Unit 9 Final Project Post

Hello Class,

Here is my final, didn't mean to get so personal. Good luck in future classes and careers :).

Heidi Lynn Waldman

A Personal Journey towards Health and Human Flourishing

Kaplan University

Professor John Aguilar

HW420-01

April 30, 2013

            The beloved Dalai Lama has stated that, “only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek” (Cosmicquotes.com, 2012, par. 1). This is how we can flourish. It is extremely important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually, ad physically in order to help ourselves and then our clients/patients. To be a model for others and to guide others to the path of human flourishing we must embark on the journey ourselves and gain direct personal experience. To change the medicine we are practicing, we must change ourselves as well.

By transforming the inner and outer areas of our own life through preparation and contemplative practice we see the true value of integral health and thus out of love, devotion, and service we will feel an un-quenching desire to help others to alleviate pointless worry and suffering in order to find true health and happiness in their own lives (Dacher, 2006).

            Through contemplative practices such as the subtle mind practice and loving-kindness practice, we are able to calm our own minds, letting go of needless chatter, making our minds still enough to truly pay attention to what our clients are communicating to us. This can only be done with a truly calm and empathetic mind and heart that is unbiased and non-judgmental, without time constraints or our own intrusive thoughts (Dacher, 2006). This will allow us to center on the person without comparing their path to our own or others but helping them to develop their own particular route to health and happiness, “If [our] entire being is listening, the listening itself is meditation. In this way, we experience the truth of [our clients/patients life]. We experience it in our mind and body. And from this we arrive at a comprehensive and empathetic understanding of their presenting concern” (Dacher, 2006, p. 169). Through our honest understanding and compassion our clients/patients feel deeply and truly recognized and cared for (Dacher, 2006). I know personally that this can be healing in itself. We cannot reach this type of relationship with those we are trying to serve without developing our own psychological, spiritual, and physical health and well-being. I know that to serve others with full ambition I need to vigorously work on all three of these areas in my life to achieve my goals.

            When I first looked at the assessment integral I was basically worried about letting down my wall and letting people in, as it affects my interpersonal relationships. After taking an even deeper look into my own self and life I find that there is a much deeper meaning behind that block I put up and I need a compete overhaul! I must develop a program of integral practice that I can intentionally follow with determination and the first step is to be completely honest with myself. Psychologically I need to banish thoughts of worthlessness, loneliness, hopelessness, and helplessness. I have been conditioned throughout my life to feel these feelings and it affects all other aspects of my life. My conative line and the source and character of my motivation (Dacher, 2006), is much worse than I had originally thought.

            Through quiet meditation I penetrated a wall quite involuntarily, and came to the realization that I am motivated by survival needs, ego-centered and driven by fear (Dacher, 2006). My fear of driving has hindered my life and my development leading to poor interpersonal relationships, seclusion, and a dependent relationship on my husband because of my reliance on him. I know it is a dependent relationship because losing him would not only leave me feeling empty, with no resources and without peace, but absolutely terrified to survive on my own (Dacher 2006). The text is painfully accurate in saying, “dependent relationships force us to see things about ourselves that we would prefer not to see [and also] keeps us stuck and suffering rather than growing and flourishing” (Dacher, 2006, p. 90).

            This psychological fear lowers my spiritual wellness score as well. Although I have a very close relationship with God and pray daily, I feel inadequate and guilty for not becoming the person I feel that God wants me to be. Due to constant guilt, worry, and restless thoughts it is difficult to develop a calm-abiding mind and to find inner peace. It is even harder to love myself and how can one truly love another or make any progress in anything without first loving their self? In relationship to my mind my physical health gains a low score as well. My thoughts, feelings and emotions, feeling of inadequacy and anger at my circumstances puts stress on my body leading to comfort foods, drinking, overeating, headaches, smoking, apathy, complete lack of energy, insomnia and even some extra pimples! I have lost my motivation to exercise while only two weeks ago I was on the treadmill at least every other day. I am a complete mess. This course has very unexpectedly taken me to a place of no return. Hopefully a few steps backwards will lead to a giant leap forward! Time to make some changes!

            My first step is to evaluate how certain areas of my life encourage suffering and which areas can add to overall health. The next step is to target areas for, “future growth and development” (Dacher, 2006, p.170). My physical goal is health promotion, eating right, reducing stress, more exercise, and letting go of unhealthy habits. Looking at the six principles of integral assessment, number three tells me that I need to stop looking for immediate pleasure and start looking at long term flourishing (Dacher, 2006). I might think that a bowl of chips, a cold beer, and a cancer stick are alleviating my suffering but in my heart I know this isn’t true and is only masking my suffering. True health and flourishing comes from within, is self-cultivated and uninterrupted (Dacher, 2006). My goal is to stop with the short term relief and find healthier ways to cope such as breathing exercises, yoga, and physical exercise.

