Unit 10 - Reflections

In unit 3, I rated myself pretty high on the physical and spiritual level, an 8 in both categories, because I thought a high rate portrays a high involvement, not success but how much your focus lies on these aspects. My psychological health was rated with a 6, well, that's because I had an uncomfortable session with my therapist which threw some dust in my face. Something of my past cropped up and proceeded to impede my well being. But it is better now - at the end of a term, when all the finals are in, I have a sense of accomplishment that is pretty strong in my psychological perception. It has something to do with, yes, I CAN do it. Still, after three years of term after term, I still am apprehensive whether I get through the classes. But I always get A's. I should slowly start to believe in myself. So, my psychological aspect has improved to a 7. Spiritually I keep on meditating but I don't think I got better at it yet..I mean the spirituality..how can you measure that, anyway? Physically, I keep on doing Taekwondo and am improving, but not to a 9 yet. So I do implement my strategies but I think it takes longer or it is actually just the trying to better myself that is worth the most.
Throughout this course I have become more aware of my spiritual surroundings, my responsibilities as a future practitioner, and have found again how important it is to find one's center, one's subtle and witnessing mond, in order to change anything in and around oneself. But if I am good with myself, I can be good to others. I also understand now how important it is to be still, to listen. to be quiet. Only in this stillness I will find answers as to how to treat myself and others.
Meditation is not an easy task, but one does get better with practice. I always find it diffilcult when there is a guided meditation and I have to find the environment they choose relaxing. I mean, beach for me is stress! So whenever a guided meditation uses the beach image to relax I get tensed and have to rigorously work on finding my own relaxing spot. Meditation soemtimes is impossible for me - sometimes I am so caught up with all the things I have to do, that my brain just won't stop twirling! But, again, progress not perfection is what I strive for. All in all I found this class rather eay, although there was a lot to do to get the grades in....it definitely was intensive. I would take this class again if I had to...I am suggesting it to all the people I know who want to become somebody in the health field. I think it is important to find a holistic approach - now more than ever!

Unit 9 - Final Project

Running head: INTEGRAL HEALTH – A PATH TO A HEALTHIER FUTURE

Integral Health – A Path to a Healthier Future

Johanna Bennett

Kaplan University

HW420 – 02

Professor Nysewander

April 27, 2011

Integral Health – A Path to a Healthier Future

            What is integral health? Integral health is self generated and self-cultivated and leads to a comprehensive, holistic, and far-reaching healing of body, mind, and spirit and is immune to life’s adversities (Dacher, 2006, p. 3). Our western culture perceives health from the outside – a doctor treats the physical symptoms only. Eastern philosophy and medicine connected and offer a variety of instruments (meditation, yoga, etc.) to heal from within; the body-mind-spirit paradigm which can alter our whole being. It is important for health practitioners to understand this paradigm in order to fully become a healer of our next century. But this is not enough, the healer has to practice and live the body-mind-spirit connection in order to be trustworthy and to be a true medicine man. In the following will be discussed what areas I have to develop to achieve my goals, goal development, and practices to achieve the latter.

            The areas I still have to develop are the access to my inner, peaceful self, to nourish the body that I have been given better, healthier, and to better my psychological balance. The four quadrant model developed by Ken Wilber show four areas of any given human being, psychospiritual, biological, interpersonal, and worldly. After I have taken the integral assessment I know that I will have to work more on the conative part in my psychospiritual aspect, on the nutritional part in my biological aspect, and on the social activism aspect of my worldly aspect. My interpersonal area seems to be quite alright for the moment, since the development and status of a being is dynamic and changes from time to time (Dacher, 2006). Therefore I rate my psychological health as pretty good, my physical health as to be improved by nutrition and exercise, and my spiritual health as to be developed even further.

So, I will, to better my domains, seek help from a professional for my psychological aspect. There are still many issues in my past that I carry with me and are burdens and keep me from achieving a better me. A psychologist could help me clean up my past in order to have a better basis for my spiritual health. I will also keep going to AA meetings, which is good for my psychological as well as spiritual health. Alcoholism is a disease which takes away all spirituality and the program of AA fosters a good relationship with a higher power, however one understands a higher power. The mental aspect of alcoholism is also addressed in those meetings – we take care of each other’s problems and discuss any issue we have on a daily basis.

I plan to better my spiritual well being with further meditation and by keeping with Taekwondo, since this sport has many factors which play into my spiritual health – focus, virtue, honesty, and kindness. Meditation is a wonderful tool to access one’s spiritual self, or the center in which one can find the real self. This course has given me several meditation techniques and I know some from earlier times – so, no excuses anymore.

My physical health will also improve by taking Taekwondo but I will also have to watch what I eat. I do not respect food to much, or better, I do not think too much about what I eat to feed my body well, to nourish and protect my body. This is definitely a big challenge for me. My life is very fast paced and often I just eat what I can find or put into the microwave. In the future I will take time to eat, to prepare fresh what I eat and to focus on eating while I am eating. Often I do ten things at once, and everything gets done half way. So, would it not be better to take time, focus, finish one thing at a time fully, and then move to the next? In the end effect, I am sure, things get done faster and better.

To assess my goal achievement I will, every now and then, probably every four weeks, take an integral assessment to assess also the obstacles in reaching my goals. Sometimes I am not sure why my health for instance is not good, but looking at the integral assessment, the four domains can help me find the holistic viewpoint on it – maybe if the psychospiritual aspect is weak I have to change something in my worldly domain or my biological as well? Since all aspects, domains, or areas are interconnected it is almost logical to look for obstacles in all domains, not the obvious one. A routine assessment will help find the culprit. To understand that everything that exists is a holon – a whole/part – that is everything that exists is a whole in and of itself and also a part of something else (Schlitz, Amorok, & Micozzi, 2005, p. 467) will help me maintain all my goals for as long as I am on this track. It will help me understand that if I am to feel whole and better I will have to look at myself in all domains and as part of a big universe as well.

