Final Project

I am sorry I tried unsuccessfully to incorporate the project into a compressed word document but have not been able to. I have to post it as an open writen post. All comments welcome. Vicki D.

Unit 9 Project:
Integral Health requires a mind/body connection. A healthcare professional is better able to heal a person as a whole entity if they recognize their own mind/body connection in themselves and the interconnection it has in helping their patients. As we extend our lives, so do we extend the knowledge of illnesses that are new to the extended life span of a patient. We now know scientifically, that mental illnesses such as stress are directly related to the body’s function, and that social interaction, and spiritual health play an important role in the new illnesses caused by modern culture. Even conventional methods change with research, education and exploration. It is necessary to understand, and incorporate health practices not only in my professional life, but my personal life as well.
The key to understanding any health modality, or method, is self knowledge through self practice. I have learned much about my total health, mind, body and spirit, and these are the results.
I recognized from the beginning of this semester I am a type A personality. My mental and spiritual areas of health are almost nonexistent. This is due a mindset of strict, schedules, and outline plans for everything in my daily life, and stress to keep current activities and future plans on a tight schedule. This keeps my mind extremely active and preoccupied with constant mental chatter, blocking out mental relaxation, spiritual openness, and creating physiological illnesses such as gastro intestinal, back and shoulder pain, poor nutritional habits resulting in underweight, and fatigue. My primary targeted areas of Integral health are Mental and Spiritual health. These areas are the most unbalanced creating illness in all areas, including physical imbalance.
I set up a simple rating scale that I use now and will allow me to continue a self assessment for the next six months.
Self Assessment Rating Scale is as follows: 1= Lowest Wellness. 5 = Total Wellness.
II Assessment:
At the beginning of this semester I rated my Mental Health = 1 Spiritual Health = 1, and Physical Health = 2
My mental health was unhealthy, due to stress overload, mental chatter, constantly producing fatigue, forgetfulness, anger, and a feeling of despair. This feeling of overwhelming despair creates an unhealthy level assessment of 1 in Spiritual Health.
I came to this assessment through understanding, first I had to eliminate my lifelong learning that mental health was separate and not accessible to me from a perspective of person centered healing. Secondly, I had to eliminate the stigmatism tied to mental health that I learned conventionally, which is this area of healing is only accomplished through a mental conventional healthcare professional, and it revolves around emotional issues only. Once I was able to let go of this I then incorporated integral methods, starting with loving kindness. I opened my mind, clearing it of mental chatter, letting it rest, without guilt, or restrictions. Next was meditation, which I incorporated to fit my individual needs. This meant my own openness to my time, place, method, of meditation, not by a standard one size fits all. This allowed me to instantly recognize how busy my mind was, and realizing how it was affecting my spiritual health as well. Next I realized that my spiritual health has been long ignored, due to the mental chatter, and I had not relaxed, reflected, or even connected internally with the external world. Following the practice of visualization meeting Asclepius, allowed insight to applying this once again to fit my own unique schedule, time, and place. I realized even a few minutes could be just as beneficial as a whole hour or day. What came next was the insight to feeling what person centered healing is. I am now active in my own mental and spiritual health. This is a very strong feeling of empowerment. As a result of six weeks practice I will honestly say over that period the scale of 1= lowest to 5= highest has fluctuated. I realize I must be patient, kind, and caring to myself and my personal integrative development skills, just as I would be to a patient.
Today the scale is Mental Wellness= 3 Spiritual Health = 3 Physical Health = 3.
I have been able to incorporate daily three things that will further increase my Mental and Spiritual Health. Every morning I choose loving kindness, for myself and others. Every morning I make a conscious decision to be mindful, relaxed, calm, loving, and insightful to everything around me. Lastly and I believe for me most important, making time everyday for silence, and silent reflection to allow the natural flow of spiritual energy heal my mental state of mind. This practice really has a benefit on my overall mental wellbeing. And this in turn has allowed me to go into the silence comfortably, and practice visualization of a comforting spiritual being, absorbing much needed spiritual energy from them, and heal without fear, pain, or confusion.
My physical health which in the beginning of this semester, is what I only focused on has now changed to a level 3, as a result of assessing and incorporating wellness techniques to heal my mental and spiritual health. First I notice after six weeks a steady climb in physical energy, as the fatigue is disappearing. Next, I have gone back to mindfully making better choices in nutrition, and more importantly, do what I call mindful eating, taking time to enjoy and savor what I eat. This has decreased my stomach illness episodes. And lastly, mindfulness and meditation with breathing has significantly relieved my upper shoulder pain, asking me more aware of tensing muscles. My physical health simply followed a path to increased wellness as a result of focusing on the mental and spiritual areas that were causing the imbalance. I am confident that my self assessment is on target, and that the areas of mental and spiritual wellness are the primary targets to my total health and wellness. Goals must be set and incorporated however to keep on track.

