Creating Wellness Unit 9: Final Project

For our final project, we were asked to complete five sections covering all of the information we have learned in this class and what we have gotten out of this class. Listed below are the five sections and my answers to each question.

I.                   Introduction

It is important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically so that not only they can reach integral health but also be able to teach others a better way of living than we have ever known. It is essential now that we have been taught these truths, that we share with others and help them to grow and become psychologically healthy, flourishing spiritually, and finally, achieving total healing from a physical standpoint. Some of the main areas that I need to develop to achieve the goals I have for myself are from a physical realm.  I have been working on becoming emotionally mature and have recreated my spiritual belief system in hopes that I can now follow the path set forth by this class and others I have recently learned about. I feel that I have the tools to achieve integral health and that I am the only one standing in my way from here on out.

II.                Assessment

  I have assessed my health in each domain and I feel that after looking back at the beginning assessment and then surveying the changes I have been trying to make, I am in a much better place than I was. I feel that I while I am not near what I want to be, I am closer to finding my center and the person that was on their way to integral health before I got sidetracked by stress and by life itself within this last year. I wonder how many other struggle with the ups and downs of this journey and who fight through it but then give up eventually because they feel that either they have no support, or that they are the only ones fighting these same demons to not only reach the goal of complete and total healing, higher levels of consciousness, and raising their awareness, but just by simply trying to stay afloat on a daily basis. There is so much more out there for us if we only reach for it. As I said earlier, we have the tools now so we just need to apply them. How wonderful the end result will be when we have reached our goal! I would change my scores just slightly when assessing my wellness spiritually, physically, and psychologically. (Dacher M. E., 2006) In the beginning, I assessed my numbers as the following:
Spiritually = 6

Physically= 4

Psychologically= 6

Now, at the end of this class, I would say that psychologically I would rate myself at 8, spiritually at 8 or 9, and remain at a 3 or 4 physically. I feel that the most growth I have made would be spiritually. It is more difficult for me to concentrate on my physical health and keep that a constant focus. It tends to be the least of my concerns on a daily basis and this is what I am working on changing.

III.             Goal Development

The goals that I have for each area are as follows:

Physically: I want to lose weight overall but most of all, I want to learn a healthier way of eating altogether and learn to nourish and sustain my body without overindulging or eating things that are not edifying to my wellbeing. This has always been a harder thing to do in my life and it’s a battle I face every day. I do know that when I eat better, I feel better all the way around and I am free from pain and have less headaches, etc. I also want to learn more about Ayurvedic Cooking and how to incorporate more foods for my entire family based off of our individual Dosha’s. This is exciting to learn more about and I look forward to it.

Psychologically: My goal is to become more emotionally mature and to practice some of the guided meditation exercises such as the Loving Kindness exercise, the Subtle Mind Practice, and the Meeting of Ascelepius. (Dacher E. S., 2006) I also want to teach others in the future how to become stronger in dealing with psychological aspects of their being. People feel that they are often defeated by stress, trauma, and grief and that they have no alternative but to give into mental health issues and to just give up. I want to be their light and help guide them along this new path. I want to show them that I by no means have all of the answers, nor am I perfect, but I want to teach, even as I am still learning.

Spiritually: My goal is to flourish spiritually even more in this next year. Now that I am finding my center again and completing some of the visualization exercises, I want to move further into different levels of brain waves which function at different levels of meditation and of consciousness (Schlitz, Amorok, & Micozzi, 2005). I want to increase my awareness and knowing. I will continue to do Reiki and Chakra practices as well as incorporate even more new things that I have learned in this class. It is a true gift that we have been given and I intend to cherish every minute of this new-found knowledge.

IV.             Practices for Personal Health

Physically: Two exercises that I can incorporate from our reading and also from other sites that I have researched are yoga and tai chi. These are both aspects that I would like to partake in to foster growth in my physical life. I will also not start a diet, but I will seek to change my eating behaviors and lifestyle to reflect a healthier physical being.

