Unit 10

After repeating the Unit 3 exercise and reviewing my original assessment, I have found that I have changed in the physical area, but not in the good. I have found that I have put on some weight that I want to lose. With my spiritual well-being, I have pretty much stayed the same. My psychological well-being has actually come up in the assessment score. I am finding that I am more peaceful an individual than I was before. That I am able to reduce my stress level. This is a wonderful feeling.

My goals for all of these areas involved being able to wean if not discontinue some of my medications if not all of them. I also want to be able to look at all aspects of my life and work towards a more healthy weight and physical ability as well as a greater spiritual and psychological attitude towards life.

Unfortunately, the only areas I have been able to implement in my life deal with the psychological area in my life. I do not feel as sad and unworthy like I did after my son passed away. I am able to complete some of the short term meditation periodically through my day and feel a great deal of peace.

My personal experience obtained from taking this course has changed my outlook towards what a healthy body actually is. I know that it also includes the mental and spiritual areas. Having recently had to accept and deal with my own mental health, I have learned that if an individual does not feel mentally stable, they are not completely health.

Patti Selbe

Unit 9

FINAL PROJECT - INTEGRAL HEALTH

Introduction: There are multiple reasons why a healthcare professional should have to knowledge of psychological, spiritual and physical healing. The patients want complete healing for what their ailment is, however, many of these ailments are mental or in the patient’s mind and they are unable to define it. When a healthcare professional who is not familiar with the benefits from this form of complementary and alternative medicine tries to find a treatment for mental health issues, they are more likely to rely on pharmaceuticals for treatment (Dacher, 2006).

My personal areas in need of development are the physical and psychological areas. My spiritual well-being has been tested a great deal in the past year. Over the past eight weeks, I have finding that even though I had questioned my spiritual beliefs that I am doing quite well in maintaining them in a healthy manner. For my physical and psychological health, I have put on weight that I am not pleased with. I need to work on an exercise plan to lose it. I also need to work on focusing on myself and developing a healthy, calm-abiding mind.

Assessment: Not only have I learned a great deal in this class, but I have looked at myself closely regarding these areas. I assessed my spiritual wellness to be the best of the three. I am always praying or talking with my son, who is no longer with me. By doing this on a daily basis, I feel more centered in my beliefs and it makes me feel calmer. My psychological wellness was sort of alright, but I had found that I was allowing negative thoughts to enter into my mind on a daily basis. In the past few weeks, I have implemented into my daily life ways to eliminate these thoughts the moment I know they are there. My physical wellness actually needs some work. In the past few months, I have put on weight that I had lost back in 2001. I am not real pleased with myself, but I am considering the many changes recently in my life that could have caused it.

Goal development: My personal goal for the physical area is start an exercise plan as well as finding the time to complete it multiple times a week. With regards to my spiritual goals, I will continue praying or talking with God as well as my son. I will continue to attend church and keep it in my heart on a daily basis. My psychological (mental health) really needs a lot of work. I am currently on medications to assist in maintaining my mental health. Since taking this class, I have found that there are other alternatives to achieve mental health wellness. My goal is to wean myself off of the prescription medication and achieve mental health happiness.

Practices for personal health: Strategies for these areas include eating better and having an exercise plan, implementing more meditation and possible yoga plan and continue with the loving-kindness and subtle mind exercises. After researching in more detail about the meditation and yoga programs, I feel that these would assist in achieving the mental health wellness I need. For my spiritual domain, I am continually finding myself practicing the loving-kindness and subtle mind exercise. This area I find myself doing these at different times during the week. Physical domain will need a program that I can complete as well as eating better to achieve the weight I use to be. I need to look more closely at my schedule to allocate the time necessary to complete an exercise program. I feel that if I am able to implement and continue these exercises, I will reduce the amount of stress that is in my personal life.

Commitment: When making in changes in one’s life, you need to have a specific game plan to assess progress or regression. After I make the changes in my life to achieve a healthier lifestyle, I will monitor any changes I make in my mind, body and spirit areas. The best strategy I can use is consistency. By sticking with a schedule, I should be able to implement them into my life as natural and I should be able to achieve my ultimate goals, which are regain my weight to what it was, no longer be dependent upon prescription medication and reduce the stress levels in my life. This is the best for me to achieve my goal of a healthy mind, body and spirit.
 

 

REFERENCES

Dacher, E. S. (2006), Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. ISBN:

# 9781591201908, Basic Health Publications

Unit 8

Of the many exercises that we have been taught in this class, I have found the most beneficial to be the loving-kindness and meditation to me. I just did the subtle mind exercise and found that I was doing pretty well at the beginning, but when we asked to witness the movement in our minds, I find this part to be difficult. I have been utilizing some form of relaxation techniques on a daily basis and am finding that I am not as stressed as I was in the past.

 I attempt to do these exercises at various times during my day. When I am at a patient’s home and the care is completed but I still need to remain for a period of time, I will focus on one thing and remove all the unneeded clutter in my mind. I relax my mind which makes my body relaxed.

