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.