Unit 10 Creating Wellness

Hello everyone!  Wow, how time flies when having fun.  I can hardly believe that this term is coming to an end.  We were asked to reflect on our psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being and score ourselves between 1 and 10 in each area.  In unit 3, I rated myself at a 7 for my physical well-being, 8 for spiritual well-being, and 7 for psychological well-being.  I don't really know of a change in any of the areas that we have studied.  It's not that I haven't made changes to improve my well-being, but I think that it's going to take some time to make a noticeable difference.  I haven't been able to successfully add a 10 minute yoga practice into my daily routine.  However, I have been able to successfully add a 30 minute exercise routine, three days a week, to my life.  I have increased my prayer time and scripture reading, because of my own personal desires to grow closer to God and because my children have a love for hearing about God.  Psychologically I am trying to focus on positive thoughts, use breath and find quiet time.  Every step has a long way to go, but I believe I can reach my goals.

Unit 9 Creating Wellness

Introduction:

It is important for the health and wellness professional to become psychologically, spiritually, and physically developed.  When you, as a health professional, participate in integral health practices, your mind can be freed from clutter.  This freedom then brings healing to all aspects of your life.  With mental freedom comes spiritual growth and release from stress, which then brings physical healing. The health care professional can then have the mental clarity, spiritual strength, and physical capabilities to best assist clients (Dacher 2006).  I definitely know there are areas that I need to work on to reach my goals.  I want to spend more time using meditation (prayer) to get more spiritually connected with God.  I also need to strengthen myself physically.  I want to work on freeing my mind from clutter so that I may be less stressed and more likely to show loving-kindness towards others.

Assessment:

After taking a long hard look at myself, I can see the work I need to do to reach a flourishing health.  I have paid attention to the things that affect me to see how I respond and although I try to be optimistic, I find the things that overwhelm me come to the forefront.  I allow those overwhelming moments to take control of me way too often instead of me taking control of them.  I find in my observations that I don’t make time for me to release my mind from all the daily clutter, or the time to grow spiritually.  My physical well-being then suffers as the stress builds up, my body aches, and then my health depletes. 

My spirituality probably rates the highest at an eight, because I do focus and depend on God for my strength.  As in all areas of my life, my busy life can draw me away from spending time with God.  My vision can become blurry and my time spent in the bible can become minimal until He reminds me that time with Him can make life smoother.  Though I pray every day, it is usually at meal times and before bed.  I know without a doubt of my mind that I should be praying more often and praising God at every opportunity that He lays at my door. 

My psychological well-being is probably a seven.  I wouldn’t consider myself unstable, but the stress of everyday builds up within me.  I’m not the kind of person who allows tension to take control of me in a way where I would hurt others.  The truth is, I’m a people pleaser and often times take on more than I can handle, because I want to help others.  I become overwhelmed where I can be a bit testy, but usually I can see what’s happening and as soon as I can find an opportunity, I find a way to release.  Once I have been able to release, I can refocus and go back to the task at hand with a clearer mind and calmer demeanor.

My physical wellness, however, rates about a five.  I know a lot of my physical is because of my psychological well-being.  I have MS and when my stress level becomes high, my body aches and I deal with muscle spasms.  My mental thoughts have to remind me that what I eat effects the way my body feels.  I also have to mentally remind myself that physical activity keeps my muscles from tightening up on me.

Goal Development:

My physical goal is to develop strength in my shoulders so that they don’t dislocate every time I try to use them.  I would also like to lessen the muscle spasms that attack my body each day.  My goal psychologically is to lessen that clutter that builds up in my mind causing stress.  I would like to learn to focus more on positive thinking (Dacher 2006).  My spiritual goal is to grow a closer relationship with my Heavenly Father.

