unit 7

Hello Everyone,
Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog this week.  I am feeling emotionally better this week than last week.  I am sick with pneumonia right now but I am starting to feel a little bit better now.  I hope everyone is doing well this week.
To this weeks meditation exercise I have learned that I have a harder time with the exercises that require me to focus on an individual in my mind.  I have a hard time really visualizing that person and being able to keep my focus on that individual.  I was not able to see the light around her in order to get the full benefits of this exercise.  The person I chose is someone who holds a dear place in my heart and is very intelligent mentally, spiritually, and in loving kindness.  I hope that I can experience half of the knowledge that she has gained during her lifetime and apply that to my life.  She is someone who I will always remember for the kind little notes that she used to give me when I would go to her home to do her therapy.  She always made me feel good about myself and motivated during the difficult times in the week coming.  She truly is my angel in my life.
Mindfulness and meditation has increased my spiritual and psychological wellness as I try to take the time daily for quiet mind exercises so that I will be able to start learning more about my inner self.  I am continuing to practice this several times throughout the day so that one day I will get the ability to really listen to my own inner self in order to use that in healing and overall well being.  My plan in to continue these practices several times throughout the day so that I can continue growing in my integral health.
The saying, "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" means to me that you need to walk in those shoes before you can give someone else advice about that situation.  That can be applied in many areas of our lives.  It is easier for someone to take advice and listen to someone who has been there before in their own life instead of someone who is speaking to them with no experience in that area other than what they have read or studied.  It applies to health and wellness professionals in the area that if we are going to give advice and guidance to others we need to have used this in our personal lives so that we can speak to them from experience.  This also makes it more personal for yourself and the person you are trying to help.  Then you can give them advice on difficult things by telling them what worked for you or how you overcome that barrier when beginning the practice.  Yes, I feel that we have this obligation to our clients so they can get the full benefits from someone who has experienced it first hand and comes into the situation with personal experience.  For me, I implement psychological and spiritual growth in my personal life by practicing quiet mind several times daily, spending time in nature daily, practicing meditation, and loving kindness application to my own life so that I can help others in their growth towards integral health as well.  There are many ways that you can do this including meditation, exercise, yoga, growing in your spiritual life with God, allowing quiet time for the mind to rest, deep breathing, and also just going out into nature and experience the calm and quietness it has to offer.
Hope everyone has a great week.

Conscious Health: Unit 6 Integral Assessment

Conscious Health: Unit 6 Integral Assessment: " Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ..."

unit 6 post

Hello Everyone,
I am sorry but this past week has been extremely stressful and painful for me so I am going to vent a little bit at first.  Last week I had a house fire and lost most of my possessions.  At 40 years old and no renters insurance since I recently moved that is devastating for me.  I am trying to rebound back and apply my exercises and knowledge from this class into my personal life.
Then today I went to Wal-Mart and was waiting in the truck on my husband and I seen this Vietnamese man come out with his small child and I could tell she was sick.  A few moments later he came back running by my truck back towards the store yelling for help.  I grabbed my purse and took off running inside.  The little girl was not breathing, non responsive, and drueling out her mouth.  I took her into my arms and gave her to small breaths and praise God she started breathing but was still non responsive.  By the time the ambulance got there the little girl was trying to come around, grabbing ahold of me, but her eyes were still rolled back in her head.  I do not know what happened after that because she left in route to the hospital.  Please pray for her and her family as her father was about to go crazy.  At the time I did not let it affect me but a few minutes later I just started crying feeling her pain and urgency need of care.  Sorry I am still emotional about it.
Wow the Universal Loving Kindness exercise this week was great.  This was a great opportunity for me to look at the needs of others.  I guess I enjoyed this as I do not like to see other suffer physically, emotionally, or spiritually.  I would rather suffer than someone else.  It made me feel like I had the knowledge and abilities to help others to experience integral health with the knowledge I have learned in this and other classes.  It took the focus off of ourselves and placed in on others and helping them.
The Integral Assessment process made me discover my need to look at the psychospiritual aspects of my life and make some changes.  I need to really take a look at what motivates me and why and see if I am where I want to be in that area of my life.  As I spent sometime reflecting I can tell that I need further development in this area.  On the cognitive level I realized that I am stuck in the reactive stage of development.  This is partly due to the fact that I have built up anger, hatred, grudges, and ill feelings that I need to let go of.  I am always on the defense when people say things to me.  I do not handle criticism constructively, learn from it, and have that help me further develop.  I am too reactive.  The emotional development needs worked on since I have uncontrolled anger, fear, jealousy, and other reactive emotions.  Some exercises or activities that I can use to grow towards greater wellness includes meditation, goal setting, forgiveness, subtle mind exercise, self reflection, spiritual practices, mind training, coping skills, loving kindness exercise, and physical exercise.