            Psychologically my goal is to let go of past hurts, anger, and resentment and to learn to forgive and forget. Studies have shown us that forgiveness benefits us emotionally and physically and raises our hopes, our self-efficacy, and gives us a better spiritual connection (Schlitz et al, 2005). I also hope to develop better coping skills and mind training techniques.

            Spiritually I find my greatest potential for growth and development (Dacher, 2006). My goal is to let go of needless fear and worry through meditation, prayer, and spiritual practices. My fear of driving comes down to experiences from my childhood which further reinforced an already existing fear of injury and death. Through raising my consciousness I will get a closer and closer glimpse of my spiritual body and come to the realization that my body truly is a manifestation of spirit (Dacher, 2006). The text says that through overcoming fear we also overcome feelings of, “insecurity, lack of control, isolation, and separateness” (Dacher, 2006, p.86). These are the exact emotions I feel and cling to everyday and that keep me from progressing along the path to integral health and flourishing. My goal is to battle and overcome these demons and I know it won’t be easy but as Hippocrates put it, “the art is long and life is short, but we can begin and that is what makes all the difference” (Dacher, 2006, p.172).

            To foster physical health I have already made the choice to use the upcoming break and the rest of my future to get back on track. Rather than reverting to old habits for short term relief I will use breathing exercises taking a moment to turn inward and relax to evaluate my emotions rather than reaching for the chips or worse. I will also start doing some Yoga every day to strengthen my body. I found that Yoga also helps a person to focus on breathing which alleviates stress and anxiety (yogamovement.com, 2013).

            To foster growth in the psychological domain I will do my best to practice the loving-kindness exercise whenever possible. The first step is to make a conscious choice to love myself. I will show loving kindness to my closest circle of loved ones and all of God’s creation, and with practice I believe I can expand it even unto my enemies and learn to finally forgive. Loving-kindness will be my strongest conqueror of the emotions that hinder my progress such as, “anger, intolerance, jealously, pride, and greed” (Dacher, 2006, p.51). I will also use daily self-affirmations to replace negative emotions with positive ones. Affirmations that will help me include telling myself that I deserve love and I also deserve to be happy, I do have worth, I can and will forgive, and I do have the ability to change myself (more-selfesteem.com, 2011).

            For spiritual growth I will do my best to practice the subtle mind exercise daily to stop being enslaved by thoughts of worry, doubt, and fear. Hopefully I can learn to witness intruding thoughts rather than reacting to them and advance towards the calm abiding mind and unity consciousness. I also found a visualization meditation to let go of fear. The meditation involves natural breathing and conscious identification of fears. During the visualization I will picture the fear and its underlying cause. I will imagine it as a “dense thick smoke” that I breathe out and as I do it disappears to the farthest reaches of space never to come back to me again. On the in-breath I will take in fearlessness and white light that encompasses my body and mind which in turn will lead to feelings of calmness, peacefulness, and fearlessness (dealingwithfear.org, n.d). I will practice this visualization technique daily and believe it will be very helpful.

            I know that without commitment I will not succeed. I do not want to be stuck in this same sinking ship six months from now and I have made the choice to pursue this with the strongest of intentions and determination. Who could possibly step back from all that we have learned?! I will set a date each month to evaluate my progress. I understand that my progress requires continuous monitoring and I will need to make changes to my personal integral practice program as I change and evolve in every aspect (Dacher, 2006). I have personally taken the integral vow to reach wholistic health for myself with the ultimate goal of serving others and guiding them in their own journey to health and human flourishing. To maintain my long term practices I will continue to review the invaluable readings from this course, pray for guidance and perseverance, keep my eyes open for a mentor, and take advantage of the other resources provided to us. I will also continue to do my own research to learn more and do more for others out of loving kindness.

References

Cosmicquotes.com. (2012). Dalai Lama Quotes. Retrieved April 30, 2013 from: http://www.cosmicquotes.com/quotes/authors/d/dalai_lama/only-the-development-of-compassion.html

Dacher, E. (2006). Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health Publications Inc.

Dealingwithfear.org. (n.d). Meditation to Overcome Fear. Retrieved April 30, 2013 from: http://www.dealingwithfear.org/overcoming-fear.htm/

More-selfesteem.com. (2011). How Can Affirmations Increase Your Self-Esteem? Retrieved April 30, 2013 from: http://www.moreselfesteem.com/affirmations.htm#.UYAmJrXvuSo

Schlitz, M., Amorok, T., Micozzi, R. (2005). Consciousness & Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine. Elsevier Churchill Livingstone Publishing.

