Unit 10

Well, we've come to the point where it's time to look back and see how far we've come. In my Unit 3 blog post, I scored myself pretty highly on the physical and mental scales. Not perfect by any means, but I felt pretty healthy mentally and physically. I still feel that I'm doing pretty well in these areas. Now that my class load has quited down some, I can get back to exercising more often. I'm still eating pretty well, and I wouldn't say that I have any serious mental distress. I would have given myself 7s in this area, and I would say that has held steady since then.

The areas that I felt needed improvement were in my spiritual practices and in my social involvement. I said that I'm working on creating a personal cosmology for my spiritual practices, and some progress has been made in that area. I've been sticking with the practices that I've been doing for a while and are looking to incorporate a few more. Socially, I felt that I should be contributing more through my artwork. I've been working on a few projects to that end, as well. I would have probably rated my spiritual health as a 6 at the time of unit 3, and I'd say it's a 7 now. Socially, I probably would have said 4. Now, I'd also rate it at a 7.

I have exercised less over the last 10 weeks, but now that my work load is decreasing I have started exercising more again. I haven't incorporated any new daily practices into my spirituality, but I feel that I am doing better because I've been exploring it in other ways, I have been working more on my artwork, so of the three activities, I'd say that one has shown the most improvement.

I think I have developed over the course of this term. I had the advantage of being familiar with many of the concepts discussed and already having applied some of them to my life. I'd say that I started out in a pretty good place generally, and I have improved. I feel that it has given me some extra strategies for when things get difficult in the future. I think the thing that I found most difficult is the same thing that I always find difficult, and that is daily practice. I have a hard time sticking to a particular practice every day, and this term has been no different. The practices themselves come pretty easily to me, because I have previous experience in meditation. It's making time to do it every day that's the challenge. I think the most rewarding thing has been pulling together the different aspects of my life and looking at them as an interconnected whole. I think my experiences with this concept will help me in the future when I am working with clients, because I will have a greater understanding of what may be causing their distress as well as additional areas to suggest improvement in order to see an increase in their mental health.

Unit 9 Project -- Reflections

Introduction:

            Integral health, the study of how health and healing is related to the different aspects of a person’s life (physical, emotional/mental, spiritual, and social), is not just a method of healing but rather an approach to life. This system sees those aspects as not separate areas, but rather all part of an interrelated whole. What affects one area affects them all. To best understand integral health and to assist others in pursuing integral health, it is necessary that the practitioners are taking steps towards those aspects in their own lives. By expanding those areas, we increase our compassion and ability to work with others (Dacher, 2006). A practitioner expanding their own integral health also gains the personal experience and perspective that is a part of the healing process with a client.

            In my own life, there are some areas that I need to develop in order to meet my personal goals. I am working on expanding my social circle so that I have a wider network of friends. Social connections are a vital part of integral health. I am in pretty good physical shape, but I do want to be a bit more toned, so developing my fitness practices will improve my integral health. My career goal is to be a psychologist specializing in psychoanalysis and sex therapy, and to meet this goal I will have to develop my mental skills through learning, study, and practical experience.

Assessment:

            Over the course of this class’s assignments and in thinking of my own goals, I have assessed my health in each domain. For the physical domain, I think about my general level of biological health and fitness. I am fit, though I could be fitter, and I have no serious health concerns. I eat fairly healthily, and I exercise a few times a week.

In the mental and emotional domain, I think about what sorts of thoughts and emotions occupy me. I have ups and downs, and sometimes the downs are a little deeper than I think they are in others. I wouldn’t say that I’m concerned I’m depressed, but just that I’ve had some emotionally difficult situations punctuated by some better moments. On the whole, I think I am doing fair emotionally. Mentally, I am working on changing the thought patterns that arise from and contribute to the emotional difficulties. I am developing my self esteem and working on creative activities that bring me emotional and spiritual satisfaction. I would say that mentally, I’m fair but improving.

Socially, I look at the connections I have with people and how I feel about my social life. I also look at whether I am working on making the world a better place in some way. I am working on meeting new people and being more involved socially. I find that I experience a lot of energy and fulfillment when I’m seeking new social connections in addition to maintaining the ones that I have. I have a circle of people that I have known for a long time, as well. I have experienced a greater sense of compassion with my social connections. I am much more readily accepting people as they are, and I feel that I am more understanding of their faults and idiosyncrasies. I feel that I am making a difference in the lives of the people around me by showing that I care and trying to help them by listening more.

Spiritually, I look at whether I am feeling spiritually fulfilled and whether I am practicing in ways that support and increase that fulfillment. I do feel that I have found a spiritual system that I find fulfilling and that has room for a lot of exploration. That room for exploration helps me to stay interested in it. I do have some semi-regular practices, but I think that I could benefit from having some additional, more frequent (such as daily) practices. My practices utilize shamanic ideas such as those described in “The Technologies of Shamanic States of Consciousness” by Stanley Krippner (Schlitz, Amorok, Micozzi, 2005). Doing more research into the techniques of various cultures will help to put some variety into my practices.