unit 5

Hello everyone,
This has been a very difficult week for me since we had a house fire last week and lost almost everything with no renters insurance.  It is tough with work, school, the stress of the situation, and life in general.  Please remember me in your prayers as I could use it and the power of prayer is amazing.
I really enjoyed this exercise until the CD decided to die on me 6 minutes into it.  It was easier for me to focus on something that I could see and bring my attention back when my mind got to wondering.  I had a harder time with the loving kindness exercise than this one since I have a hard time with letting go of grudges.
I can see where the two exercises tied into each other.  They both helped to calm the mind and make you focus on something else in order to let go and refocus for a brief moment.  Both of these exercises required you to keep the mind focused and not let anything else deter you from that moment.  These activities have been really great for me and have given me a much greater understanding of how the body works and how everything is affected by other parts of the body.
I intend to start using the mind body exercises in the morning when I am doing my AbCircle Pro.  The mind is a very powerful thing.  When you do not think that you can do something if you keep a positive mind and tell yourself Yes I can you will be amazed at how much you can accomplish.  I think of this in terms of when we are physically feeling under the weather it affects our mental state and spiritual state as well.  This is why it is important to treat the whole body as a unity instead of as an individual part.
Thanks everyone and hope this blog makes sense.  I am so mind boggled right now.  God bless everyone and have a great week.

unit 4

Hello everyone,
I had a difficult time with this exercise.  I tried it on two occasions and truly had a hard time getting the full benefits of the exercises on the track.  I plan to try doing this again and see if I can feel the benefits.  For me the loving and kindness practices appear to be helpful for me with relaxing and making me feel more positive about myself.  This is something that I am trying to apply with my fiance since he seems to be the one that I have the most difficulty with because I am nice all day at work to others and when I come home it is like I do not have the kindness left in me anymore.  This is something that I truly need to change for the well being of our relationship and myself as well.
One reason that I feel this exercise is difficult for me is because I am a bitter person with some people and I  cannot forgive them for what they have done to me.  Spiritually this is something that I need to continue working on.  I know with the Lord's help I can learn to forgive as truly I am the one who suffers from this bitterness not the people that I am bitter towards.  Please everyone pray for me that I will learn to let go. Have a great week

unit 3

Reflections.  Here are my scores for the reflections portion of this blog.
A.  3-4
B.  3-4
C.  6-7
The reason that I ranked my physical well being so low is because I currently have not been doing any exercises to help promote my physical wellness.  I do not feel nearly as healthy as I used to in the past and this scares me with my age.
Spiritually I need to get back into worship services on a regular basis.  My spiritual life has been suffering since I moved from Georgia.  I have not really started searching for a new church and I need to.  I still pray daily, believe in the Lord, and try to live my life well but I have much room for improvement.
Psychologically I feel that I am pretty good as I challenge myself mentally everyday with work, school, and life in general.  I tend to be a bitter, angry person and with that said I need to work on become happier mentally.
My goal for my physical well being is to start working out daily on my AbCircle Pro and quit making excuses.  Spiritually I need to do more soul searching, walk closer with my God, and get back into a church so that I am around other believers so I can feel better spiritually.  Psychologically I need to learn to forgive, let go, and relax.  Daily I need to make time for myself to meditate, relax, and just focus on myself instead of everything around me.  This would make me feel better all the way around.
The relaxation experience was great.  I have a hard time focusing and totally relaxing.  I hope with practice this will get better.  His voice in very calming and helps you to stay focused on what he wants you to be doing.  This was helpful.  I loved the rainbow idea as I find them miracles sent to us from God to make us smile.  Have a great week

unit 2

Hello my name is Ann Cooper and i am new at this blogging thing.  Please bear with me as I learn more about it. I thought that I made a post last week and do not know where it went.  I am an occupational therapy assistant working on my bachelors degree in health and wellness so I can go on and get my masters degree in occupational therapy.  I definitely enjoyed the relaxation slide.  It gave me some much needed time to relax and focus on things other then what is going on in my life.  I have not practiced relaxation techniques much in the past except in my last class.  The one that I liked best was the dolphin breathing.  For me it is hard to totally relax.