Final Project: Self Reflection

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