Final Assessment

I was a little disappointed to find that when comparing my personal scores from Unit 3 to Unit 9, I had dropped my rating one point in each category.  Physical, Spiritual and Psychological went from 9, 6, 7 to 8, 5, 6.  I consider two possible explanations for this: 1. My pregnancy has lowered my self-efficacy and physical performance just slightly; and 2. Money and job stress over the last couple of months have been a mental burden and caused my time management (translating to loss of quiet time) to suffer.

While I have felt good during the course of my pregnancy, having little sickness, average weight gain, no risk, etc.,  I am definitely outside of my comfort zone physically.  I am used to being more active and exercising at the gym regularly.  While I kept up my normal exercise for a while, I reached a point (around 30 weeks) where exercise felt especially taxing and painful.  I still walk and stretch as much as possible, but I miss being able to run and participate in more challenging fitness classes.  I look forward to getting back to that after the birth. 

Anticipating having a child, mixed with the the normal anxiety of being an actor (my husband is also an actor) and not having a reliable income has definitely been challenging mentally and spiritually.  While we have become much more stable over the past few months, there is still an anxious feeling that fluctuates but never quite disappears.  I have definitely been managing stress through meditation and through my own cognitive process, so I feel that it could be affecting me much more dramatically than it has.

Overall, I also feel that my numbers going down reflect a growth, not a retreat.  My awareness of my mind an body has advanced throughout this class, which could make me more critical of my health and wellness.  For example, I've played guitar very casually on and off since I was in high school.  I know several chords and a few songs.  But when I've taken formal lessons, I suddenly feel far less adequate, even though I am learning and growing.  Because I can see how far I still have to reach, where I am seems like a great distance away.  I feel that way about my integral health.  You can be climbing a mountain, look down and think, wow, I have climbed a long way.  But when you look to the top and see how much further you have to go, you will either feel motivated or dismayed.  Our success depends on our personal reaction to those different perspectives.

Unit 9 Project

The definition of health and wellness is slightly different depending on who is asked.  For a conventional Western physician, it might be the absence of physical illness.  For a religious leader, it might have more to do with spiritual connectedness and practice.  And for a clinical psychologist, it may lean toward behavioral or cognitive awareness and performance.  Integral health and wellness touches on all three aspects of health, not only the absence of pain or illness in each area, but the flourishing of the human mind, body and spirit.  For an integral health professional, flourishing is important both personally and professionally to act as example and guide to a patient/client, so the person may see how to put wellness principles into practice, as well as observe the fruits of practice. 

In assessing myself in each area, I recognize that physical wellness is my strongest point, with mind and spirit both in need of attention to varying degrees.  My physical health has come very far in the last several years, since I spent most of my life from age 8 to 25 overweight and inactive.  I decided to become proactive about losing weight through better nutrition and exercise at age 25, and it changed my body completely, as well as my self-efficacy.  I found that over the past few years, as I have conformed to my newly-found health guidelines, my psychological wellness correlated with my physical wellness.  Now that I have settled physically, I need to find new outlets of fulfillment psychologically now that I no longer have self-efficacy conflicts when it comes to my body image.  My spirituality has also been dynamic recently.  I was raised Catholic and was always actively involved in my religion.  I remain faithful to the beliefs, but not all of the practices of the Church.  My spiritual development includes but is not limited to Church practices.  Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10, I score myself thusly in the three areas: Body: 8; Mind: 6; Spirit: 5. 

My physical goals are on the right track, but not fully actualized.  A goal I have for myself physically is to perfect my body on an athletic level.  Right now I am 32 weeks pregnant, so this goal will have to wait for a few months while I deliver my baby and recover from delivery.  Nutritionally, I am healthy, maintaining an appropriate weight and taking in the right amount of calories and nutrients that I have found to work for my body.  Physically, I would like to challenge myself.  I have participated in a few 5K races and I attend classes at my gym, but I would like to move out of my exercise comfort zone by completing a longer race, starting with 10K.  I would also like to implement a more consistent resistance training schedule to tone muscle. 