Goal development: Goal setting for me as an individual may not be the wisest method of integrative health practice based on my personality. Knowing that my personality type may produce increased stress by defining goals as another schedule to be strictly kept, is not a method I would incorporate. Rather redefining the word goal and its intent would be more beneficial for a person like me.
Therefore my own unique personal goal is redefined. I call it Commitment and Development. This allows me to define commitment to a person centered mindset (myself) and loving kindness, and caring for me, which for me conveys action and not reaction to a goal mindset. Development, for me means allowing a continuing evolution and understanding of my personal level of wellness in mind, body, and spiritual wellness will rise and fall, in a rhythm that is natural, and normal, making the commitments less of a failure if not achieved and more of an insightfulness to progress at that moment in time. This is my Commitment/Development in each area of health.
Mental – Commit to daily relaxation, and mindfulness meditation, no matter if it is 10 minutes or an hour. Develop daily moment assessment to breathing exercises. Commit to small amounts of time to silence, daydreaming, and visualization of calm abiding thought. Develop further insight and continuing education in Integral health, allowing this to become a natural way of living.
Spiritual- Commit 15 minutes every weekend to sitting in meditation in the place I set up for this practice, and give myself 15 minutes once a week to visualization of a spiritual person renewing my sense of purpose. Develop more increments of time, as well as further developing my inner voice that lets me know my spiritual energy is depleted.
Physical – My first commitment to my physical health is stop and assess each day what my body is physically feeling. I know this may sound strange, however, personally I do not pay attention to pain that may be created by injury, or even poor posture. These small moment to moment assessments can increase physical wellness just being mindful of how your body feels. Am I sitting properly, bending properly. Next is the commitment to making mindful choices in my eating habits. Commit to sitting down and eating each meal mindfully, enjoying taste, texture, and flavor. Develop a new food menu to increase my health, incorporating more fruits, and green vegetables in my diet. Developing a plan to incorporate at least one new vegetable, and or fruit into my weekly diet, and increase to daily. Commit to walking, and dancing every weekend, even if 10 minutes, and develop a plan to increase walking time to 2 hours a day every day.
The strategies for incorporating Integral Health forever in my life will take the commitment and development as defined above. What strategies will I utilize though to follow the path of Integral development and health?
My first strategy is education. Keeping a mindset within the Integral health community, will allow me to stay focused on all I have learned and research methods that I may not know of that may work better. For instance look into biofeedback as a method of relieving pain that may be caused by a physical abnormality. Staying actively within the Integrative medical community will allow me always be mindful to all the possibilities to Integral health. I started to attend open and free seminars offered in my workplace on different integrative techniques. This week I attended a seminar on the Alexander technique of body realignment and posture.
My second strategy is focusing on areas such as my diet and nutrition incorporating mindfulness in the area of nutrition, as well as researching this area to see if stress reduction, will help my poor eating habits, and look into the best methods of exercise for my age group. Physically my strategy is to increase other venues of physical enjoyment such as taking a dance class in tap or jazz, which I love.
My next strategy, to focus on my mental health, I already started. I am making small significant changes such as posting mindful messages around the house and on the job. For instance, “Life is not a race, it is a journey, be mindful, stop, look and listen to yourself and the world around you. I now utilize the strategy of purposefully waking slower, which slows my mind.
Strategies for my mental health, peaceful contemplation and meditation, in which I no longer watch violent TV shows, no news, and listen more to meditating music, in my spare time. I purposefully seek out comedy shows if I feel sad, or watch comedic shows to produce laughter to heal mentally and spiritually, this surprised me as a therapy that really works well for me. Spiritually, I am now thinking about purposefully seeking out a social group, or center such as meditation class, or yoga class that feels the same way I do about spiritual healing methods, on a social basis other than a professional medical basis. I will commit myself mentally spiritually, and physically to altering, changing, and adding new strategies as they enter my daily life each and every moment, from relaxing and living in the moment, to appreciating the very things around me, such as nature.
Commitment means self assessment. When and how I assess my development is the key to my design plan for me, honestly, openly and realistically. I am fortunate in that first I work in Integrative medicine; it is around me at all times, even as far as sitting side by side with the doctors and nursing staff. So this is a constant reminder to think about the areas of my health personally, in mind, body and spirit. But there is a difference in commitment before I started this class and now as to how I will assess my own personal progress in mind/body/ and spiritual health. I now have a monthly chart pinned to my refrigerator with a pencil on a string, and each section is marked Mind, Body, Spirit, (1=lowest – 5 highest) with a section called Why?
At the end of each day I commit myself to fill in each area, with a number, and a brief word or to trigger, why. Then at the end of the week when I have cleared my mind through breathing, and medication exercise, I will assess, contemplate what the numbers represent, focus on the causes of the low numbers and the connection they have to my overall health in each area, and finally assess whether or not I need to increase commitment, and or develop a different method such as trying a new methods of wellness, yoga, etc. that may not have worked for me before. This strategy is really the definition of taking responsibility for my own personal health and wellness every day.
Finally I make a commitment to myself that I deserve to be the best I can be and this means my total self, mind, body, and spirit. And I promise to pass along the knowledge and practice of loving kindness, compassion and mindfulness to all others.