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.