Goal Development:

            Physical: To work out for at least 30 minutes at least 5 times a week.
I think this is a reasonable goal, and it would increase the number of times I’m working out every week.

            Mental/emotional: To meditate for at least 10 minutes per day in support of developing my still mind capacity.
Developing my still mind will increase my own psychological health as well as my capacity to listen to others.

            Spiritual: To celebrate at least one of the moon phases (new or full) every month.

Practicing more regularly will help to further my spiritual development.

Practices for Personal Health:

            Physical: One physical practice that would help me is continuing my cardio workout. I work out using the Kinect for Xbox, and it has helped keep me consistently interested in exercising. I have a tendency to get burnt out quickly doing the same thing repeatedly, so having different exercises helps include the variety that I need. I’d like to start getting up about an hour earlier each morning so that I can do the cardio workout. Another example practice is to walk more. I like to walk, and last summer I started walking out to a nearby cemetery and walking around there for a while. This is a total workout of about 5 miles. I’d like to do that more often, such as at least once a week. I could do this on weekends, such as Saturday mornings before I go to work.

            Psychological: An example of a psychological practice that would expand my mental health would be to study more psychoanalytic theories. I find these ideas helpful to both my mental and spiritual health. I’d like to ready at least one book on psychoanalysis per month. Related to this, I could keep a dream journal with a friend of mine. She and I are both interested in dreams and dream analysis, so we could write down our dreams on a shared electronic document and help to analyze each other’s dreams for unconscious meanings.

            Spiritual: One practice for this area would be to explore a new aspect of my spirituality by reading one book per month about an area of pagan practices with which I am unfamiliar. This would give me new ideas to implement for my own practices to see what I can work with. Then, a practice that would be related to and benefit from this one would be to do a shamanic journey via meditation or drumming at least once a week. Reading about unfamiliar practices would provide me with an increased vocabulary of belief from which to draw when trying to interpret the journeys.

Commitment:

            The biggest challenge for me, and I imagine for most people, is not making the commitment to doing regular practices, but honoring the commitment by keeping it. There is a peak period where it is easy to keep the commitment, but then I skip a day, or two, or a week, and then it becomes a month, etc. Repeating the practices regularly establishes it as a habit, but the challenge is picking it back up if a day is skipped. I could assess my progress by keeping a log of the days that I do my practices. This could be a calendar with different colored markers to denote what was done each day. At the end of a month where I meet all of my practice goals, I could reward myself in some way. This uses the behavioral analysis technique of a token economy to set up a reinforcement system to keep me motivated to do the practices. Eventually, they should be so well established that I won’t need the reward as often.

References:

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

Schlitz, M., Amorok, T., Micozzi, M. (2005). Consciousness and healing. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Inc.

Most Useful Exercises

I think that the two exercises that were the most helpful to me (and that will be most helpful in the future) are the loving kindness meditation and the use of the mantra a few weeks ago. The loving kindness meditation will serve me well because I occassionally have to work with difficult people. Since doing the loving kindness meditation, I am generally slower to get annoyed and more willing to approach people from a place of acceptance and love. My future career will involve helping a wide variety of people, some of whom I may not immediately get along with. The loving kindness meditation will be very helpful with this. I plan to return to this meditation regularly in order to recharge that loving kindness battery. When I'm feeling antagonistic towards someone, this can be done in an abbreviated form immediately in order to reduce the tension inside me.

The meditation with the mantra was not a success in and of itself, but it did show me how useful mantras can be. I had heard a lot about their use, but I had never really experience firsthand how effective they can be at occupying the part of the mind that would normally be given over to extraneous thoughts. I plan to find (or create) mantras that support the practices that I'm doing and try them out to see if they help me to focus my attention.

Meeting Aesclepius Exercise

The "Meeting Aesclepius" exercise is actually very similar to a meditation that I already do on a biweekly basis. I have a person that I visualize, and I merge myself with that person. Whenever I do this, I feel like there is another presence in the room with me. It does not feel like I am simply imagining it all, there is another element to it. I feel a tingling on my skin, and after the process is complete, I feel refreshed. Since I have been doing this particular exercise, which has been for several months, I have noticed physical and emotional ailments leaving me after the merging meditation

As for the other mediations, I will admit that this week I fell far short of what I should be doing. I did manage to meditate a few times, but two of those times I was so exhausted that I fell asleep. I do want to stick with this, because I have noticed improvements. Right now it's just a particular challenge because time to do it seems very hard to find.