 

Practices for personal health:

Since physical is my weakest area, I feel it very crucial to concentrate on its development.  I want to develop a daily yoga routine, which will not only help me physically, but also mentally.  Yoga can release my tensions that have built up throughout the day and build up within my muscles.  Focusing on my breath throughout my practice can help me release my tensions with each exhale.  Yoga also strengthens and stretches the muscles.  We recently got a membership at our local YMCA.  There I will do aquatic exercises, because they are low impact and gives comfort to the muscles being used.  Psychologically I will practice subtle mind and focus on my breath so that I can release the clutter that tries to overtake me when I want to sleep.  This will help me to relax and fall asleep easier.  I would also like to practice thought control where I look at the good in a situation to be able to get through without feeling stressed or overwhelmed ( Dacher 2006).  Spiritually I want to spend time daily meditating or praying.  Prayer can release and bring healing to the mind, body and soul.  I also want to spend more time in the bible.  Reading the scriptures can bring strength and understanding.  There is clarity of the soul and freedom from many things such as fear when one reads the scriptures.  Reading the scriptures actually give the blueprints on how to live life to the fullest through love, grace and forgiveness.

Commitment:

To be able to assess my progress in six months, I could make a questionnaire that I answer before I start and again six months later.  This will enable me to see whether I have made any progress with my health and well-being over six months or if I need to find other approaches.  To help me maintain my long-term practice, I could start a journal.  This will help to hold myself accountable.  I will also allow me to see what I have done to improve my well-being, what changes I may need to make, and the progress as well.

Unit 8 Creating Wellness

Hello everyone!

We were asked to decide two practices we would find most beneficial for us.  The number one practice for me would be the Subtle mind.  I find myself quite capable of emptying my mind and focusing on my breathing.  This practice releases my stress and often times causes me to fall into a peaceful sleep.  The second practice I found beneficial was meditation.  My form of meditation is in the shape of prayer.  However, this practice is actually more important to me than the Subtle mind.  I find my time in prayer crucial, uplifting, calming and releasing.  Talking to my Heavenly Father brings me such a closeness, love, and freedom from the things that trouble me, that I find it necessary to be applied to my daily life.  I believe that I can implement these practices daily to help bring peace, strength, release and health.  I believe when time seems to be overwhelming, using the Subtle mind practice will help me to breathe and refocus.  However, when times appear stressful or sorrowful, prayer could bring me strength or freedom.

Unit 7 Creating Wellness

Hello everyone!
I cannot say that I enjoyed this week's meditative practice.  Although I spent time focusing on God, there was too much moving around on my already stressed out body and mind to be able to focus and relax.  I can't say that I would be able to find release with any of the visionary practices.  I prefer to clear my mind and focus on my breath instead of visualizing something.  I can say that my practice with breathing, my use of yoga, and the use of my piano has brought forth the greatest increase of my psychological and spiritual well-being, as well as prayer.  I believe that if I want to increase my health and wellness even more, I should continue these practices on a daily basis, especially when I become stressed or overwhelmed.

The saying: "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself," means that if  you haven't experienced something, how can you teach or show someone else that thing you haven't experienced?  This applies to the health and wellness field in the way that you can't lead a client to freedom from stress and mental torment if you yourself can't find that freedom.  I think it would be very important for the client if I made it my priority to develop my own psychological, physical and spiritual wellness so that I may be able to help my client without any distractions.  I want to practice quieting my mind on a daily basis by using yoga, breathing techniques and my piano.

Unit 6 Creating Wellness

Hi everyone!  The exercise process was to repeat certain phrases over and over.  This was to help me to be able to believe that I may be able to help myself and others find health, happiness and wholeness.  The assessment process allows us to look deep within ourselves to see what is causing us difficulties and suffering.  This look enables us to care for those issues and free ourselves from them.  I've found that I often times take on more than I can handle.  I have decided that I will focus on only those things that are the most important at that time.  Limiting the things on my plate and focusing on fewer things would release my stress.  For me, breathing and learning to say "no" would greatly help me in increasing my health.  I also use my piano to release and refocus.  If it wasn't for my piano, I would be a stressed out mess.

Unit 5 Creating Wellness

The subtle mind activity was wonderful.  Concentrating on my breath allowed me to release my stress from the day and gave me the opportunity to relax.  When comparing this activity to the loving kindness activity, I found it to be much easier to relax with the subtle mind.  I was able to release and quiet the mental activity through the focusing on my breath.  When you can bring calmness to the mind, it can bring physical wellness to your being.  Spiritual wellness is the basis of both the mind and body.  If the spirit is not healthy, which people use as their strength in troublesome times, then their mind and body become weakened which then in turn weakens the spirit further.  The spirit, body and mind are all interconnected and when one becomes weak it affects the other.