Psychologically: Two exercises in this area are ones we learned about in this class as well.  I will continue the Loving Kindness exercises, and also the Subtle Mind practices (Dacher E. S., 2006).  I will continue to listen to these and live them out in my daily life while adding more that I can find on the internet. I feel that if I remain strong in this area, the psychical aspects will be easier to achieve as well and I will be a healthier, happier, more well-rounded person.

Spiritually: As mentioned above, the exercises that I will partake in to foster growth in this area will be Reiki and Chakra practices along with meditation and finding different levels of higher consciousness. I want to learn more about intention setting and increasing my awareness.

V.                Commitment

I will continue to assess my personal growth in these areas by keeping track in a journal I have recently started again. I write all the time, and I even started what I hoped would be a book that I hoped to publish one day. When my laptop crashed last year, I lost all of it and I was devastated and I stopped writing for a while. Now, I see that I was only hurting myself and even hurting others by not sharing those valuable experiences that have changed my life and have proven to me that I am right where I need to be in my life.

One of the strategies I can use to implement in maintaining long-term practices for health and wellness is to remain positive. One goal I have in this area is to learn more about negative energy clearing, setting positive intentions instead, and then remaining in a higher level of consciousness even in the midst of turmoil and chaos. I know it can be done because I have done it before, but I fell short and gave up on myself too soon. I have allowed negative thoughts and feelings to creep back into a life that was well on its way to integral health. I am so thankful that this class was one of the ones we were required to take, because in the long run, it is again setting me on the path that I want and need and desire for my life. I wish you all the best of luck on this journey and I hope that you all see what a rare and precious opportunity we now have to go forth and teach others. Good luck to you all.

Namaste

Kris Sinclair

Creating Wellness: Unit 8 Blog: Loving Kindness and Meeting Aesclepius

After going back and reviewing some of the exercises that we have done in this class over the past several weeks, I looked at both visualization exercises and meditation exercises. I feel that two of the most beneficial exercises in this class have been "Loving Kindness" and "Meeting Aesclepius".

I will continue to use the loving kindness exercises to foster the traits I need to move from one level of consciousness to another. The loving kindness exercise has taught me to focus on many things, be they negative or positive, and change my heart so that it always reflects an attitude of loving kindness and compassion, no matter who I am dealing with or what type of situation I may be in at the time. The world would be a better place right off the bat, if we would begin by doing this simple exercise and changing and softening our hearts towards one another.

Meeting Aesclepius was probably my overall favorite exercise. I have done exercises like this in the past while doing Reiki attunement and others from long ago have spoken through the practioner and given me advice and comfort. This might sound strange to those who do not practice this, and it felt a little strange even to me the first time it happened. But as I learned to open my mind and my heart, it felt right and it is now and important part of my psychological and spiritual flourishing.  I will continue to use this exercise as well to learn from those who are wise, to continue to learn myself, so that I may be a light being and a healer to those who are in need.

Kris Sinclair

Creating Wellness: Unit 7 Blog Assignment: Meeting Aesclepius

WOW! That is how I'm going to begin! This was my favorite of all of the practices we have done so far. I felt that it incorporated many of the different aspects that we have talked about and read about throughout our reading this far.

My meditative practices have fallen short lately, mainly because of time constraints and I realized just how much I have missed the connection I have in a meditative state to my inner self. Because I have received Reiki Attunement before, I have had others who have "spoken" through the Reiki practioner who have helped me through differen times in my life. Because of my intense connection with her and the wisdom she has shared with me through the past several years, I chose to focus on her for this exercise. We practice things like this when we are in session, but I have never done this form of distance healing and intention. It was remarkable to say the least. I felt a drastic temperature change in my body and I felt at peace and more focused when completing this assignment.

Mindfulness has restored not only my emotional but my spiritual connection. Both of these areas have felt depleted lately and I did not feel whole. Because of the peace and the feeling that I am centered once again, I will continue to incorporate these practices on a daily basis to help move towards integral health and healing.

