Unit 9 Final Project

It is important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically because it is hard to trust and follow what a person is teaching if they are not practicing what they are teaching. Actions speak louder than words and when trying to motivate others to make mindful choices it helps if you are making those mindful choices and have knowledge in those areas. A person may find a health and wellness professional a hypocrite for saying one thing but doing another, they question the credibility of the professional, they become disinterested in the professional’s services, and it is much easier to teach when you are experienced in the topic first hand. A hypothetical health care professional that participates in routine exercise, nutrition, health, and activities fosters a sound sense of wellness as opposed to a health care professional that eats poorly, lacks physical activity, and partakes in negative activities and choices such as smoking cigarettes. When seeking out a professional of any kind the main objective is to find someone that is affordable, highly skilled, proficient in their line of work, and trustworthy. In order to be a skilled and proficient health and wellness professional you must first be knowledgeable with the methods, practices, and components not just through books but also with hands on experience.

When assessing my health in each domain I analyze to see if I am in balance or if there are imbalances, what areas are out of balance, what is working, what needs to be improved on, and what options I have. When it comes to my wellness physically I would say that I am a 10 out of 10 because I go to the gym 1-3 times a week for an hour and a half, I am at a healthy weight, I drink plenty of water, I eat a lot of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, I no longer smoke cigarettes, I have not been sick in a while, I take my supplements every day as well as a Emergen-C especially when people around me become sick to prevent illness. One of the fitness accomplishments that I am most proud of since quitting cigarettes is the ability to run, at the gym I run at a 5MPH speed for 40 minutes straight at a 10MET level. All my life I have never been a runner or could only do bursts of running. Another physical goal is to be better about eating breakfast because this tends to be a meal that gets skipped quite often. I feel I have a well balanced level of fitness, nutrition, as well as strength, agility, flexibility, endurance, a great sense of body awareness, prevention, and health promotion, and can always improve upon self regulation from subtle mind and body practices for spiritual/mind/body abilities (Dacher, 2006 p.108). When an imbalance occurs it is usually in the form of low blood sugar from needing to eat, too much coffee while working on school work, not enough food or frequent enough meals, migraines and restless sleep from stress. I have found many helpful tools such as Kava and Tranquil Yogi brand tea, Bach’s homeopathic sleep medicine, melatonin, creating an hourly/daily/weekly schedule, a daily/weekly/monthly meal calendar, a list of school assignments and designated days to complete each cross referenced with the hourly/daily/weekly schedule, and planning sleep based on 90 minute sleep cycles. Mentally, I would say I am currently recovering to an 8.5-9 out of 10. This time of year is very stressful for me, I hit a very rough spot, and became overwhelmed with stress and stressful events but I have been determined to push forward and be aware of what is stressing me out and staying in control of my life. There are specific stressors such as finances, bills, and starting a new job, but my attitude is that I am going with the flow, trusting the process of life, shooting for the best, and hanging on! Spiritually, I would give myself a 9.5 out of 10. I feel that I am doing well spiritually because I always feel like I am connected with the universe and I participate in personal activities that make me feel in harmony with the universe such as the colors of the day, planets of the day, celebrating the seasons, using aromatherapy, color therapy, crystal therapy, card readings, and other activities. There is always room for development though and areas in spirituality that I can develop are exercising the witnessing mind and observation for “the ability to determine the character of our life rather than live unconsciously and reactively (Dacher, 2006 p. 40).” I tend to go through cycles of going about my life consciously and periods of time where I get wrapped up in the chaos and drama and get stuck in a cycle of reactivity. When I am in charge I labeled it “Momentary Moments of Clarity” when I am being reactive or those around me are being reactive instead of active I call it being “half asleep bumbling about.” What I found inspiring is that during our psychospiritual development we are motivated first by fear, instinct, reaction, and is ego centered, the second motivation is vision and values, and the third motivation is wisdom, unity, loving kindness, and compassion (Dacher, 2006 p. 106). My goal is to mostly motivated by wisdom and unity and be the least motivated by fear because I have realized that much of my stress is caused by fear and much of those fears are irrational or can be overcome.

A physical goal that I am working on currently is regaining back my lean muscle tone that I lost from being severely depressed, bedridden, and atrophying for an extended period of time. An extension of this goal is “sculpting” through the exercise program I created for myself and have been working on for the last six months in the hopes of buying myself a new bathing suit this summer once I feel I have met my goal. Another physical goal would be to maintain being a non-smoker, the end of this month will be exactly six months since I quit smoking and I know this will be a lifelong challenge of maintenance. Another physical goal can be to eat breakfast more often than not instead of the other way around. Some psychological goals are to continue to work on decreasing my stress levels, decrease negative thinking, increase positive thinking, staying in charge, active instead of reactive, and focus. As I mentioned previously, much of my stress I have found to be rooted in fears, some of which are rational such as flight or flight response and others that are irrational such as emotional induced fear. When faced with a stressful situation I ask myself, “what am I afraid of? Is it fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of death? Often times I can break the stressor down into manageable pieces and determine if it is a rational fear or an irrational fear and overcome the situation. My goal when it comes to fear and anxiety is to overcome a fear one at a time, such as dealing with crowded areas, driving anxiety, trying new things, going to new places, and making myself do something even when I am scared. A spiritual goal that I have is to trust my intuition more, trusting life more, practicing and mastering the witnessing mind, the calm abiding mind, and the unity consciousness to decrease misunderstandings, confusions, doubts, and needless mental stress (Dacher, 2006 p. 74). I believe that working on the witnessing mind and the calm abiding mind will bring me closer to the unity conscious and towards a fuller human flourishing.

