Unit 9 Project
Jessica L. Houser
Professor Mark Maule
HW420: Creating Wellness:
Psychological and Spiritual Aspects of Healing
14 January 2014
Unit 9 Project
Throughout
this course on the psychological and spiritual aspects of healing, I have had
to take a deeper look into myself and evaluate just how healthy, or unhealthy,
I truly was. Throughout this paper I
will stress the importance of not only the physical aspects of staying healthy
but also the mental and spiritual aspects too.
I will continue on to assess myself, develop a goal, discuss practices
for personal health, and express my overall commitment to achieving this goal within
the next six months as well as how I will continue to achieve overall health
and wellness throughout my life.
Importance
It seems only
realistic that a health and wellness professional needs to develop themselves
psychologically, spiritually, and physically because these are the aspects they
will be trying to enhance in others. I
would not want someone selling me Nike’s that wears only Adidas or someone a
Doctor operating on my knee that’s actually a pediatrician. These are things that just make sense, in order
to help someone in a specialized area; you yourself need to be well
versed. As a health and wellness
professional, you need be constantly challenging your mind, body and fulfilling
spiritual needs, whether it’s religious or lack thereof, so you can truly feel
the full effects of whole health.
Personally, I
feel that I need to develop mostly in the spiritual and physical aspect. My mind is pretty solid in comparison to the
other two, where my body is recovering from knee reconstructive surgery I had
last week and my spirituality is slacking the most. The only times I have meditated or even
attempted to be a little spiritual has been when this class called for a guided
walk through, and I need more than this.
Since my surgery I have cut out 90% of my fatty, processed foods and eat
primarily fresh vegetables, lean meats, and limit my snacks to Kind bars, Laura
Bars, and 100 calorie fruit cups and ice cream cups because you cannot
completely cut out bad foods right away.
I tried that once before and I ended up binge eating for a week due to
cravings and lack of self-control. My
working out, however, will be a slow process where I’ll start with physical
therapy and work my way up with my home gym.
Later in this paper I will discuss some three month goals, six month
goals, and of course one year goals that I have set for myself, but for now I’ll
talk about my personal assessment.
Assessment
Back
in November of 2013 I wrote a blog posting that rated my overall wellness in
the following categories; spirituality, physically, and psychologically. I gave myself the following scores in each
area: spirituality (5), physically (6) and psychologically (6). If I were to rate myself right now I would
change my scores slightly since it’s only been two months. For spirituality, I would now be a 6 only
because I have begun incorporating weekly meditation into my busy routine
thanks the guided passages from this class.
This allows me a change to dig into my soul and try to find that
connection with my God and Goddess to truly achieve full spiritual health.
For my
physical health I would now be a 7 even though I’m sitting on my couch all day,
I have yet to gain weight like most people do after surgery because my wife and
I have completely changed the way we eat and what we eat every day. Over the next few weeks I will slowly start
to have more time to do physical therapy and work out even with my limitations
to actually lose weight and gain more muscle.
Psychologically I would now be a 7, not much improvement but with the
higher spiritual and physical rating comes a healthier mind. My changes have not been huge, but I’m sure
in the long run I will be at least two points higher in each area.
Goal Development
I
have three main goals that have a few minor goals that go along with my
30-90-360 time line over the course of the next year. By this time next month I hope to have
incorporated meditation into my life at least once a week since this class will
be over. I will continue to eat healthy
and begin working out slowly as my knee heals, while allowing that spiritual
development through meditation to also help with any mental ailments that may
plague my mind. By my 90 day mark I hope
to have lost at least 10 pounds and can walk without crutches (even if I need to
still use my brace), have started not only meditation once a week but now practice
rituals on the major sabots, and continue to have a positive mind. A year from now I plan to have a strict
schedule where I meditate twice a week and hopefully my wife begins to join in with
me.
My final
goal will be to have a more solid understanding of my faith, which is Wicca,
and a grasp of how to incorporate my religion into my families’ everyday
lifestyle. For my physical growth I hope
to be running and sprinting on my new knee as well as working towards a
beautiful six-pack, and of course overall slimming looks. I plan on keeping this healthy living and
even working towards cutting out almost all of the bad stuff, even salted
butter. A year from now I hope to be
stronger physically, mentally and spiritually, as well as healthier all around.
Practices for Personal Health
All
of these goals will not just achieve themselves; I’m going to have to come up
with a course of action which will allow me to hit my end result. Some things that will allow me to achieve my
spiritual goals are incorporating a strict schedule of meditation time along
with a reading list and sabot preparation.
