.  I am also on pain medication right now, and will not feel totally well until I am off it.

Right now my spiritual well-being is a 4 out of 10.   Since my surgery, I have looking into the spiritual side of my life, and I am working with a yoga master to help me with meditation and visualization.  I have not been a spiritual person throughout my life, and I am realizing that it is something I need to work on.

Right now my psychological well-being is a 6 out of 10.  I have been experiencing severe anxiety and anger pertaining to the ankle surgery and the healing process.  This is the second time for the surgery, because the first surgery was done incorrectly.

Goal

Right now my goals for my physical well-being are to strengthen my right ankle, so that I can be more active and to get off pain medication.  Once my ankle is stronger and I am able to walk without pain, I will begin a heavier exercise program involving weights and basketball activities. 

The goal for my spiritual well-being is to learn more about being spiritual, so that I can incorporate it in my life much more than I have

The goal for my psychological well-being is to be much more at peace with myself instead of letting anger and anxiety control my thoughts when something isn’t going well.

 ACTIVITY/EXERCISE

For my physical well-being, I am doing a light work-out plan that involves yoga with a yoga master until my ankle is strong enough to do more involved exercises.

For my spiritual well-being, I am now working with a holistic healer who has helped me with meditation and visualization techniques. 

For my psychological well-being, I have been seeing the same holistic healer who has been working with me on clearing techniques, breathing exercises, and relaxation CDs.

EXERCISE

Was it beneficial?

I really liked this exercise.  The combination of the sound in the background, the person’s calm soft voice and the visualization techniques using colors and descriptive words really helped me to pull away from my outside self into a more inner self.  When the exercise was finished, I felt very calm and relaxed.

           It wasn’t frustrating to me except at the end, when I was so relaxed and enjoying
           my inner peace, that I didn't want to come back to the outside world right away. 

Relaxation Exercise

I was busy doing everything for work this weekend that I thought, on my night off I really want to do this relaxation exercise. Well I am here to tell you that it works, and I found that out in front of a good bit of people. I went to the local College Library and hooked my head phones up to the computer. I figured this will be cool, I can listen to a cool relaxation technique I can start using if it works. I would have to say that it worked! I woke up 40 minutes later with my pen across the isle in between desks lol. When I came to I though, wow was that awesome. Then I looked around and some students were giggling so who knows what was going on when I was out. This exercise probably would not have done this so easily if it were not for working a football game in 8 inches of snow Saturday! talk about taking a lot out of you. All in all I felt the technique used was very useful when I went back and listened again. This is definitely some I would like to incorporate into my wide range of relaxation tools. I am wondering if anyone else feel asleep. If so and you are reading this shoot me a comment. For my reflective statement for the week I would like to use a quote I have enjoyed for some time. "Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending." - Carl Brand
To me this touches many parts of my life. Sometimes I want to have regrets, or think how I wish I could go back and do something over. Then I read this, or think it and i get a motivation to stay on the path I am on and not look back until I have created my dreamt upon ending.