Unit 8 Blog Most Beneficial Practices

Hello Everyone,

The two practices I have found to be the most beneficial are the loving-kindness and subtle mind practices. My favorite is the subtle mind practice. I especially like that one because my mind is constantly moving a thousand miles per hour. I'm the type of girl who finds the TV remote in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard lol. My husband has always compared my mind to a junk drawer while his is a neat room with handy little file cabinets lol. I want to be able to quiet the constant babble not only during the practice but to have that calmness all throughout the day! I am already getting a little better at the witnessing mind and hope that calm abiding and unity consciousness will follow with practice and perseverance. 

The loving-kindness practice helps me to remember to embrace and love myself which is not always easy but it is needed for integral health. It also reminds me to embrace even my enemies which has not been easy either but I can feel anger and resentment melting away in my heart.

I have really loved this course and am sad it is coming to an end. I can feel the impact that it has had on my life and even in my family. To foster mental fitness I will make it a point to keep striving for integral health and happiness. Just because the course is coming to a close does not mean my goal should. The books for this course will not go on the bookshelf with other past materials but I will keep them with my upcoming texts and I will review the books each week and I will also continue to practiced the exercises and remember what I have learned, which is pretty priceless. This has been quite the journey this term! Loved it!

Heidi Waldman

Unit 6 Blog: Universal Loving Kindness and Integral Assessment.

Hello Class,

Well, let's try this again I already typed this but somehow deleted it UGH!! The Universal Loving kindness exercise asks us to go beyond our personal love of say friends or family and project love and health to humanity at large. It asks us to repeat the phrases~

"May all individuals gain freedom from suffering. 

May all individuals find sustained health, happiness, and wholeness. 

May I assist all individuals in gaining freedom from suffering.

May I assist all individuals in finding health, happiness, and wholeness"

(Dacher, 2006, p.93). 

The phrases should be repeated in the stillness of our mind for ten minutes and will help us to dissolve hatred and anger (Dacher, 2006). This exercise helped me to focus on work and gave me hope that I can make a difference in the lives of the children and the families that I work with. 

The integral assessment asks us to go into a contemplative state and to analyze the four aspects of our lives, the psychospiritual, biological, interpersonal, and worldly aspects that are in the greatest need of growth and development (Dacher, 2006). The area I have chosen to be a focus of growth is the interpersonal area and specifically interpersonal skills. I find it is hard for me to develop deep and lasting relationships with anyone other than my family. This is not because I am unlikable (I hope), but because I am scared to let down my guard and let others into my world. I find others will share their whole life story with me in a sitting and I often wonder how and even envy the fact that they can, but I cannot share my experiences with others because  my life was pretty dysfunctional and maybe even a little tragic compared to many others and I am afraid of being judged or thought of as looking for pity. I think this makes me look very closed off or maybe even stuck up. 

Having friendships and support is very important to being holistically healthy, but as for now I feel I am walking this world quite alone. My goal is to use self affirmation techniques and contemplative practice to convince myself that I am worthy of true friendship, that I can trust others and they are not out to hurt me, and that as much as I want to give loving kindness to others, I also deserve and need to accept loving kindness from them. 

I will use life-as-practice, "with each person we meet, we need to take time, listen carefully, create a heart connection, and act with skill" (Dacher, 2006, p. 127). I am a patient and empathetic, caring listener, but I also need to let people into my world sharing more of myself rather than putting up a wall that nobody can get through. Hopefully, this can help me to develop more balanced, equal, and lasting relationships to help my integral health. 

Thanks for listening to my rantings :),

Heidi Waldman

Reference

Dacher, E. (2006). Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health Publications. 

Unit 5 Blog: Subtle Mind Exercise

Hello My Fellow Bloggers!,

I found this exercise to be a little easier than the loving kindness exercise although I enjoy them both this one seemed almost the opposite as the other one. The Loving Kindness exercise required a lot of visualization such as imagining the suffering of loved ones and embracing enemies. It also required us to love ourselves while the subtle mind exercise only asked us to be ourselves but our deeper selves not our busy selves! 

I had mixed experiences during the exercise. I used the rising and falling of my chest as my focal point and I did find it was rather easy to come back to that focal point when my mind would wonder. My biggest frustration is that I kept telling myself thoughts and emotions to remember to include in my blog, this made it really hard to reside in the stillness and the funny thing is I don't remember much of what I was telling myself lol! 

I could definitely see the difference between grasping and witnessing. I would grasp to thoughts about the blog and I even found myself grasping to thoughts about Native Americans because I really enjoyed the Native American music in the background. I found my mind wondering, "What tribes of Indians lived by the oceans when Europeans came?, could I have been a Native American in a past life?, Where can I buy Native American Music? What would my Indian Name be, maybe Wondering Mind?". LOL, then I'd wonder further, "How can I share this exercise on facebook"? Oh boy did I grasp and cling and wonder! Then I would become aware of it and go back to my breaths. 