Psychologically, I am satisfied with my day to day function, but I tend to become anxious easily.  I have struggled with panic attacks since my teen years, although they are rarer now.  I have spoken to psychologists about this issue and cognitive measures have been suggested.  To address anxiety, focusing on the present is my main goal.  Most of my anxious feelings result from dwelling on the past or the future, so I try to invest in whatever is happening at the moment of my panic.  Becoming intent on a work or home project is helpful to minimize anxiety.  I would eventually like to reach a point where I do not have to think through my panic as much and will more easily transition to the present. 

My least developed area in my opinion is spirituality.  Although I feel very connected to my religious faith, I have trouble taking time for quiet reflection or prayer, due to my short attention span.  I feel that I miss a lot of opportunity to connect to spiritual feeling because I am distracted by work, entertainment or anything else going on around me.  When I attempt to meditate, it is easy for my mind to wander and get pulled away by passing thoughts.  My goal to develop spiritual connection is to continue meditation practice, increasing my chance of quieting my mind and learning to observe and let go of thoughts more easily.

To progress toward these goals, I can implement specific practices.  I plan to return to physical training after I recover from delivery.  I will train for a longer run, either in a formal race or on my own, starting with 5K and moving beyond it.  To heighten my muscle toning, I will commit to a weight lifting class that I have attended sporadically in the past but will produce much better results with more consistency. Psychologically, my goal of remaining in the present requires mental exercise.  I can establish a physical or mental routine for times when I begin feeling anxious.  Active meditation, such as a mundane activity like folding clothes, combined with a mantra I can repeat in my mind, may return me to presence and away from my anxious thoughts.  For spiritual practice, I plan to set a time to practice meditation each day.  If over time I am still having difficulty quieting my thoughts, I will try different times of day or different methods to find what works best.  I have also considered attending religious services with different faiths. Although I remain a Catholic Christian, I am interested in the logistics and practices of other faiths.

      Self-assessment of progress in integral health is not entirely objective.  I may progress in some areas based on my material goals, but how I feel holistically will be the true gage of wellness.  I believe this will be especially true after my baby is born.  I expect to feel physically exhausted and have a lot of work to do to restore my body, but at the same time I hope to feel emotionally and spiritually happy to have a child.  To me, this is a prime example of health being person-centered, dynamic and evolutionary.  Outside of the context of having a child, being tired and overweight would adversely affect my well-being. But those things as a result of pregnancy do not have the same effect.  So with that in mind, my assessments and goals moving forward will be fluid.  I will rely more heavily on the support of my husband, family and friends to reach my wellness goals. 

      This course has been invaluable to put into perspective ideas that I have had regarding holistic wellness.  It is refreshing to learn how integral health is being applied to and with Western medical science.  In my Health and Wellness education so far, this has been the most inspiring and motivating course, and I hope to be a part of the awareness of holistic and integral practices in our country.  As I have learned, of course, that begins with my own integral development. 

Subtle-Mind and Visualization

While I am still trying to adjust to meditation practice, I have found subtle-mind and visualization practice to be the most accessible for me.  I think I like them both because in a way, they oppose one another.  Subtle-mind requires observation and the ability to let go of thoughts and images as they pass through the mind.  Visualization is more active.  It requires a focus on a single thought or image and a development of it.  I find it difficult to focus in quiet, but both of us these practices tap into the mind's ability to follow through, either with passive observation or with active imagination. 

I believe the best way to practice both is to alternate them.  It may exercise my mind to practice both either day to day or week to week, so I can strengthen the individual practice, while still maintaining interest in both.   For example, if I practice subtle-mind in the morning when my my thoughts are less active and less likely to be distracting, and then practice visualization at the end of a day where images are fresh and vivid, I can use my own daily rhythms to contribute to mental fitness.  Or as a challenge I could do the opposite, waking myself through images and winding down with observations.  Either way, consistency is important in making these practices count.  I have to commit to setting aside time each day.