Spiritual strategies that I can implement to foster growth in my life is to include breathing techniques, guided meditation, and bring back listening to Omharmonics on a daily basis. Three breathing techniques that I found that I can try, learn, and integrate into my daily schedule called the Stimulating Breath/Bellows Breath, 4-7-8 Exercise/Relaxing Breath, and Breath Counting (Weil, 2013). I very much enjoy breathing techniques but I have not as of yet made them a part of my daily life, I have used So Hum contemplation meditation during times of stress or unrest but not consistently as a daily habit. This spiritual technique will also be beneficial for me physically because it will help to lower my blood pressure, heart rate, release of the stress hormone cortisol, improves circulation, decrease fatigue, insomnia, headaches, and gastrointestinal issues linked to stress levels. Another strategy that I can put into action for mental health is focusing and improving my concentration, which tends to lead to procrastination that can lead to stress. I have created tools to become better organized although there are still many things that I can add and improve upon. A great tool that I came across defined concentration into four components; duration of focus either sustained or brief, direction of focus such as internal or external focus, intensity of weak or intense focus, and width meaning how broad or narrow your focus needs to be (Dallaire, 2012). I found this resource to be greatly beneficial to understanding focus better as well as a mental technique to visualize focusing on the important topics and tasks at hand. Dr Jaques Dallaire describes a mental technique that has you visualize your focus as a flashlight beam of light from your forehead and you are in control of the “beam of concentration” and the four components of intensity, width, duration, and direction of the concentration to consciously manage your concentration (2012). From here on out I am always going to automatically think of concentration as a flashlight beam of light coming from my forehead, I may even get silly from time to time and come up with a laser to blast away chores, assignments, tasks, and other responsibilities that need to be done that I am having a hard time focusing on. I think this will be a great mental/visual technique that can easily be incorporated into my daily life that I can also share with others to try. Lastly, a strategy that I can use to eat breakfast more often is to start using my monthly calendar to create meal plans, and I have also bookmarked a Daily Food Plan Worksheet so I can track and analyze my food to really make sure I am getting everything that I need (United States Department of Agriculture, 2013). Even though I already eat healthy I know there are days when I do not get enough food which causes my blood sugar levels to drop, my blood sugar levels to be inconsistent, which leads to not enough energy for my brain as well as negatively affects my mental, emotional, and physical state.

Coming up with a way to track and assess my progress or lack thereof is important because the tools and resources discussed, taught, and learned in this class on integrative health are not only important to my education it is also essential for my own health, my future careers, and those around me that I influence. I find that if I make myself lists and calendars I am more apt to actually do the tasks so that I can cross them off my lists as well as visually see the reminder each day that I have not gotten the tasks done yet. Making lists and calendars also helps me to be more organized on all of the things that I have to take care of. I have used lists and calendars for quitting smoking, creating a sleep schedule, juggling work, school, and exercise, meals, and finances, in addition to basic daily tasks or to do tasks. One of the biggest and most helpful strategy that I can put into action to make my life easier, more manageable, more fulfilling, and help me towards my goals of human flourishing is to revise my hourly/daily/weekly schedule now that I have my new work schedule and I can make time to try new meditations and work on goal of working on meditating every day of the week. I am going to need to keep a schedule since my new job has me traveling to different stores in different cities, I am going to have to be well organized with my time, calculate my mileage, trips, and gas, and most importantly make time for myself for exercise, sleep, meditation, and breathing techniques, listen to Omharmonics music, and so forth. I can track my progress not only by my lists and calendars I can also get back into journal writing and keep track that way as well. When I used journal writing in the past I was able to revisit previous journal entry logs to see if my frame of mind has changed, if I have improved, what areas were unproductive or counterproductive, and obtain a realization of where I was to where I am in the present.


References

Dacher, E. S. (2006). Integral health: The path to human flourishing. Laguna Beach, CA:

Basic Health Publications.

Dallaire, J. (2012). Focusing on concentration – concentration skills and improving techniques.

Retrieved January 14, 2013 from http://www.performanceprime.com/performance-

focusing_on_concentration.php

United States Department of Agriculture. (2013). My daily food plan worksheet. Retrieved

January 14, 2013 from http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/downloads/worksheets/Worksheet_2200_18plusyr.pdf

Weil, A. (2013). Breathing: Three exercises. Retrieved January 14, 2013 from

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART00521/three-breathing-exercises.html