At one point I think I may have actually been stabilized in the stillness too! I became so relaxed and envisioned a canyon with a river flowing through it and waterfalls. My mind was completely clear but focused on that image which seemed so real, then the woman's voice came on and scared the holy you know what outta me! I admit that I couldn't finish the whole recording. I had six minutes left when my restless mind took over and I just had to get up. Still, it was pretty neat and I imagine now that my blog will be done I can truly relax next time I try it. 

Having spiritual wellness helps us to connect to the divine. We realize that we are more than a body and we don't have to fear death. As the text mentions, when we are spiritually well it is easier to develop a higher consciousness and, "an ease and lightness enter our life and cleanse our mind and body" (Dacher, 2006, p. 86). 

This has manifested itself increasingly in my life especially since the beginning of this class. I admit and you may even be able to tell from my posts that I was very stressed out and a little angry at the chaos in my life but now I am noticeably calmer. I think I've developed a closer relationship with my inner self. I pay more attention to my attitude, emotions, actions, and behavior. I feel better mentally and physically and my body feels more relaxed and healthier as I have even stopped eating so much to mask stress. 

Thanks for reading, 

Heidi Waldman

Reference

Dacher, E. (2006). Integral health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health Publications Inc.

Unit 4 Blog Entry. Loving Kindness and mental workout

Hello Everyone,


I put the loving kindness track on my Ipod. I have only had the chance to listen to it twice this week but I find that after work it really helps me to release stress and to relax. I also try to remind myself throughout the day to not only project love to others but to project love to myself. I find it works better when I imagine Jesus and his love. It sounds bad but the most difficult thing I find is embracing even my enemies and projecting love and kindness to them only because a few people have hurt me so badly, but I know if I can work on letting go of that pain and anger it can heal my own soul and really help me to better help others. So that is what I am working on, loving my enemies and loving myself.

 It is true at times I have been my own worst enemy so that is difficult as well but I will keep trying. I imagine my father's suffering during the exercise as he just had surgery on his neck and had to get all his vertebrae fused together. I pray that my outbreath of love and joy and healing projected at him is really helping. Yes, I would recommend this to others as you really can feel changes being made in one's self, I could especially see this with more practice.

The concept of a mental workout is that through daily practice and perseverance we can work out our minds just as daily exercise works out our bodies. Mental workouts can lead to a higher more expanded consciousness. The proven benefits of a mental workout is a trained mind. Research shows that, "advanced contemplatives have gained the capacity to permanently enhance their well-being by altering the brains neural circuitry" (Dacher, 2006, p. 63). Working out our minds leads to better insight, attention, memory and perception among other things (Dacher, 2006).

I can implement mental workouts by practicing loving kindness each day. I have not had a lot of time lately, it seems I am constantly playing catch up but I know that is not a very good excuse. Although I can't do one hour each day; at least not right now, I know that even five minutes a day can make a difference. I am working hardest on skillful action right now. I find that changing my own thoughts and behavior to be more positive has already made my life and interactions more enjoyable and my heart feels lighter <3.

Heidi Waldman

Reference

Dacher, E. (2006). Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health Publications.

Reflection on a relaxation exercise

Listening to the relaxation recording and taking part in the exercise was amazing and even a little strange! I was amazed to find that fifteen minutes had gone by as the recording ended and I came back to reality. I did indeed find my arms and hands to be heavier and warmer as I suggested the blood flow to those areas. Strangely enough I even found myself switching a little lol! I also came out of the relaxation exercise feeling more energized which was strange considering how completely relaxed I was. I feel better now because I have to admit trying to figure out all of this blogging stuff did make me a little frustrated and stressed out lol! 

I have always known that the mind can have an effect on the body but it was nice to put that into practice. With three kids it is hard to find the time to enjoy such things. I am glad this course made that a requirement :). I am going to recommend this recording to my grandmother who has serious problems with the blood circulation in her legs which puts her in a ton of pain. I think it could really make a difference.Here is a link to some nice Relaxation Music. 

Welcome Statement

Hi there! Welcome to my blog! I am new to blogging so this will be interesting! I will be sharing my journey through a course on psychological and spiritual aspirations of healing and creating wellness. I will also share a little about my amazing family. My husband and I have been together since I was 17 going on 13 years now! We have a 13 year old son named Isaiah, an eight year old daughter named Dezarae, and a 7 year old son named Cylus. God has truly blessed me with a beautiful family. I will also share a little about my job as a Mental Health Associate at a residential treatment facility for children with behavioral and emotional disorders. I am hoping this course will help me to further help the children I work with and to become more wholly healthy myself :).