I have been finding that I am more kind to others; I have more patience than I had in the past and that my stress level has reduced. In fact, I was at the doctor’s on Friday, and my vitals were excellent: b/p 86/51 and heart rate of 64. It has been a long time since my blood pressure has been this low and I normally have low blood pressure. After this class is over, I will continue to use some of to use some of these exercises to develop human flourishing and gain a healthy mind, body and spirit.

Patti Selbe

Unit 7

This week I found the meditative exercise difficult to stay on track. When beginning, I was able to focus on my father, who to me was always a wise man in my eyes. However, I found other thoughts invading my thought pattern of focusing on this image. I had difficulty in imaging the beams of light. At the end of this exercise, I was gaining a better handle on controlling my mind and felt better about myself. By maintaining a continual meditation, I feel that I will be able to increase all areas of wellness in my life.

The saying “One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” implies that unless someone has experienced an event or feeling, they are not able to help someone going through a similar but not exact event. The best way I can explain this is that everyone was to give advice about dealing with the loss of a loved one. Since I have been and am still going through dealing with the loss of my son, I have been offered a lot of assistance from those who have lost a loved one, but I found the most comfort from was those who had lost a child of their own. Applying this in the health care setting, one must only give advice or direction that they have experienced or gone. This could become an issue in the patient having trust issues with their health care provider.

Patti Selbe

Unit 6

After completing both exercise and assessment process, I again found that the universal Loving Kindness exercise produced the same results. I am finding that I am able to relax whenever I begin this exercise. I am finding that I am able to project loving kindness towards those who I would otherwise not be able to. I believe I am slowly working towards becoming a healthier person in all areas especially my mental health. Due to the recent events of my life, I had thought I never feel whole and complete again.

The Integral Assessment process showed me that the biggest area that needs to be focused on is the psychospiritual part of my life. I want to feel whole and complete and this is an area where I need a lot of work on. My mental condition has not been where I would like to be at. The specific exercises that could assist me in this area would include meditation and relaxation techniques.

I am at a point in my life where any suggestions towards achieving a healthier psychosocial part of my life would be greatly helpful. The other areas of my life have mostly been in good shape. I have always been dealing with stress to an excessive level and thought I was handling it well, but after learning from this class, I am finding that I haven’t been handling stress as well as I thought.

Patti

Unit 5

I found that both of these exercises were very similar in the methods used. Instead of focusing on a loved one as in the Loving Kindness exercise, I was focused on my breathing.  I have found that whenever I am doing one of these exercises that I clear my mind to all else and focus on what is being taught to me.

The spiritual wellness is as vital as the mental and physical wellness in any individual. Until recently, I thought I was as well as I could be, however, since then I have found that I was not. It became apparent with the sudden loss of my son. I, then, knew I wasn’t well completely. Since utilizing these various exercises and techniques being taught, I am finding that I am feeling a little more whole than I was. I find that I am continuing with keeping the clutter in my mind down to a minimum and focusing on the positive in my life at that time.

Unit 4

I found that I have be subconsciously doing some of the techniques of the "Loving-Kindness" audio practice. I have always been a person who shows kindness and love to others all the time, even if they are people I am not happy with.  I never knew that this was a way in which to obtain  integral health. I found myself being able to relax quicker than I would normally would be able to. The focusing portion was when I realized that I had been doing this a great deal lately. The person I focused on was my son. In the past few months, I would focus, think or talk about him to feel closer to him. I am now finding that I am thinking about him when I am working with a patient. I have always be able to give compassion and loving-kindness to others naturally, but there were those it was difficult to give this to. Now I am finding it much easier and makes me feel  good about myself.

I believe that being able to do this type of mental workout daily will help those who are in need and  become more   beneficial to those who utilize this  multiple times a day. I feel as though this  would be the first step in health flourishing and I am   wanting to continue this because I am working towards feeling completely healthy again.

This week’s blog involves my optimal well-being. Personally, I would put my physical well-being at an 8, but my spiritual and psychological well-being would probably be about a 4. I need to set goals toward bring my spiritual and psychological well-being up to close to where my physical well-being is. Then work towards bring them all up to a 10. This would be the best way to achieve optimal well-being.

I think that setting time in my day to do a relaxation exercise such as the one suggested for this blog. I began listening to it for 30 seconds to a minute and found myself relaxing to the point of falling asleep. That would not have helped me to complete this blog in time. So I would say this exercise was extremely beneficial to me since I have been having difficulty in relaxing and eventually being able to sleep without assistance.

I will have to look into putting this into my daily life prior to bed and maybe I will be able to no longer have to take prescription medication to help with sleep.

Hello classmates and Professor, This is my first time using a blog so  please bear with me. Originally I was going to be a Medical Transcriber and have the degree to go with this and then I became interested in Public Health. As I have said, my son passed away from a long term illness in which I was his mom and primary caregiver. I am now working as a CNA and planning to advance towards becoming a RN. I believe that any means to heal the ill is what will work the best whether it is the traditional Western medicine or Eastern methods. I am here to learn more and expand on my knowledge is this area.

Patti Selbe