Unit 5 Subtle Mind

I really enjoyed this guided meditation out of all of the other ones that we have done in this class as well as the ones I have done for other classes. The only problem I had was my patience during the extremely long periods of times of the lady not talking. I tried so hard to stay with it through the whole thing but I broke the concentration 16 minutes in. The first 10 minutes I was all about it, enjoying it, concentrating on my breathing, and clearing my mind, and then the 5 minutes of silence crushed me. I am so exhausted after not sleeping well, trying to get school work done before work, working 10 hours from 8pm to 6am and then going straight to Denny's after work to work on the bazillion school work assignments for both of my classes. Many of the thoughts that ran through my head were work, school, I want to be working out, I am so utterly tired, my back is killing me, I need a chiropractic adjustment and massage so terribly, I want to be sleeping in my warm bed with my cats.... I was able to refocus back onto breathing and also let these thoughts dissolve into nothingness and when asked what was left, there was just me saying in my head to myself, "there is just me." I really liked this guided meditation but the moments of silence are just way too long for me. Compared to the loving kindness guided mediation I feel that they are two totally different types of meditation. One focuses on love and kindness for one's self, those close to us, and everyone and everything else. This meditation focuses on clearing the mind. I had an easier time with the loving kindness guided mediation that I did the subtle mind guided meditation. I am not surprised by this considering I am terrible about shutting my mind off and if I am successful I usually just put myself to sleep.


Spiritual, mental, and physical wellness are all interconnected, meaning if you poke one the others will also react. If one is out of balance the others will become out of balanced as well. If our mental health is low this state starts to manifest physically with problems such as lowered immune system, headaches, high heart rate and blood pressure and stomach problems. Alternatively, if our mental health is high then physical well being is high and this shows physically with a higher immune system, shorter healing time, lower heart rate, and so forth. I think many people forget or not think about spiritual health although I believe that spirituality is ingrained in our nature. Being spiritual to me does not mean being religious or being affiliated to anything religious, although for some religion is a constructive focal point for spirituality. For me spirituality means being in touch with our own soul, what we know to be right and wrong, how we want to be treated and how we believe others should be treated, our compassion, kindness, thoughtfulness, and being in touch with the universe and everything in it. In my life personally I have had many imbalances with these areas of wellness. I believe I have always been spiritual ever since I was a child with vivid dream, great intuition and foresight, a connection with children and animals, a love for smells, plants, and crystals precious and semiprecious, the seasons, the elements, the planets, and so on. However, my mental health and well-being has always been out of balance causing major imbalances in my physical health and well-being and in part affecting my spiritual well-being. I come from a family of mental health illnesses such as depression, bipolar, manic depression, chronic anxiety, worry, and panic. Major bouts of depression, stress, and anxiety attacks have been the biggest troubles that offset my balance because they cause me to go into a hibernation mode where I don't want to eat, I have no appetite, and a revulsion to food, I sleep for 10-15 hours at a time, become bedridden with apathy, I let my hygiene go, my immune system would crash, I would have constant never ending migraines, chronic stomach pain, and the inability to leave the house to accomplish simple tasks like checking the mail or picking up milk. These mental and physical imbalances affected my spirituality by making me question what I believe in or feeling like I was losing faith in humanity and the universe, wondering if I was being punished for something I did in a past life, and wondering why it was necessary for me to go through what I was having to go through. On the other end of the spectrum, taking back charge of my life, I chose to quit smoking and get back to my love of hiking, which opened the door for me to start going to the gym, and I just got my own membership all by myself at a gym of my choice. I have chosen exercising to be my new healthy addiction to release stress hormones and to release beta endorphins for happiness, pain relief, boost my immune system, and a whole plethora of beneficial mental and physical benefits. With stress and my smoking habit I not only had a high heart rate, at 25 I was at a pre-hypertension level! What!? Pre-high blood pressure at 25 even though I am a completely healthy aside from that one bad habit!? Now that I am not in a constant reactive state with stress and anxiety I am able to be more aware and witnessing of my life. I can ask myself why am I stressed, what am I afraid of, is that a reasonable fear, why am I so angry about this particular thing, is that a reasonable anger, are other people in charge of me or am I in charge of myself? I make my own happiness. I take myself out to dinner, I take myself to the gym, I take myself out for a drink, I do not rely on someone taking me out or wanting my time. I also started setting boundaries with people and putting my foot down about what I will and will not tolerate when it comes to how I am treated by others. I am also a lot more proactive when it comes to stressful situations by coming up with constructive and productive strategies and plans such as creating hour by hour day by day weekly schedules of work time, school time, sleep time, and so forth. All in all though, I am only human and I am not perfect but I do strive for evolution of my self everyday, not to become better or worse, just more me, the true potential that we all hold.

