Unit 8 - Mental Fitness

Hello all,

The two practices form this course that I believe were most beneficial to me are Loving Kindness and Subtle Mind. The Loving Kindness exercise promoted positive thinking about others and extending and thinking kind thoughts toward others. The exercise promotes seeing all people gaining freedom, from suffering and find sustained health, happiness and wholeness. I can implement exercises to foster greater wellness in this area are treat people as I want to be treated, thinking positive thoughts towards others and always lend a helping hand. The Subtle Mind. I also enjoyed. It put me in a peaceful relaxing state of mind.  The exercise was tailored more to the individual person. Meditation is more beneficial to the individual needs than others. It is much easier for me to achieve a peaceful mind when thinking about self-first. I did enjoy both exercises and the ocean in the background was relaxing. I think for me to foster these practices into my personal life I need to practice both types of exercises, one is for others and one is for self. That will give me a type of balance. I totally believe that I and the environment around me has to be at peace and in unity to foster mental fitness. For example, if I find peace of mind with myself, but the environment or people around me doesn’t promotes a peaceful calm demeanor, than there would be an imbalance in my life. I can only have temporary mental health. I have to remove the negative totally.

Myra 

Unit 7

Hello everyone,

     I found this exercise very relaxing. The person I chose for this exercise was my mother. She passed away in April 2009 and I miss her dearly. This exercise was easy when it came to me picturing her because I try to do it all the time. I picture her saying some of the wise phrases she use to use. I didn’t really understand the purpose of the light over the head and it didn’t really do anything for me but I was able to meditate on my mother’s presence and that made me feel good. Meditation has fostered an increase in my spiritual wellness by allowing me to remove bad thoughts and meditate on positive thoughts. I now meditate at least four times a week, which helps me to release any stress that I may have being dealing with from unpleasant situations. I can continue to apply these practices in my life by making sure to always practice loving kindness and exercises that promote mind and body health.

     The saying: "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself", basically means we cannot teach what we do not know. The way this applies to the wellness professional is, how can they teach mind and body health if they have not made the journey themselves. I cannot imagine teaching a patient to journey to integral health if I have not yet done it myself. I believe that we as health wellness professionals owe it to our patients to have developed our health psychologically, physically, and spiritually to better assist them. How can I know if they have reached the point of health and wellness and total flourishing if I have not experienced it? Implementing psychological and spiritual growth in your personal life would mean for me to be serious about making time to implement these practices and stick to it. Just like the old saying goes, “if you don’t use it, you will lose it”. Small steps will be my goal to bigger steps.

Myra  

Unit 6 Universal Loving Kindness

Hello all,

I engaged in the universal Loving Kindness meditation exercise in our required reading and I can see when repeating the phrases 10 times can have a positive effect on how I would want to see all people gain freedom, from suffering and find sustained health, happiness and wholeness. I can also understand that how the exercise can make me feel as if I want to assist people in gaining these things also. When I did the exercise it make me think how that would be a great thing to happen. I have always said that I don’t wish bad things on anyone and I try to wish positive things, even for people don’t know or people that may not feel the same way for me. I discovered that doing this gave me an “I Think I Can” attitude when it comes to my part. It reminded me of one time before my unit deployed. We had a squadron run and after the run our sergeant major gave a motivational speech about us deploying, being successful and safe over there and coming home. That speech made us feel as if we could do anything. That was before my second deployment that I dreaded going but after that speech, I felt ready for anything. The areas of growth and development I chosen to focus on is stay positive and don’t dwell on things that I have no control over. Dwelling on things I can’t control will only add stress to my life. Some specific exercises or activities that I can implement to foster greater wellness in this area are treat people as I want to be treated, be helpful when I am able and set an example for others to follow. I use to always try to start the work week off with a positive attitude and keep it throughout the week. One thing that really helped me was my religion and I signed up for daily quotes of devotion. I found this very helpful; I could read them in the morning while I was waiting for physical training to start and reflect on them. I would also read me bible as I sat in my car or I would close my eyes and reflex on life in general. I believe that if we ourselves become better people and foster that into our environment it will become universal.