UNIT 10

Reviewing and reflecting on my personal assessments of Unit 3, unfortunately the scores that I will give myself are basically the same.  I find it so ironic that the two courses that I took this semester both reflect on ways to de-stress and achieve better health.  Back then I have my physical well-being a 5. At that time I was struggling with the concept of not eating sugar or white flour products and I am still having the same struggle.  I guess I could use the excuse of the holidays and all of the goodies that come along with it, but I know that in reality there will always be temptations.  My spiritual well-being was rated a 4, as well as my psychological well-being.  I think that I have improved fractionally in both areas, so I will give myself a 4½. Actually, in the last few weeks I had a horrendous family situation where my youngest child was being held against his will and had to be rescued. Nothing could be more horrific to me, but thankfully, my child is safe and home again once more.  The day of this nightmare, when I could do nothing but wait, I found myself meditating with soothing music and using our visualization practices to keep my as calm as possible.  I will admit that I still have to work on loving-kindness, as I did not potentially feel that toward the person that was holding my child.

My goals were to stretch and exercise more, which I will admit I have not achieved, but am getting outside more in the sun (when it is available) and the fresh air…which was another goal. I also find myself parking the car further away from stores that I am visiting in order to walk more…baby steps. I have also extended my work hours so time is more limited that it has ever been before.  The ‘Crime of the Century” relaxation exercise was probably the most satisfying exercise that I experienced this semester, and although I have not been able to do it on a regular basis, I have done it a few times and am trying to make it a regular practice for me.  Taking 15 minutes to totally focus on my body and what is happening with it is something that is so very beneficial to me and my stressed personality.

I am a spontaneous type of person and that can work for me in some wonderful ways but work against me when it comes to planning and follow-through.  There are so many ‘have-to’ in my life, and even though I know that all of the things I have learned this semester would be so very beneficial to me, it is not always easy to do…but right now I am trying to focus on the ‘preparation’…loving kindness, being less negative in my reactions and silence and stillness, both inner and outer.

I know that in order to be a compassionate and kind nutritionist who is sensitive to my clients and their situations I must be ever vigilant of my intentions, actions and practices and stay on the journey of achieving holistically, flourishing health or I will be of no assistance to them or to me. I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have gained in this course, as well as the tools to make help me be the person that I want to be.

Thank you, Professor and thank you all for reading my blog and walking with me on this part of my journey.

Jen

 

Unit 9  Project

I don’t see how it could be possible for a health and wellness professional to help, heal or counsel a patient/client successfully in matters of physical, spiritual or psychological health if they themselves were not actively trying to develop themselves in those areas as well.  Educational knowledge and skills may lead a professional to a diagnosis, but that is only a portion of what is needed.  A person who has unaddressed physical, spiritual or psychological negativity in their lives would not be of any help to others.

I have spent the last few months taking a close look at my life; my thoughts, words and actions, to try to figure out where I need to make positive changes that will promote flourishing health.  These last few months have been unusually difficult for me; looking for work, financial difficulties, family problems, a voluminous amount of schoolwork, and the fact that I am at an unhealthy weight, to name a few. These problems have been wearing me down to having outbursts of unhealthy negative emotions, filling me with fear, and pushing me to the point of exhaustion. I understand that aspiring to have a career as a nutritionist will not be productive if I cannot find a way to successfully alleviate this suffering not only in the short term, but also permanently.  I need to find a healthy way to lose weight (who will trust an overweight, unhealthy nutritionist, unless I am on the journey of losing weight to achieve optimum health?).  I also need to trust that with the skills that I have, even in this difficult economy, I will find work to help me with my financial burdens, and to focus on the thought that long as I keep putting myself out there with a positive attitude I will find work. If I approach my family with a loving attitude, things could turn around and give us an outcome that is possible to bring us all together in a loving peaceful way. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give myself a 2 or maybe on a good day a 3 in all three areas thus far (physical, spiritual and psychological health.)  I believe it is a gift that I took this course because it has taught me so many ways and practices that I can use to achieve flourishing health in all three areas, if I adopt them into my way of life.

I know what to eat and how much to eat in order to maintain a healthy weight, but I continuously over eat and participate in binge eating. For my physical body, I am now in the process of assess inwardly why I overeat and binge eat to find a way to stop these detrimental habits.  Negative emotions have been such a part of my daily life, I now have learned that the mind is flexible and that I could train my mind to think and react in a more positive (more compassionate, more loving) way. My goal is to systemically train my mind through inner development with contemplative practices.  I have been incorporating deep breathing into my life daily and sometimes more than once a day when needed, to try to bring myself back to the present moment. I am confident that by me achieve a less stressful and more peaceful mindset, I will be able to affect all those that I meet during my day in a constructive and optimistic manner.  Reaching spiritual health is probably the most difficult one to achieve, but I am in hope of achieving this ultimate goal by spending a lot of times in preparation.  I am beginning to understand the value of silence and the realization of something that has always been foreign to me.  TV, radio, phones, texting, computers and other erratic business are such a part of my life and it adds to the chaotic level of stress that I am under.  Although it is almost impossible now-a-days to do away with all of these things, I am going to consciously try to eliminate them from controlling me and my time.  To start, I am going to set times for each of these things to make the time that I spend with them productive and at the same time incorporate a short amount of time of silence in my day daily.  I plan to increase the amount of quietness each day and change the activities I do during the day to things that really matter, rather than just going through the motions of the day doing things out of habit that don’t.