Unit 4 Blog Creating Wellness

Wow!  My experience with the loving kindness was not beneficial at all.  I found myself unable to relax and to focus.  My spirit was putting up red flags and I had to quit.  As a Christian, I could not implement this practice into my life and I most certainly would not be able to recommend this to others.  My beliefs and the bible strictly forbid it.  Because you are being asked to allow pain and other feelings to enter from other people, you are opening your mind up to allow evil to enter.  I cannot do this practice nor ask others to do it. 

The concept of "mental workout" is to train the mind to think positively and to let go of the non-positive.  The proven benefits of a mental workout is a more psychologically sound mind.  I can implement mental workout by encouraging myself and treating others tenderly and lovingly the way I would like to be treated.

Unit 3 Creating Wellness

Looking into my own life, I would rate my physical well-being at a 7, my spiritual well-being at an 8, and my psychological well-being at a 7.  My physical well-being is affected by MS which is in its own affected by stress.  My spiritual well-being in my mind, could always be better.  I could always draw closer to God, because there is always more room to pray, study His word, and worship.  My faith is very strong, but like anyone else, it can be shaken and during this time it is even more necessary for me to focus on God and draw from His stregnth.  My psychological well-being is affected by stress, the lack of spiritual focus, self-inflicted and other inflicted mental harms.  Things from our past can haunt us and cause us to not be able to be psychologically sound.  It is not until we face our underlying problems that we will be freed from our psychological bondages and enable us to reach human flourishing.

I am placing personal goals on my self in each of the individual areas of my live.  Physically I am lacking in a daily physical activity and threfore I am going to try to place a daily routine of 10 minutes of yoga every evening to not only stretch and stregnthen my muscles, but also help me release my stress and help me to relax.  Spiritually, I feel I should try to increase my prayer time and my scripture reading.  I spend lots of time in worship since I am a part of our praise team at church and I am now one of the co-directors of the children's praise team.  I am always sitting at the piano, singing and writing songs.  Psychologically, I need to learn to focus more on the positives in my life.  If I work to speak with love, calmly and quietly, instead of jumping off the handle and saying things that I will later regret, I would find myself having a much better psychological constitution.

I know a couple activities that I could include in my daily life that could aid me in reaching my goals.  I can place an exercise routine into my daily schedule, a yoga practice and even a quiet time in which I can focus on strictly my breath to aid me in releasing my stress and gaining physical stregnth.  I could increase my time in prayer and studying the bible to give me the stregnth to face my everyday life, stresses and psychological battles.

I tried the Crime of the Century exercise.  I found myself focusing more on my breath for the certain areas and breathing out my stress.  I could not picture the colors.  I can say that the breathing part of the exercise was very beneficial in relaxing me, for I did not hear the exercise come to an end.  I believe I fell asleep and it was the sound of my children that brought me back to the here and now.

Transpersonal Psychology

Hello everyone!

Our subject this week is transpersonal psychology.  This is a focus on the entire being and not one specific area.  We are looking at a healing of the whole - mind, body and spirit.  The mind has the ability to heal by training it to look at the good and focusing on it instead of the negative.  It was amazing to learn that we can cause neuropeptides to develop just by thinking about what we want our bodies to do.  This is definitely a technique that we all need to learn to achieve optimal health.

Week 2 of Creating Wellness

Hello everyone!

It is great to have another term to meet more new people.  I look forward to getting to know each of you this term.  I wish you the best in your studies.

A new term in a great class. Unit 1 Creating Wellness

This is the first posting for this new term and I want to welcome everyone to this new term.  You will find your time in the class exciting.  Mark is an wonderful professor and is a very understanding and thorough guy.  I wish you the best in the term and can't wait to communicate with all of you.

News of Exciting Changes

Hello everyone. It has been a long time since I blogged. I want to share with everyone of the new changes about to take place in my life and give you the opportunity to explore this future adventure. Last week I bought my own business. I will have an e-commerce site dealing with the things that we all expect the most. I will be selling many different healthy products, naturals, fitness supplies and much more. I hope that you will take a gander when my site is complete and up and running. I will post more on this in the near future.

The New Year Has Begun

Hello everyone and welcome back to Healthy Lifestyle and Wellness. It's great to be back with all of you. As you all know, a new year means new beginnings. Many of us make ourselves new year resolutions and unfortunately, we mess up within the first few weeks. I would like to offer all my readers and followers the ability to hold up their end of their resolutions by posting on my sight and letting others help keep you on track.

