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.
JoJo,
ReplyDeleteSounds like you have it all mapped out. Good luck with your plans to continue with your health and wellness goals. It has been a great experience being in this class with you. I hope to keep the lines of communication open. Your last statement says it all. Stay on the path, keep your heart and mind open and enjoy the ride.
Mack
Jojo, you have done a great job of observing yourself. Knowing that there is work to be done on oneself is probably the hardest first step to make. Not only have you made that step, but you went even further and examined yourself. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to give my opinion on how much easier things are if you have a plan, and aren't trying to do 100 things at once. I believe that if you can sit down and take everything you have to do during the day and organize it into some sort of schedule that you will feel a lot less overwhelmed, and things will get done more efficiently. I work full-time, go to school full-time, and have three children running in all different directions for their extra curricular activities. I would get so stressed out worrying how I was going to get everything done until I remembered what I learned in my stress management class. We can only do what we can, and everything else will have to wait. I have learned to lower some things on my priority list that are not going to hurt anything if they get done or not, and I sit down at the beginning of each week and plan out what I want to do each day. As far a school work, I usually take one day to do my discussion board, one day for seminar, one day for my project or quiz, and another to make my responses to other classmates. This works very well for me, and hopefully I gave you some ideas that might work for you also. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteHi Johanna, I like that you posted that you are going to seek for professional health for the psychological aspect of integral health. I don't know why I didn't think about that and I started questioning myself about it. Why didn't I think about this option and I think is because of the taboo of thinking that going to the psychologist mean one is crazy. My mom used to take me to the psychologist when I was a child because I used to be very forgetful and get distracted easily but I haven't gone as an adult and I definitely think it would help me in many ways. As you mention on your post I have also change some things in my priority list. I was doing badly in the beginning of this class because stress from work and relationship were eating me alive, but I have to think about things that were more important. Very nice post, you gave me extra ideas to improve my own. Thank you!
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