For my physical health—exercise and proper diet.  I have started out slowly (exercise is not something that comes easily for me) I plan at the moment to go out of my way to walk more than I do now in simple ways—to park further out in the ShopRite parking lot when I shop, to walk to the bank a few blocks away rather than use the car, take the stairs instead of the elevator/escalator whenever possible, etc.  It does not work for me to do vigorous exercises. I have found that if I try to do too much too soon, I end up giving up the entire plan…baby steps (no pun intended) works better for me.  I have recently cut out all unhealthy sugars and white-flour products in my diet and plan to continue this indefinitely.  Once I am comfortable with this, I am going to try to watch my portions in hope to drop my excess weight.  My psychological practices will incorporate deep-breathing exercises and visualization.  Whereas I do already incorporate deep-breathing exercises for a few minutes daily and sometimes a few times a day, I plan to extend this exercise purposefully to include some visualization practice at least two days a week in hopes to keep me focused on the present and in hopes to maintain a loving and compassionate demeanor.  Spiritually, I plan to incorporate yoga and chanting as a routine. I did a daily yoga practice faithfully for years long ago, but not any longer.  I have a great tape by Susan Winter Ward, a yoga instructor, and have decided to take one hour on Sundays…the best day of the week for me…to practice yoga with the tape.  Chanting is something that I have done only once on a retreat up in NY State and it brought me to a place outside of myself where I experienced one with nature and my God.  This was an experience that brought me incredible peace and I hope that by incorporating it somehow in my weekly practices, I will get great spiritual benefits from it.  This will be done by trial and error until I find a time that it will fit into my routine.

All of the above goals and the practices that I have listed below cannot be done successfully unless I make a commitment to the process. I personally know people that belong to Alcoholics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous and understand their commitment to abstinence each and every day in order to have a fruitful and ongoing recovery.  I see what I am now trying to do as the same type of opportunity to commit to practices that have been proven effective for others time and time again. Daily commitment, keeping my focus on my goals, participating in proven holistic and contemplative practices will help me assess the progress that I am making in the next six months and longer. Making this commitment will help me to be able to get closer to the goal of flourishing health as well as putting me in the position of being able to help others also achieve the same.

                           “Become the change you want to see happen in the world.”                                                                                                                                                                                         Gandhi

Jen

 

Reference

Dacher, Elliot S. (2006). Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health       Publications. Laguna Beach, CA.

 

              Unit 8 – Loving Kindness

Picking two practices from the many that we have been learning about this semester is not an easy task.  They all have such ideal benefits but for this exercise I am choosing loving kindness and meditation.

              I now know that loving kindness can only be given away to others effectively if we love ourselves.  In preparation for this, I am now deliberately keeping this in the forefront of my mind as I go through my day with an open heart trying to be less self-centered by analyzing my reactions to people and situations that are going on with them.  I watch what I say and try to put loving kindness into the inflection of the words I speak and the way I treat others, now knowing that this is the groundwork to being able to be loving and kind. I watch my own internal reactions to things that I am doing and insist on being both patient and kind to myself when I don’t get something right, or something doesn’t go as planned.  I am not beating myself up any longer for things out of my control. The more I do this, the more I believe that I can continue to do this, which in turn will ultimately give me more inner peace and less stress, which of course will give me better health.

Meditation is a great tool, and where meditating for an hour or more at one time may be difficult to incorporate in my day, certainly deliberately scheduling a few minutes a few times a day can be a successful practice for me.  Just taking those minutes to break my normal routine, and concentrate for three to four minutes on my breath will clear my mind and give me a fresh start to the rest of my day.  Those few minutes recharge me as if I have taken a nap in the middle of the day. It brings me back to a center point where I feel loving, strong, with a new hope and vibrancy.

I think that I can easily incorporate these two practices in my career as a nutritionist.  Overeating or not eating correctly can be just as much a psychological problem as it is one of not knowing the proper and healthy foods to eat, therefore, incorporating one or both of these practices while I am treating a client should not be difficult at all.  In educating them to the easy availability of these practices would just be part of the solution to their problem.

