My Overall Wellness Improvements

Overall, my wellness is growing everyday and to be honest my wellness various depending on how I feel on that particular day.  As mentioned in last week’s post my overall wellness is growing on a daily basis and my spiritually wellness is about a 7.5. Of, course there are places where I feel that I need to improve, but overall spiritually I feel connected with Christ. I would have to say that my spiritual wellness has improved and I find myself relying on Christ even more on a daily basis and not just when I am in a crisis. Due to me being pregnant physically I am at about 5 because I have been extremely tired and have not had the energy to workout. Currently, my goal is to remain active on a daily basis and only gain about 15-20 pounds throughout this entire pregnancy. Therefore, I would have to say my physical wellness has decreased, but I am trying to increase my physical wellness. Psychologically, on a scale of 1-10 I would consider myself to be 5 because currently I am under a little stress, but I am learning to cope with my stress positively through mediation and physical fitness.  Honestly, psychologically my wellness has not improved, but at least it has not drastically changed or gone down.

Personally, this course has brought a great joy to my life. I have met some people that have been very inspirational and my instructor was amazing! The most rewarding aspect of this class has been my experience of learning how to mediate. I always wanted to be able to mediate and the exercises provided in this course taught me the art of mediation. This course has definitely given me some extra tools to use when teaching wellness class, especially classes such as stress management or tobacco cessation.

Saying Good Bye To My Creating Wellness Class, But Hello To Tracking My Wellness World After College

I.  Introduction:

As a Wellness Educator I find it important to develop my mind and body psychologically, spiritually, and physically in order to be considered a legitimate health care professional. It is almost like a practice what you preach situation. Personally, I find it important to physically exercise on a regular, spiritually remain focus on God’s will, as well as psychologically remaining stressed free.  I have found that exercising has helped me remain focus on life, by helping me clear my mind during stressful situations and physically boasting my immune system.  

II. Assessment:
Recently, I have set back and really looked at my life from the six dimensions of wellness perspective. In order to assess our health in each domain, we must understand how we translate optimal health from our own standards and views. The six dimensions of wellness are the intellectual, emotional, physical, social, occupational, and spiritual. (Kolander) As we become aware of the dimension we can begin to assess our scores. Therefore, just to keep things simple we will use a scale from one to ten. My overall wellness is growing everyday and honestly various depending on how I feel on that particular day.  As mentioned before my overall wellness is growing on a daily basis and my spiritually wellness is about a 7.5. Of, course there are places where I feel that I need to improve, but overall spiritually I feel connected with Christ.  Due to me being pregnant physically I am at about 5 because I have been extremely tired and have not had the energy to workout. Currently, my goal is to remain active on a daily basis and only gain about 15-20 pounds throughout this entire pregnancy.  Psychologically, I am still crazy! Just kidding…..On a scale of 1-10 I would consider myself to be 5 because currently I am under a little stress, but I am learning to cope with my stress positively through mediation and physical fitness.  

III. Goal development:
 As mentioned in the above statement physically my goal is to remain active on a daily basis by at least 20-30 minutes of running/walking 3-5 days a week and doing pre-natal yoga at least 2-3 times a week. Spiritually, my goal is to remain focus in God’s word through having daily devotionals, remaining focus on God’s will and doing his work. Psychologically, prayer has been my best and remains my number one goal in order to keep on track especially when faced with challenges and obstacles in life.

IV. Practices for personal health:
I have found that in order to foster growth physically, psychologically, and spiritually I must record in a journal and/or my blog! From a physical standpoint as mentioned above I plan to incorporate a minimum of 20 minutes of cardio into my daily activity as well as some toning exercises, such as yoga. Psychologically, I found visualization a great tool and as stated before prayer remains my number one source of psychological balance. Spiritually, daily devotionals and prayer time is a great way to foster personal growth.

V. Commitment:
This blog has been such an great experience for me that I actually plan to continue tracking my wellness status by using this blog. As I share my experience being pregnant I am sure I will be able to see the difference in my outlook on life as hormones kick in and as my unborn child develops.

Optimal Well Being

For the past eight weeks I have been taking a course called Creating Wellness: Psychological and Spiritual Aspects of Healing in which has been an amazing experience. Last week, as you may notice I submitted a post on my psychological spiritual growth that was more of a visualization post. During that particular exercise I experienced being able to mediate. This was a powerful moment for me because as I stated in the post that I was extremely excited to actually be able to mediate for the first time and I have the hopes of using the visualization exercise as a way to develop a closer relationship with Christ. Due to being marriage enrichment retreat this weekend I did not start my visualization exercise, but I plan to attempt the exercise by waking up a few minutes earlier every morning and incorporating this exercise with my devotional period. The other session that I found most benetifical throughout my Creating Wellness class was the loving kindness technique. Considering that I am a sucker for love this particular exercise was right up my alley. I focused my exercise more on the forgiveness aspect and how through love and kindness one is capable of developing love and kindness. Lately, I have been trying to accomplish a sense of forgiveness by trying to master the art of positive affirmation when I find myself becoming upset or frustrated with individuals that hurt, rather than focusing on the negative or heartaches and pains the individual has caused me. As stated before this course has been amazing and those two exercises are what have influenced me the most.   

Psychological and Spiritual Growth

This week’s meditative practice was more of a visualization practice. In which my personal visualization focused on a person that I admire, which is Maya Angelou. I visualized her being a kind, loving, and brilliant women of God. As I sat in her present I was honored to hear her stories of life and grasped onto her ever word of wisdom. For the first time I was able to slowly flyaway into another place where peace and tranquility took over my body. Now, I can truly understand why people mediate on a daily basis and I can definitely see myself visualizing during my prayer time. I can just imagine to connection I can have with Christ if I used this same sort of mediation practice.  There is a particular bible verse that reminds me of the importance of spiritually and psychologically taking time out and strengthens your mental state.

Spend your time and energy in training yourself for spiritual fitness. Physical exercise has some

value, but spiritual exercise is much more important for it promises a reward in both this life

and the next. This is true and everyone should accept it. 1 Timothy 4:7-9 (NLT)

As I read the quote, : "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” I naturally wanted to relate it to spirituality because in life we run across people that effect our thinking in either a negative or positive aspect to the point that it can run us closer or further away from a higher being. As a healthcare professional I feel that it is an obligation of mine to have some sort of impact on my patient/client life. To give a person the confidence to become an advocate for his/her owns health is my number one goal as a Wellness Educator.

The Universal Loving Kindness of Meditation

For me meditation is not an art that I completely grasped yet. As stated in previous post I find myself able to escape when I exercise. Especially, when I run, but last week when I went to the driving range (golf) last Thursday I found myself once again escaping into another world. I guess I should say those are my sorts of mediation. I found that during my Integral Assessment that it was hard to cultivate into a still mind, but as I tried I focused a lot of my time and effort on my personal relationship with God and my emotional development. Maybe, the majority of my problem during this assessment was that I was focusing on more than one subject. As I visualized the changes I needed to make I envisioned myself having a more positive and productive life as a stronger women. In order to accomplish some short term goals of becoming stronger women I look forward to graduating within the next few months by working hard to graduate with at least a 3.5 GPA and completing a 10K race. Mentally, as I accomplish those goals I will gain a sense of accomplishment, confidence, and satisfaction that no one can ever take away from me.