unit 7 meditative practices

Unit 7 meditative practices.

My meditative practices for this week have been very good at pushing me accept that I cannot please my mother. Psychologically I understand that I must live my life in way that is balanced and productive for the person that I am and that my mother has expectations that do not apply to my life or the person that I am. I have accepted these facts and am happy psychologically and spiritually about this, the conflict is how to deal with a mother who does not understand why her values/expectations do not fit into my life and to stop changing who I am to please her when she is around. Changing yourself to fit someone else’s expectations/beliefs even for a short time causes a lot of stress and stress related illness. To foster greater health and wellness I must continue to be myself even around my mother and accept that her goals/values are not mine and while she will always find fault and try to change things to the way she believes is right I can only acknowledge the way she feels, understand that she is not trying to hurt me but make me happier and accept that while she will not change I cannot change just to please her even for a short time because that is only hurting myself.

The saying “one cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” is self-explanatory. If you have never eaten ice-cream you cannot describe the taste or texture to someone else. If you have never changed a tire you cannot teach someone else how to change a tire. The blind leading the blind only leads to trouble ok by some very lucky coincidences you may get the tire changed correctly but they instances of that happening are very few and far between. When applied to a health and wellness professional if you have not gone looking for health and wellness you will not be able to lead someone else to the path of health and wellness. If you are a health and wellness professional it is your professional obligation to your clients to be the example and lead by example. I can implement psychological and spiritual growth within my personal life by increasing my meditation to a daily practice, as it is now I only meditate about 4 times a week and practicing loving kindness daily, that is all day every day.

 

wellness and healing unit 6

As I have stated many times before these exercises really do not do much for me. Already having a system in place I find lead mediations tedious, they do not really take into account my temperament, needs or where I am in my own path to integral health even thought I have learned that I started down this path many years before I even knew that integral health had been given a place in the popular culture.
 That being said I have looked at the areas of my life and have come to the conclusion that I need to spend more time developing my connections to the community and social activism. Why I need to do this is because it is time, I have spent the much needed time on the personal and self-regulation that now it is time to move to areas that have been neglected in favor of areas in need of immediate attention. In order to do this I will join a community group, one that does volunteer work in my area. The other way I plan to improve this area is to join the local slow food movement. This is a movement that really needs a greater voice and representation in the mainstream because I truly believe that if our government continues on the path it is on this country will fall further and faster than anyone can comprehend.

Unit 5 blog---warning this may be lengthy due to the prescribed subject matter.

 

 

This exercise is a compare/contrast of the loving mind and subtle mind exercises. Before I start than I want to say something about this week’s reading. Specifically the reading on forgiveness I personally found that much more informative than the exercises that I will compare/contrast shortly.  The reason I think that the forgiveness reading is more beneficial than the exercises is that I believe that forgiveness is a building block for everything that Dacher is trying to convey. Without first forgiving ourselves none of the rest of this is possible just as liking yourself is a building block the basic foundations of integral health.  So with that said the loving mind and subtle mind exercises. While I did not find them personally helpful I would definitely recommend them to anyone who is willing to try something new as a way of improving themselves. As I have said before both exercises were a trial in patience and tolerance. The reasons why are many for instance the voices are distracting and vaguely disturbing in a don’t make the dangerously unbalanced person way upset. Another more important problem that I have with this type of lead exercise is that while the narrator is trying to help you focus they really are not.  Listening to the narrator tell you what to do and when to do it takes the focus off the relaxation, peace and connection to the inner world that is you and the natural world we are all connected to by learning to let go of the distractions all around us.

Now I am supposed to cover how all this fits together in my life. Since that can be an intensely personal discussion I do not feel comfortable sharing at this time in this way. I prefer such talks to be with actual people not a computer keyboard and screen. I will simply cover the highlights. When my mental processes are healthy I am able to connect with the natural world around me and my inner self and the physical is healthier as well. I know that these exercises are supposed to make one understand that physical health is linked to both the mental and spiritual health. Personally I can attest to the fact that even when my mental and spiritual health are not optimal my physical health has always been that way, although that is not to say that unbalanced mental and spiritual health has not tried to negatively affect the physical just that it has not happened at this time. I can say that physical health does lead to better mental health from experience. I know that for me I feel much better mentally when I am physically active and healthy. An example of this is when I broke my foot. And no this was not caused by an imbalance in the mental and physical just running across the room in my socks the foot slipped because socks and wood floors are not the best combination and hit the wrought iron bakers wrack. This caused the Doctor to place me on restrictions for 8 weeks. Spending more than 2 hours a day with my foot in the air is a guaranteed way to make me very unpleasant to be around. The mental and spiritual practices were started many, many years ago and these exercises have not helped or hindered the ones I have been using.