"One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" is a very profound statement and I believe that this can apply to many areas of our lives. It is why when someone loses a child to SIDS, they join and advocate the SIDS foundation. It is why when a parent loses a child who was killed by a drunk driver or the child was killed because they were the ones drinking and driving, that they join MADD. It is why recovering alcoholics continue to attend AA meetings long after they really need to. We learn through adversity in our lives, and we grow from the despair that shakes us to our core. Only by going through these things ourselves can we truly help others and say "I know how you feel, let me help." We can then guide others through difficulties in their life. This is why we must focus on and achieve integral health ourselves. We may then lead others down the same wonderful path of healing because we have achieved it ourselves. We can then be the guider, the healer, and the person full of wisdom that we just focused in on someone else during this exercise. How awesome is that?

I believe because of what we have now been taught, that we all have an obligation to share this information with others, and to become guided mentors and healers to those in need and teach them how to reach psychological, spiritual, and physical wholeness in their own lives. What a journey we have begun and what a wonderful place this world will be, if we can learn and grow from each other until we have all reached integral health!

Kris Sinclair

Creating Wellness: Unit 6 Blog: Loving Kindness & Integral Assessment

Hello all! I hope you have a wonderfully long relaxing weekend!

I listened to the Loving Kindness Meditation Exercise Again and found it to be even more beneficial than the last time I listened to it. I love focusing on the four sentences from this exercise and I think that I am going to place them at random places around my house so that I can see them, and meditate on them whenever possible. The four sentences that I find most beneficial from this exercise are:

"May all individuals gain freedom from suffering.
May all individuals find sustained health, happiness, and wholeness.
May I assist all individuals in gaining freedom from suffering.
May I assist all individuals in finding health, happiness, and wholeness." (Dacher E. S., 2006)

While reading Notes from a Fellow Traveler in our text, I was able to also benefit from the exercise because I already had myself in the right frame of mind from listening to the first exercise and I was still in a meditative state. However, if I would have just had to read this assignment and not be able to listen to the meditative voice instructions along with the background music or ocean waves playing, I would not have been able to have reaped as much benefit from it. When I have to hold a book and read what I am supposed to be meditating on, it is distracting to me.

What I discovered about myself is that I am falling back into an easy state of meditation. I had gotten away from it for a while and I didn't realize how much I had missed it and how ungrounded and uncentered I had been feeling lately without it.

The area that I have chosen to be a focus of growth and development in my own life is my own emotional development. Because there has been a lot of negativity around me lately where I work and even in my life in general, I have been letting it get to me and cloud my mental and emotional judgment. I have forgotten to put the protective coating of white light and peace around me. In the process, I have fallen into some negative patterns as well. I will choose to focus on positivity, joy, and peace in the midst of this struggle because I want to move into new higher levels of consciousness and not backslide as I work towards integral health.

The main exercise or activitie that I can implement to foster greater wellness in this area is to continue my meditative practices as well. My husband and I are redoing our back yard (1/2 an acre) and have started a trail down to the woods and put some meditative stones at the center of it. I hope that this will become my peaceful haven and my zen garden of sorts where I can go to meditate, reflect, worship the earth, my creator, and the universe, while I continue to grow and learn to fill myself with light.

Creating Wellness: Unit 5 Blog: Subtle Mind Practice

Creating Wellness: Unit 5 Blog: Subtle Mind Practice

For this week’s blog assignment, we were asked to complete the subtle mind practice exercise.  I was very distracted when I first began this assignment and I had a time focusing quite honestly. There were many things going on in my home at this time with my kids, the dog, the phone, etc. and I found that I had to go in my room, light a candle, and even use some of my focusing essential oils in order to move myself from a state of chaos and unrest to the first stage of a witnessing mind in order to be where I wanted to be to begin this exercise.

The gentle waves and laps of water were not as easily heard at first in this assignment and I found the stillness soothing while I first settled and stilled my mind. I have been told that I am drawn to water and that within its coolness is where I find the most peace.  During this time, I did feel the shift in thoughts and stillness as I went from an active mind into a witnessing mind consciousness. One of the issues that I am working on is that during the large gaps of “nothingness” in this assignment I either start to let my mind wander and have to get it back where it needs to be, or I get so into what I am doing, that when she begins to speak again, I have a startled reaction. This confused me because I was expecting to hear her voice again, but I guess maybe I was further away in my mind that what I thought.