I will start off with every Sunday (which I usually have off) from 7pm
to 8pm, I will have uninterrupted quiet time in the office to have either a
guided meditation session or just work on intimate mental meditation where I
reflect on that day or week without any guidance. Eventually I will move up to twice a week,
but that will come later. Then I will
allow myself at least one chapter a night of new Wicca material to familiarize
myself with the ever changing ideas and ritual practices of others within my
faith. This will allow me the time to
plan accordingly for the major sabots, or Wiccan festivals, so I can truly
become one with myself, my family, and the earth.
In
order to achieve my physical goals I need to maintain a constant standard of
healthy foods that I consume and once I can finally workout I need to have a no
excuse plan to work out every single day, with the appropriate rest days
allocated. For now, I have a free weight
set, resistance bands, a rowing machine, a pull up bar, and of course a few
exercise videos. I will keep a log of
the foods I eat and track it with fitday.com, a website that allows you to track
what you consume as well as what you burn off in exercise. This will allow me the ability to keep a
constant eye on how many calories I’m consuming from day to day I know if I
need to work out a little harder on the next session or maybe eat a lighter meal
the next day. Only by tracking what goes
into my body and what goes out will I be able to achieve my physical
goals. Along with my physical goals I
have a recovery goal of being able to run and sprint upon my one year
mark. The only way I can achieve this is
by slowly easing into power walking, and then jogging, then finally full blow
running with discretion to my physical therapist and their advice.
My
mental health is not really much of an issue, even though my score is not
perfect. I do not feel that anyone can
honestly say they have tens across the board, because from day to day we all
make mistakes or feel stressed from work and eat that burger from a fast food
joint. I do, however, feel that once my physical
and spiritual aspects are on track, then so will my mental. Sometimes, I do struggle with anger, which is
the one aspect of my mental being that needs the most attention. I plan on using the meditation sessions not
only to hone in on my spirituality, but to also look back at instances where I
was negative or angry and try to find the root cause of my anger and figure out
how to deal with the situation differently for next time. I have also begun taking vitamin D supplements
which I call my ‘happy pills’. In Alaska
it gets very dark for 20 hours a day during the winter. Generally I’m only outside to go to and from
my car, so the exposure to sunlight is almost non-existent. I found when I first got to Alaska that I had
a sever vitamin D deficiency during the winter months which was much of the
cause to my negative, depressed and easily angered attitude. I plan to continue to take vitamin D during
the entire year, but double and maybe even triple (if needed) my
supplementation during the winter to keep my emotions balanced.
Commitment
The
only way this entire plan is going to work is with commitment, and I’m not
talking about the ‘yeah let’s do it today’ commitment, I’m talking about the ‘I
need to allocate an hour a day for working out and an hour a week to meditation
no matter what else is going on’ type of commitment. Too many times in the past I have started
something that truly makes my health better, but for whatever reason or another
I stopped it for a few days, then a few weeks, then I never started back up
again and all that progress was lost. My
Cross Country running coach back in High School used to tell me that if you
took more than three days in a row off from running, that fourth day would be
like your first time running all over again because all of your progress was
gone.
I feel
like any health kick is just the same way, which is why I plan to track my
progress by used the fitday.com application to print out monthly reports. This site allows me to track all of my
calories in as well as calories out, and also has separate reports for
nutrients consumed so I can adjust the results I want to see based on what
information I want to know. Upon
reaching the six month mark, I will assess myself based on a printed report
from fitday.com, a height and weight recording along with a body mass index (BMI)
text, and a re-evaluation of my scoring for my mental, physical and spiritual
health levels. The same way I assess myself each
month and at the six month milestone will be the same way I will maintain these
practices for long term health and wellness.
Conclusion
Throughout
this paper I have discussed three major aspects of whole body health; physical,
spiritual and mental health. In order to
keep these areas of our body healthy we need to learn how to heal them and how
to maintain this level of health. I have
stressed the importance of not only the physical aspects of staying healthy but
also the mental and spiritual aspects too.
I have developed a plan to assess myself every month as well as at
milestones (30 days, 90 days, and 360 days), I have developed a series of goals
in each aspect of my health, discussed practices for personal health, and
expressed my overall commitment to achieving these goal within the as well as
how I will continue to achieve overall health and wellness throughout my life.
References
FitDay - Free Weight Loss
and Diet Journal. (n.d.). FitDay. Retrieved from http://www.fitday.com