The loving kindness exercise was confusing. One of the confusing things was the loved one who is “suffering” is this suffering mental or physical or a combination and what if I think the loved one is suffering but they think that they are happy and healthy? I practiced loving kindness in the physical and mental at the same time by demonstrating love and kindness and silently sending the same thoughts as the exercise lead. Another confusing thing was taking in the suffering of a stranger and extending loving kindness. If the person is a stranger how do you know what they are suffering if indeed they are suffering at all. A stranger is by definition some one that you do not know. I find it extremely egotistical to think that I should know how some one that is a stranger is feeling or that some stranger may think that they know how I am feeling while sitting comfortably in my home.  Daily I pray and meditate on happiness and health for the world in general but never have I presumed to know what a specific individual is feeling.

The only part of this exercise that I found beneficial was the beginning when loving kindness was projected toward the person doing the exercise. I have practiced this in a very different form without the irritating distraction of static that is meant to sound like the ocean. I think that an exercise like this should be undertaken without distractions especially if someone is new to such a practice. I personally did not find this exercise beneficial. I would encourage anyone to try this exercise but caution them that while this particular way of doing this exercise may not be what they need that they should keep trying until they find the way that is beneficial to them since no 2 people are alike there is no right way to find an inner path to loving kindness just the way that works best for you.

According to Dacher (2006) “Mental Workout” means utilizing contemplative practices to help tame the mind’s constant mental activities and train it along with opening one’s heart, expanding consciousness, and progressing towards psychospirtual flourishing.  The goal is for progressive development of an expanded consciousness and healing within the mind, body, and spirit.  There are two contemplative practices; they are loving-kindness and subtle mind.

The concept of mental workout is the use of contemplative practices to tame the mind's constant mental activity, open one's heart, expand the consciousness and move toward psychospiritual flourishing( Daches2006). For me this means that to achieve this goal it is necessary to spend time working on the muscle that is the brain with mediation aimed at expanding the subconscious mind in awareness and accepting while challenging the conscious mind with new and challenging tasks very much like mental calisthenics. The research has shown that those who do this increase the neural pathways increasing the brains abilities and prolonging mental health or at least delaying processes such as dementia. This is the same as exercising the muscles of the legs so that you can walk or doing cardio so that the heart remains strong.

This is supposed to be an exercise is self reflection, something I have not done for some time. The last time I did any self reflection I made the decision to go back to school and here I am. I still have very little understanding of blogging and am not sure what a post should look like. So I have just gone ahead and answered the questions leaving the question in bold with my answer in regular type.

 

 

1.   Based on your reflections, and on a scale of 1 to 10 (ten being optimal well-being), where do you rate your A-physical well-being, B-spiritual well-being, C-psychological well-being? Why

A-Physical well-being is an 8 because I am overweight and still transitioning to a more plant based diet.

B-Spiritual well-being is a 10. I am secure and grounded.

C- Psychological well-being is an 8 sometimes a 9. The psychological is not something I give much attention to since I feel that I am stable, understand the thoughts behind my feelings and am mature enough to know what feelings are destructive/constructive and just because you feel/think something does not  mean you should act on it.

2.   Develop a goal for yourself in each area (physical, spiritual, psychological).

My goal to increase physical well-being is to continue what I am currently doing with fewer off days and less junk food. By junk food I mean food loaded with preservatives, added hormones, and antibiotics or genetically modified.

I do not have goals to improve the spiritual or psychological at this time since I am already in the process of changing so much about the physical and do not want to split my focus.  

 

3.      What activities or exercise can you implement in your life to assist in moving toward each goal?

My goal for physical is to continue daily brisk walks and continue to change my diet to a healthier pattern. I have no plans/whish or desire to change my level of spiritual well-being. I have no plans at this time to change/improve psychological well-being since I have already started on the physical and will only change/improve one area at a time. Splitting my focus only leads to partially or totally unfulfilled goals.

4.    Complete the relaxation exercise The Crime of the Century.  Describe your experience. (What it beneficial? Frustrating? etc.)

 I nodded off several times. I did however notice how cold my hands and feet had become and little aches that I am very good at ignoring. My personal philosophy is: if I don’t mind, it don’t matter.  This is very much like a relaxation exercise I use for the rare times I have trouble falling asleep. When I need to calm down and relax I have to do something physical to release and redirect the extra energy. When I need to feel grounded I sit outside under a tree, close my eyes and listen and feel nature. Listening to the exercise was not beneficial since falling asleep was not in the plan for that time.