Unit 4 Mental Workout

When asked to think of a person the first people I thought of were my best friend Juanita who lives where I live in Washington and also my friend Jessica who lives in California that I have not gotten to see for a few years now. Both I adore wholeheartedly and value their true friendship. I thought it was very cool and surprising that the guided meditation said to turn those feelings of love and kindness of those loved ones towards oneself, I really enjoyed that. I found this guided meditation to be a lot easier than the other ones of this class and ones I have done for other classes. I think maybe that is because I caught up on cleaning, sleep, and relaxation. I don't think I really understand how I am supposed to just observe my thoughts and feelings but not think or feel them, this might be why I have such a hard time with exclusive and inclusive meditation... When told to give oneself to the higher state of mind I visualized me being 2 people much like in the movie What the Bleed Do We Know. The person I thought of that is suffering is my grandmother, she has a heart of gold and is a wonderful person but she suffers from chronic stress and anxiety that causes chronic physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual problems for her. I also visualized blowing away the metaphoric black cloud surrounding my grandmother with every exhale breath. For the circle of strangers I visualized my coworkers, because I work with a very large number of employees many of which I only briefly know. I think it is important to include them because how they think and feel affects me as well because we all work together. After a while the sound of waves started to make me very sleepy even though I slept for 11 hours today! I would recommend this guided meditation to others because it is beneficial, it is very relaxing, and it has you think not only about yourself but those around you. The concept of a mental workout is to workout your brain much like you do the body with exercise and conditioning except instead of physically your are doing it mentally and emotionally. This is important because what we think and feel affects our body physically as well as sets us up for thought process patterns that affect our well-being on all levels. Mental training focuses on a person becoming an observer of their own life, as well as calmness, peace, tranquility, and stillness, which paves the way for health and happiness. Mental training such as meditation, visualization, guided imagery, and breathing technique are proven to be beneficial mental exercises because they decrease negative thoughts, emotions, and physical effects such as high heart rate, blood pressure, and increases memory function. I use self affirmation statements, I use active meditation while I exercise, I use aromatherapy, and when I am stressed I ask myself what am I really afraid of or what is really making me angry.

Unit 3 Psychological, Spiritual, and Physical Well-Being

I think I would give myself a 9 for well being, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.  I believe that I am at a 9 because I have always been pretty in tune with all aspects of my well being, I am aware of my strengths and weaknesses and I strive to evolve, I am deeply connected with my personal spirituality, I have always lead a healthy life and continue to further that, but I give myself a 9 because there is always room for improvement.  No one is perfect and nothing is completely perfect.  I am always learning more information, seeking more knowledge, absorbing more insight, my perceptions are always adapting each day as I experience more.  I know that I constantly am working at bringing things into balance in my life and paying attention to when things are out of balance, which is a constant daily task.  It is not something you can just do once and be fine, you have to work at it everyday.   I eat healthy, I exercise and am active, I stay away from chemicals such as MSG, high fructose corn syrup, and non nutritive sweeteners, I actively meditate while exercising, I enjoy sitting in silence and having alone time, I only partake in a select few "junk" foods a couple of times a year (literally), I make and take time for myself, I got rid of smoking cigarettes, I partake in aromatherapy daily, I use crystal therapy, I do things to feel in harmony with the universe, and many other positive well being activities.  Hmmm.... Some goals for each area...  I would say one of my goals physically is to do Pilates for lower back function, much of my stress is carried in my back and I have also had a lot of back injuries for being young and Pilates is one of the best exercises for back function.  My mom has a whole DVD set of Pilates, she just can't remember where she put them, and I am pretty sure she forgot about looking for them for me and I have not reminded her because I have been so busy with work and I just recently got a gym membership since I was not having enough daylight to go hiking outdoors with my schedule.  I'd also like to get into yoga and belly dancing is for sure on my bucket list.  Another goal is to exclusively meditate by silencing everything out and quieting myself.  I am fantastic at actively meditating while exercising, but I do not take much time to actually sit down and exclusively meditate.  I do enjoy the silence frequently but I do not think it is the same as exclusively meditating.  Psychologically, I am still working on my stress levels, I have come a long ways in just the last 4 months of taking back charge of my life, but I am far from my goal because many things have continued for many years and it takes a while to change things that have been around for years and years and years.  One of the major things that I have been working on is my tendency to be a codependent stress prone personality type, although I am also the survivor stress resistant personality type sometimes the scale is not balanced.  Therefore, I have to consciously make an effort to not let things in life overwhelm me, consume me, or bring me down, and stress me out.  For instance, I ended up getting scheduled to work for a week straight, which left me no time for school work.  I was so stressed out I started to cry, instead I stopped myself and decided I need to do some serious time management, so I wrote out a schedule from Saturday to Saturday hour by hour each day and highlighted in work hours, getting ready and drive times, sleep hours based on sleep cycles (90 mins), what time I had to do school work each day, and lastly a little tiny bit of me time.   I also make a list of school work for each week and I marked on my list days for each assignment and task.  So far everything has gone according to planned, this blog ended up being spread out over a few days because every time I would work on it I would only get a little bit done at a time due to being so exhausted from work.  Tonight I will be up till 6 am writing 3 papers because I have to work all day tomorrow through till the time everything is due.  My ex husband asked why I am staying up till 6 am?  I know myself, I have already been jacked up on caffeine, I am a night owl, and I know that I will sleep instead of getting up early to work on school work so it is better to just stay up till I get it all done.  I guess the answer for psychological stress would be to be proactive, constructive, positive, and turn debilitating stress into facilitating stress.  As for the relaxation exercise, I will admit that I was multitasking while listening to it.  I have already heard this one in my previous class, Stress: Critical Issues in Management and Prevention.  Right now though it is extremely difficult to get in tune with the exercise mainly because  I do not want to be relaxed right now, I just want to get my papers written so I can go to sleep so I can go to work for 9 hours...  After I get off work tomorrow is when I can relax, but right now there is no time to relax...  When I listened to this video the first time I did feel very relaxed, I altered a few things such as the grounding root chakra is brown not red.  I do like this guided relaxation because I do believe in chakras, chakras being focal points of energy for specific things, chakras being out of alignment or blocked, and chakra healing.  I have done chakra healing with crystals placed on each chakra as well as listening to meditative music with different frequencies each specific to each chakra.  