Jen

              Unit 7  Describe the meditative practice and discuss the experience:

It is Sunday morning, and I am sitting comfortably in my den as I just finished listening to the visualization practice of this assignment.

I was not sure who to use as my ‘person,’ so I used a fictitious character named Joshua that was the main character in a book of the same name.  Joshua was Jesus Christ coming back to current times and trying to find good people in the world of today. 

It was such a comfort to perform this exercise believing that I was in the presence of Jesus, in my belief, the ultimate human being expressing goodness, love and compassion in everything he thought and did.  A great feeling of comfort, warmth and peace filled my senses as I concentrated on his image and the white beams of light passing from his awesome presence to me.  I was almost sorry when the exercise was over and I had to get back to reality, but am noticing that I am feeling less stressful in anticipation of all of the schoolwork that I need to complete today.

“One cannot lead another where he has not gone himself” (Schilitz, M., Amorok, T., Micozzi, M, 2005).

I have been overweight for most of my adult life.  I am studying to become a nutritionist.  Those two sentences are a juxtaposition of ideals if I ever saw one.  The good news is that I have been learning about my body, and my improper eating habits, along with the psychological problems that go along with overeating, so I have been incorporating some of the practices that I am learning in this course daily, along with a very healthy meal plan.  I have been on this path, with many successes so far, to conquer my weight in the last eight months.  I think that I will be a more successful nutritionist by understanding what it is like to be extremely overweight. It is my responsibility to be a healthy nutritionist, in mind and body, and as one, I plan to work with very obese people and I can share with them all of the practices that worked for me.  I think they will trust someone who has walked the walk and not just talk the talk of being nutritionally healthy.

Jen

Reference

Schlitz, Marilyn, Amorok, Tina, and Micozzi, Marc S. (2005).  Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-body Medicine.  Elsevier Inc. St. Louis, Missouri.

Unit 6

This weeks Blog post is based on practicing universal loving kindness and integral assessment.  Universal loving kindness is where we learn to hear, see, acknowledge, be present with and feel another by offering our open heartedness, sensitivity, generousity,a nd emotional intimacy and extending these capacitites beyond just our close group of loved ones, to that of all human kind (Dacher, 2006).

Integral assessment involves looking at our current circumstances, identifying aspects of our life that require attention and determine specific changes we would like to address (Dacher, 2006).

While meditating on loving kindness I found that I was questioning myself as to whether I really felt kindness towards others.  From our readings, I learned that we cannot genuiningly be kind to others if we cannot be kind to ourselves.  I have a very difficult time being kind to myself.  Since I am, is my kindness towards others not geniune?  While assessing myself, the specific change I would like to concentrate on the most would be in the area of being kinder to myself.  I find I sacrifice much of myself, when it is not really necessary.  I find I envy people who take time for themselves, and I want to be that person. 

Jen

Unit 5 - The Witnessing Mind

THE WITNESSING MIND

I think I enjoyed this exercise the most.  Like the all the other previous units, I was not able to sit through the entire exercise.  This one helped me focus the best.  Focusing on the breath really helped me connect mind and body.  I loved the waves, they helped me relax and think of warm sand and an empty beach.  I also love the sounds of a wooden flute.  I found the timing of the flute sounds fading in and out lightly in the background to be prefect timing.  They always seem to help pull my focus back, not allowing my mind to wonder off too far.  I realized during this exercise that part of the reason I can not fully relax during these exercises, is because I am too busy concentrating on what is going on so that I can write about it in my blog for school. 

The loving-kindness exercise from last week is something I most likely need to do, but I did not enjoy that one at all.  I was very restless and uncomfortable with it.  The Witnessing Mind exercise I actually enjoyed very much and would like to do again and again.

The benefit of this exercise for me, was that I actually enjoyed it, and found myself starting to relax.  I found by doing this exercise that water relaxes me; and the sound of a wooden flute and drums also calms me down very much.  These sounds were comforting to me, allowing me to relax more than any other exercise has so far, and then giving me something physical to concentrate on, such as the breathing helped me connect my body and mind.

Unit 4 Blog Post

LOVING KINDNESS

My experience with the loving kindness exercise started off very difficult.  I was very restless and could not relax.  I had a difficult time focusing.  I also had a difficult time bringing up loving feelings towards myself.  After doing the exercise a few more times, I was able to relax more.  I still had difficulty bringing in loving kindness to myself though.  I think over time, if I continue to do this exercise I think it will be effective.  I would recommend this exercise along with the other ones we have done this far to anybody.  The background sound of waves is very relaxing in this exercise, and the music in the others are relaxing too.  Each exercises quietly guides you into a relaxing meditative state if you allow it.

A mental workout is a daily commitment to practice/study inner peace and human flourishing.  Just like physical exercise is important to improve your physical body; mental exercise is important to improve your mental state.