The loving kindness exercise was one on focusing and feeling different aspects of what we were guided to do, and this exercise was more calming and focused on being still and living in the aspects of a witnessing mind. It was interesting to see and feel the differences in a similar exercise with very different results.

Spiritual wellness is an extremely integrated part of physical and mental wellness. If we cannot move through the stages of psychospiritual flourishing, we will be unable to achieve physical and mental wellness in its fullest degree.  It would then be impossible to reach integral health.

Within my own life, I have been focusing on mental and spiritual wellness recently and have taken the focus off of physical wellness. However, I have gone through stages of physical illness, including shingles because I was ignoring the warning signs that my physical body was sending out that says I needed to deal with many underlying mental and spiritual issues from the past before I could move on. This was a painful lesson to learn physically. Sometimes I feel that this whole process is completely overwhelming and I begin to doubt myself when I have setbacks. I forget that my  mind is in control and that I can change or intend for things to be different. I get overwhelmed, frustrated, lonely, anxious, scared, hurt, and completely stressed before I realize that all I need to do first, is still my mind and enter into a state of conscious peace and begin to let my mind heal my body, spirit, and soul. This is definitely a learning process and I want so much to achieve integral health. But some days I question myself more than others and wonder if others struggle as much as I do to succeed at this whole process.

Kris Sinclair

Creating Wellness: Unit 4 Blog: Part 2: Mental Workout

The concept of a mental workout is every bit as important as physical activity. If we do not continue to work, train, and transform our mind, we will not ultimately reach complete integral health. This can also be termed "contemplative practice" according to our text . This process first adds benefits such as stress reduction and relaxation, but after some time and practice and adherence to the meditation process, we begin to realize that it is so much more. We are gaining the ability to expand our consciousness and reach higher levels of total healing (Dacher, 2006).
Some of the proven benefits of mental workout are: an opening of the mind, gaining knowledge and wisdom, experiencing human flourishing through loving-kindness, and obtaining peace within our subtle minds (Dacher, 2006). 
I can implement mental workouts to foster psychological health by continuing these types of exercise, by going even further with my studying of different levels of meditation such as alpha, gamma, theta waves, and learning more about the aspects of transindental meditation and other areas of mental workouts that I believe will ultimately help lead me to complete and total healing of the mind, body,
and spirit.

References:

Dacher, M. E. (2006). Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Laguna Beach: Basic Health Publications, Inc.

Creating Wellness: Unit 4 Blog: Part 1: Loving Kindness Visualization

For this week's blog assignment, we were asked to listen to two different exercises and discuss what we thought about them. During the introduction, I felt that Dacher's voice somewhat detracted from the experience. I felt that he spoke in a sort of monotone way and had this been what we were doing our assignment over only, I don't think it would have captured my attention. I then listened to the Mp3 segment entitled "Loving Kindness." Again, I found him somewhat hard to follow as he tended to ramble at the beginning and I did not feel a connection to his voice. I love the book we are reading, but did not like his voice. I was rather pleased when the woman's voice came in and began the actual exercise!

I loved this exercise overall! It was very calming and I felt a sense of peace, as I used my husband as the source of the visualization of someone we deeply love. I also especially liked the water flowing in the background and found it very soothing. Listening to the second portion and focusing on myself was a little more difficult. It is harder for me to "self-focus" sometimes than on someone else. My mind kept wandering to other things, but I was able to quickly re-direct myself back to the guided exercise. My favorite part was letting go and releasing myself to welcoming loving kindness and creating stillness in that moment. My least favorite part was when we had to focus on a loved one who was suffering. Many different people came to mind at once and I had a multidimensional feeling of their suffering. At first it felt overwhelming and I began to cry, but I was able to follow the guided visualization and give back joy through this experience. This was again a very cathartic experience.

Overall, I did find it beneficial and I would also recommend it to others, however, I would also invite them to read passages from our text in conjunction with this exercise or they might miss some important parts and not truly understand the contemplative aspect of living through loving kindness.