Unit 2 Guided Meditation

My first attempt to listen to the guided meditation failed horribly because there was a loud movie playing in the background, I was exhausted after only getting 3 hours of sleep and being up for 17 hours, and I could not focus at all.  I decided I would give the guided meditation a try while I was exercising the next day so I emailed the link to myself so I could listen to it on my phone at the gym since I use it to listen to music while I work out.  Kind of try combining exclusive meditation with active meditation since I am great at active meditation but terrible at exclusive meditation.  Unfortunately that project failed as well, the email did not go through, so I logged onto class from my phone, which was successful except for some reason I couldn't scroll so I could reach the link.  Attempt #2 failed.  Attempt #3 I am a wee bit under the weather from celebrating my ex husband's birthday last night but I just woke up a half hour ago and it is said that it is easier to meditate upon waking up because your mind is more receptive.  I've done guided meditations such as this one before, a therapist I used to see always guided me through a meditation that started with relaxing the entire body from top to bottom, very relaxing.  My hands and fingers did feel warmer during the meditation and my arms felt heavier and relaxed.  Letting the blood flow back to my stomach didn't make me feel very well due to celebrating last night.  One thing that always happens to me is I feel so relaxed I am tired, then they say you don't feel tired you feel energized.  I feel like I am lying to myself, "no, I am tired but okay I will tell myself I am not!"  ha ha!

My How Time Can Get Away From You

Wow!  It has been so long since I have logged onto my blog and even looked at it.  I feel like I stepped back into a moment in time of my past.  So much has changed since I created this blog for a previous class here at Kaplan.  A quick run down of all the events:  My husband and I moved back to Washington from California once his 4 year term was finished in the Marine Corps, unfortunately everything started to unravel once we got home...  The year and a half was a struggle of PTSD, separation, many moves, trying to work on things and buying a house, the divorce becoming finalized, and reworking on things at the present moment.  During all of the chaos, there was much depression, apathy, meltdowns, breakdowns, letting an abusive ex boyfriend control and mentally, emotional, and verbally abuse me, losing my job, not being able to find a job, not being able to receive assistance, etc...  All while, school and my determination for 4.0 terms and my animals were the only things that kept me hanging on.  Finally, I was able to get into the class Stress: Critical Issues in Management and Prevention and a week straight of a major breaking point of stress in my life, I realized that I gave away all of the control in my life, and decided that I had had enough.  I took back control of my life, I quit smoking cigarettes, I got back into hiking, which is one of my healthy addictions, I reclaimed my confidence and got a job, I got back into taking my supplements everyday, I made a rule that I was only allowed to post something positive on Facebook, and so forth.  For the last month and a half my ex husband and I have been working on things, though there was much stress due to a female roommate that caused many problems, who is thankfully gone.  Lately my gut instincts have been super sensitive and I have much success actually listening to them!  However, much of the stress was caused by no one listening to me about my gut instincts going off like crazy that this female roommate was bad news until she bailed out with out paying the other half of the rent due.  As of recent stress levels have started to increase especially working a retail job at one of the top busiest stores at the mall, which has been setting off my panic and anxiety attacks with the increase in volume of people and a month long bout of bad luck.  One of the things that I learned from last term is that I may have the codependency personality type that is stress prone but I am also the survivor personality type that is stress resistant, so everyday that things go wrong or things become stressful I remind myself  that I am a survivor and that I have grand big places to go and be in life.  Here's to the start of another term that offers great information and resources that will benefit my life and those that are a part of my life.