To me, the phrase "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" means that to be able to help others, one must have firsthand experience with at least the technique being used if not the illness itself. I think that experiencing the technique helps the practicioner to have a stronger sense of its effectiveness, to have more "faith" if you will, in how well it works. It also gives the patient a greater sense of faith in the practicioner, because it fosters a sense of affinity betweent the two. It is like the practicioner is saying "I know, I've been there. But I got better and you can, too." I do feel that there is a certain level of obligation to develop ourselves while practicing healing for others. Someone who does not "practice what they preach" comes off as a hypocrite and untrustworthy. Developing ourselves also gives us the firsthand experience that allows us to better help others. Exploring different ideas and techniques in our own lives helps us to know what works for us and will gives us further modes of healing for our clients.

Loving Kindness Meditation and Integral Assessment

For this week, we had to do both a loving kindness mediation and an Integral assessment of where we're at and where we're headed.

The loving kindness meditation had different results on me than I expected. I didn't get a lot out of the meditation itself... I didn't really feel that it expanded my sense of loving kindness. However, I did find that repeating the phrases did occupy the part of my mind that normally wanders during meditation. I think that this could be an important avenue for further exploration, such as looking into mantras. Quieting my mind is often the most difficult part for me, because I try to use meditation to access deeper and/or alternate sources of information than my conscious mind. The problem is that there is often a high amount of mental noise that goes along with the signals that I'm trying to tune into. I think using a mantra may be a way to filter out that noise until the signal starts to come in clear.

As for the Integral assessment, the area that is causing me some distress is the worldly one. What I felt was that I am not currently contributing much outside of my small circle. I used to do more artistic endeavors, such as writing, painting, etc. By doing those things, I helped contribute (in an admittedly small way) to culture. By not putting effort into those activities, I have created a deficiency in the worldly aspect of my life, and it makes me sad to not be in touch with that part of myself anymore. The area that is ready for improvement is the psychospiritual. I have been developing something resembling a personal cosmology based on my spiritual experiences that has been supportive for me. However, I struggle with finding ways to incorporate this into my daily life. This class has emphasized how important and transformative daily practice is, and I think that this area of my life is ready for expansion. I think that daily practice will be easier if I focus on a few exercises, such as maybe a rotation of a few different types of meditation. I think that it will be easier to stick with it if I didn't get so frustrated, which is a common problem in both my creative attempts as well as my spiritual practices. The use of a mantra could help me to become less frustrated because it would reduce that signal to noise ratio.

Subtle Mind Exercise

This week our assignment was to do a subtle mind exercise. The point of this exercise is to achieve higher states of consciousness, namely the witnessing mind and eventually, with practice, the unity consciousness mind. This exercise was more about clearing the mind of extraneous thoughts (or in other words, allowing the thoughts to come and go without focusing on them), whereas the Loving Kindness practice was more visualization based. The subtle mind exercise would also be easy to extend by trying to hold the level of consciousness reached for longer and longer periods of time.

This exercise was more difficult for me than the Loving Kindness exercise. I often have a hard time quieting my mind, so this was a challenge. I also have a tendency to not get a lot of sleep, so it's easy to get so relaxed with this exercise that I start to nod off. I do notice a difference in my thought patterns, though. So far, it has at least made me more aware of my processes. That lets me start to pull back when I'm reacting to my own processes instead of acting with intention.

Spiritual wellness is tied to mental and physical wellness, because they are all part of a unified whole. I have been able to overcome and heal physical ailments in my body through the use of intention and spiritual practice. I was told that I would have to be on medication for my heart for the rest of my life, but instead I started taking my spiritual practices more seriously. When I did that, the heart problems left. When I'm feeling depressed, I also feel physically and spiritually unwell, but when I feel especially physically well, such as after extended exercise, I feel mentally clear and spiritually energized.

Loving Kindness Exercise

In this unit, we had to do an exercise designed to increase our capacity for loving kindness. This exercise came pretty easily to me because it's similar in idea to things that I practiced as a Buddhist and similar in execution to some guided meditations that I've done. I did notice a difference after doing it, as well. I felt like I was both more open to other people and also more understanding of them. In other words, I felt more compassionate. I also tried to turn my focus of loving kindness on myself, to show myself the same kind of compassion that I strive to show other people. I wouldn't say that I had any profound changes with this exercise, but I do think that it was effective. For that reason, I would recommend it to others, especially those who seem defensive or closed off from others, or couples who are having difficulties understanding each other.

A mental workout is a practice that is done repeatedly and consistently. The idea is to train or retrain the mental processes to be more in line with the practice's goal. Research is showing that those who practice metnal exercises have increased activity in the left prefrontal cortex, which is indicating higher levels of positive emotions (Dacher, 2006). The key to implementing mental exercises is consistent practice. Choosing a practice (or set of practices) and consistently doing them daily will increase mental health.

Reference:

Dacher, E. S. (2006). Integral Health. Basic Health Publications, Inc. Laguna Beach, CA.