For a very long time, six years to be precise, the time I am sober, I am looking to better myself on several levels – mentally and spiritually in particular. Before this class I had a hunch, but now I am consciously aware of the interconnectedness of myself, my health and well being, and the world around me. I can look into myself to better myself but I also have to see the connection to my fellow humans – love and kindness, a principle well discussed in this course, has already helped me, unbeknownst, to connect better to my surrounding, but now that it is consciously working in me, the principle of giving and serving, has already changed my outlook on the world around me and has already changed the world reacting towards me. All that is left for me to do is keeping on this path and discovering all the possibilities an integral life and thinking can provide for this human being and share it with as many people as possible, as well as implementing in my future career as psychologist.

References

Dacher, E.S. (2006). Integral health: A path to human flourishing. Laguna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publications.

Schlitz, M., Amorok, T., & Micozzi, M.S. (2005). Consciousness and healing: Integral approaches to mind-body medicine. St Louis, MI: Elsevier Churchill Livingstone.

           

Unit 8 - My meditations

I chose the 'love and kindness' meditation and the last one, the 'happy, healthy, whole' meditation to foster my mental health. The love and kindness causes me to think about others and to let the love I have within to spread to others. This is, I think, a very important part of mental fitness. I am spiritually sick if I keep thinking about myself all the time, the less I think about myself and my wants, the more I can listen to the people around me and can be of service to them, which in turn serves me, because I feel good when helping others.
The 'happy, healthy, whole' visualization left me with an intense feeling of serenity and completeness. Questions ceased and answers came willingly. This meditation speaks to my inner soul, my inner, self-confident, and healthy self, thus creating a better me if carried over in the now-time. My mental fitness profites from this state of being because there is no stress, no must do, no fast drive - but still more things get accomplished. Great how that works! I can feel these better moments for some time, but am far from being a saint! There are still the fast, stressy moments more frequent than the slow, peaceful ones. But what do they say - progress, not perfection!

Unit 7 - Every master needs a mentor

Nobody can teach what he hasn't learned before. And even further, nobody can teach what he is not practicing . I remember how appaled I was when I saw the surgeon who would do my appendectomy the next day, drinking and smoking in a little bar. I immediately lost trust in him - he operated anyway, and all went fine, but I did have major apprehensions. I think the most important part of healing is understanding and knowing what it means to be healed - having gone through the process oneself makes you a better healer. For instance, I always had a woman assisting with the birth of my children. It just made more sense to trust a woman who has gone through it herself. There are wonderful obstetricians out there, don't get me wrong, but personally, I trust a woman more. She just knows not only the facts and the physical process but she also knows about the mental, and spiritual part of giving birth. So, in order to teach or heal integral health I have to practice it myself - and how will I implement spiritual growth? By meditating regularly, by being still and listen, by feeling love and kindness, and by ever trying to grow more.

The Asclepian meditation was a little hard for me - I have a person who I think is a mentor, a spiritual advisor, and an awesome human being. But when I visualized the beams of light from his mind to mine, from his communication chakra to mine, etc. I felt like I am stealing something from him. Somehow I felt it was wrong to just take these powers without asking his permission - although I knew I would not literally take them away from him. So, I tried it again with an imaginary Asclepius, and that worked better. It really always makes me calmer and more confident when I meditate these kinds of meditations. Cool! I like it!

Unit 6 - Integral Assessment

I am just glad this exercise made me do my integral assessment - it made it pretty clear to me what I got to work on right now. I tried to visualize it with this blotch-diagram. As one can see there is definitely work to be done in regards to nutrition, social activism, and conative aspects. 

For my nutritional needs I finally have to be careful of what I eat, more proteins, less sugar. As to the social activism...hmm...I am not so sure how I can work on that one. I will take suggestions. As to my conative, the motivational part, well, I have to check my motives every now and then when I am doing something, or say something. Why am I saying it? Why am I really doing it? I think these three, or at least two of them, the nutrition and motivational aspect go hand in hand - if I find the right motivation for eating healthier, then I catch two flies. I was surprised at how well I am doing with the interpersonal aspects! Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am not in a relationship right now. No wonder I can do good. But I can see it also with my children, that I am improving. Love and kindness can really change lives. At least it does for me.

My Power Point Unit 5

http://www.slideshare.net/Johannabennett/j-bennett-hw420-section-02-unit-5-project-7499843

Unit 5 - The subtle mind

I think the mind is anything else but subtle....at least mine is. It's stubborn and strong. Very hard to calm down. But repeated meditation can work wonders. This weeks meditation, the subtle mind, actually calmed my mind, since it had to be focused on exactly one focal point. As opposed to last weeks meditation where we had to go through steps of liking and sending, and visualizing many different things. This time we had to calm our mind, not activate our mind in a certain direction. Breathing was a good focal point, because it always happens, whether we want ti or not. I once got the feeling of stillness - the moment when the focal point slowly changes from your breathing to stillness itself. How wonderful! To be able to just be....without questions or problems, or things to do!

This stillness persisted for a little while..then my not so subtle mind awoke again and off I was to the races. Frustrating. But I know with more practice more stillness can come. This stillness though I find I can reproduce every now and then during the day - I just focus on my breath and there it is. This stillness is very important to me - many situations in which I would immediately react, and blurt out what does not need to be said, I have a second time to think whether it really is important to be said by me now, and often times I don't say what I initially thought so important to say. I want to do this more often than not. So I keep meditating and calming my mind.....