Unit 10 All Done!

I am definitely doing my last few assignments late but things at the home haven't been so great with family members and alcoholism problems.  But things have finally settled down enough to get my last few assignments done and check my grade on how I did.  I am so relieved that I got a good grade on my paper and able to keep my A!  Now to pass my exam for my nutrition class and I can keep that A as well!  I think the best advice I cold give based on my experiences is time management and organization will be a big help in writing a quality paper.  Setting up a designated days for researching, note taking, and writing is extremely productive especially when it comes close to finalizing a paper.  I did research up until making my paper completely final and found myself crunched for time because I didn't realize how much work was going to be needed to make my paper final.  I still feel that if I would have managed my time better and spent more time working on my paper I could have had included another point on the dangers of non nutritive sweeteners making my paper a whole 6 pages instead of making each of my paragraphs so long.  I feel that there could have been more Paramedic revision done to my paper than what I did do If I had given myself more time.  As for organization, I had a mass amount of tabs open each with a different article and I forgot 2 references when I turned my paper in because I didn't keep all of my sources organized.  Luckily I woke up 2 hours after turning my paper in and realized I missed those 2 references, I would have been so upset if I would have gotten in trouble for unintentional plagiarism.  I think no matter how well I write a paper, exam, assignment, or project, I think I will always feel that I could do better and try harder the next time because I really want this degree and I want to do it as best I can.  I don't want to just barely pass my classes, or just barely pass an assignment, I want to get good grades, keep my honor roll and high G.P.A. and really be proud when I get my degree. All of my terms have had things happen and obstacle pop up and I don't expect any of my other terms to come to be smooth sailings.  So with each passing term I make a mental note of what did and didn't work such as insomnia and morning classes do not mix well and figure out the things that will work for future classes to come.  Swimming upstream is very tiresome and something I would prefer to avoid during the course of next few years of college if possible. 

Unit 9 Almost Final

For once I am trying to knock out some assignments early especially since my husband I are finally getting to go camping this weekend. At the moment I still have a some to do before my paper is final and can be turned in.  I still need to write my abstract, add a little to my 2nd and 3rd paragraph, and go over my paper a few more times to make some last revisions.  Aside from those last things to do I feel pretty good about my paper.  I think the difference between how I felt about the paper I wrote last term for Writing Composition 1 is that I got a really good grade on my first draft for this paper, whereas I didn't get a very good grade for my formal outline last term and a lack of help from the professor.  So the confidence of a good grade and really putting forth an effort to use the information I learned last class really helped for me to write this paper.  I do however think that my writers block and the different obstacles that occur make a big impact of how well my writing flows out and onto the paper/screen.  I feel a little nervous when I think about what I have to do and if I'm giving myself enough time to do it, and all the errands I have to do and things that pop up and make making time for school work difficult or my brain not working and wondering when it will work when I need it to!  But I remind myself that I do always get it done so I try not to over worry myself.  When I turn it in I will probably celebrate with a drink and feel good that I am done and spend the next day relaxing.  At this point my idea of writing hasn't changed much from how I've always felt about writing.  Sometimes I am really good at it without trying and other times I stare at my screen confused and dumbfounded, sometimes my writing flows and other times I can't get anything to come out.  I have definitely learned a lot from Writing Composition 1 and 2 and I don't think my papers would be good enough without these classes.  When I write papers in the future I will remember the things that I was taught in these classes and know where to look for help and what areas I need to pay attention to so that I continue to get good grades and be able to evolve as the classes get harder and more professional.  There are a ton of topics that I would love to research and write about such as herbalism, natural products, aromatherapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, ways to be healthy, what works, what doesn't work, etc...  I want to build a collection of all of the papers that I write throughout college so maybe I can share them with others in the future.  I would very much like to be an influential voice in helping people take an in depth look at health and be more aware of what is going on in the health world.