Meeting Aesclepius

The Aesclepius exercise was very relaxing, as guided meditations usually are for me.  Although I think that involving a real person into visualization is always a challenge.  There are a lot of thoughts and emotions tied to a person who means a lot to you, so the exercise is more complicated than it seems.  I pictured my grandfather, who died in 2003.  I was very close to him, especially after my grandmother died in 1999 and he started living near my parents.  My mother's relationship with him (he was her father) was complicated, since he had not been a wonderful father when she was growing up.  He was a WWII POW who was never diagnosed or treated for PTSD, but in hindsight, he was likely affected.  After spending a year as a prisoner in France, he was finally liberated, came home, got his GED (he had not yet finished high school when he was drafted), settled into a job with the Federal Reserve, married and had two children.  But he often drank and had a short temper with his two daughters.  It never escalated dangerously, but my mother remembers his outbursts and occasionally being hit.  Unfortunately this was probably not too far outside of the norm for discipline in the 1950s and 60s.  He changed dramatically with age, stopped drinking and became a very loving grandfather, so I could not picture the person my mother told me about when I got older.  He eventually, only years before his death, talked about his time in the war and in the prison hospital.  It made me wish he had been able to talk about those things sooner, but I think in the 1940s, it was expected that a man just move on and deal with things on his own.  I am sad that it caused him and his family so much pain. 

When I pictured him during the meditation, I pictured the man I knew before his death, who was loving and kind and happy. But it is hard not to remember everything else too.  I know he was not perfect and that his wisdom came from that.  Although he didn't have all the answers or all the support he should have had, he showed a lot of strength in living as long as he did. 

Unit 7: Leading by Example

My unit 7 posts will be in two parts, since I have yet to sit down with Meeting Aesclepius.  As for the second part:
"One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself."

I agree with this statement to an extent.  I believe more that one cannot lead another where one is not going.  Pursuit of health and wellness is dynamic and evolutionary, but not necessarily finite or conclusive.  As a health professional, I think one has an obligation to live his/her principles.  There should definitely be leading by example.  If, for example, a personal trainer tells a client that they must exercise three times per week for cardio health, I expect that trainer to be doing the same.  However, if a trainer is a small women training a large man to gain muscle, she will definitely have to tell him to do things she herself cannot do, such as bench press 150 lbs.  I don't believe in this case that she is leading where she has not gone; I believe that she is leading him along a similar path she has traveled, one of fitness improvement, but that everyone's individual path looks very different.  I also believe that no matter what point we are in our path, we can help each other. If someone is trying to quit smoking but has not yet achieved the goal fully, I believe he/she can still help motivate someone else who is trying.  As long as we are going in the same direction, we have something to contribute.  

Loving-Kindess and Integral Health

This loving-kindness exercise is very good me, because it is subtle and repetitive and brings me to a place of focus.  I sometimes have trouble with expressing loving-kindness due to a sense of justice, or more accurately, a desire to be right at times.  Not all the time, but often.  For instance, when I get frustrated with my husband, I feel the need to fully explain what he has done wrong so he will understand my feelings.  He takes this as an attack which can lead to a fight.  Instead, I can exercise loving-kindness, accept that what bothers me may not be "wrong" or "right" and I can look at his actions from his point of view instead of mine.  The meditation practice can definitely help me feel more connected to those feelings. 

In my inventory of the four aspects of integral health, my spiritual and mental development can always use work.  I feel this because I find it simple to address social and physical needs.  They are more material and outward.  My thoughts and my feelings require attention on the inside, and as an extrovert with a short attention span, it is hard for me to take quiet time for meditation.  I also focus on action rather than thought, so observing my thoughts without acting on them takes work.  I believe that consistent meditation will help.  Also, because I am motivated to act, it might better suit my personality to begin with study of meditation in Eastern culture so I may be moved to practice.  This might be an easier place for me to start than diving into quiet practice. 

Subtle Mind

The Subtle Mind exercise was much more successful for me than the Loving-Kindness exercise.  With loving-kindness, the visualization of someone in pain was difficult for me.  Not necessarily because it was a negative idea, but because it lead my mind in too many directions and too many thoughts.  Subtle mind was less complicated.  The suggestion of focusing on breath, witnessing thoughts and the quiet wave sound made it easy to relax.  I found myself still observing a lot of thoughts and outside sounds and feelings, including my cat laying near me, but I was not holding onto those distractions.  I will definitely do this exercise again.

Spiritual, physical and mental wellness cannot be separated because they are all part of one person.  One will affect the other.  If I am feeling physically ill or out of shape, I do not feel well mentally.  If I am not connected spiritually, I don't feel as good about myself.  When I am stressed mentally, I feel tired physically.  Those feelings cannot be independent of each other.