My new year resolution is to try to offer everyone help with their weight loss resolutions. I am now a dietary and fitness counselor and am wanting to use this sight to help my clients and other followers to stay on track so that they may obtain their goals. Please feel free to post any question and helpful responses and bring this page to life. We are able to help each other when we bring our thoughts, comments and questions, so that those who are concerned about asking their questions still can receive their answers. I want to challenge all of you to take this opportunity and use it to its fullest.

Let's have a wonderful new year!!

Best of Health,
Tabitha Howdyshell
(Dietary and Fitness Counselor)
(Counselor of Supplementation and Natural Medicine)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Good evening everyone. Merry Christmas one and all. I hope that your holiday has been as wonderful as mine. I also want to wish you a Happy New Year. As we enter into the new year, I want to wish you the best of health and travels into and through the new year. There are so many new things to learn as we make this journey we call life each and every day. I will be there to help you along the way and hope to be able to answer any questions you may have.

Here is a beautiful punch that I think you may enjoy for the season:

2 quarts of apple juice
2 liter of gingerale
frozen pineapple ice cream

This is a great treat for the holiday season.
Enjoy!

Best of health

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all. I hope your day has been blessed. It is wonderful to have so many things to be thankful for. I want to send a thanks out to all my followers and other viewers for a wonderful first year on my blog page. I also want to thank all of those who have served our country or is serving our country so that I could be free. I wish everyone out there a wonderful and safe holiday.

Best of Health

Did You Know?

Hello everyone. Welcome again to Healthy Lifestyle And Wellness. It is great to speak to all of you again. Everyday I learn new things and I am getting excited to be able to share some of my new found knowledge with you. It is amazing as to how much the things we eat affect the way we feel, look and how healthy we may really be. Did you know that the claims on labels aren't always what they appear? Did you know that a diet isn't really a diet, it's a change of lifestyle? Did you know that your blood type affects what you may or may not be able to eat? Did you know that your physical activity goes hand in hand with what you eat in losing or maintaining weight? Did you know that life itself can affect how you eat, which in turn affects your health and weight? These are some of the topics we are going to be delving into over the next few weeks. Please join us in these great discussions and bring your questions to the board so that others may learn things as well.

Wishing You the Best of Health

Changes to Healthy Lifestyle and Wellness

Hello everyone. New and exciting things are beginning to happen to Healthy Lifestyle and Wellness. As of November 15, 2010, I am the new Dietary and Fitness Counselor at the place where I work. This site will begin to be used by all my clients and I hope that you will find some exciting new discoveries. I wish for everyone to bring their questions to the site so that everyone can learn from each other. This is supposed to be fun as well as supportive. Do not be afraid to ask new questions or bring to the group fun new information. I wish the best for everyone and can't wait for the fun to get started.

Best of Health.

Welcome Back

Hello and Welcome back everyone to Healthy Lifestyle and Wellness. It's been a while and I am glad to be back with all of you. There are new things that I am learning everyday in my field of study and am looking forward to sharing with everyone.

I would like to invite everyone to take a look at my earlier postings and comment or ask questions to get the conversations in this site flowing. One very interesting discussion is the one on GMOs and I think that everyone will learn a lot from it. Eventually I would like to bring you some of the knowledge that I have to offer in the practice of Natural medicine so that you may have a better feel for what all may be offered in the Alternative medicine practice.

Since this our first week back in a while, I would like to give you the opportunity to ask questions that you may be interested in studying so that we can possibly delve into those areas. So please join me and learn a whole new range of information.

Until next time, I wish you all the best of health.

More about Fitness

Hello everyone and welcome back to Healthy Lifestyle and Wellness. Most of us don't realize how short we are on getting the exercise we need. It is recommended that we get at least 30 minutes a day of extensive exercise. While most of us have active days, few of us spend time really focusing on our bodies. I find it hard myself to do this. I want to challenge everyone this week to put exercise into your daily routine for this week and then tell me what you were able to do. Until next time, good luck.
Best of health.

Fitness

Hello again and welcome to Healthy Lifestyle and Wellness. This has been an interesting past few weeks as we have delved into several different topics. As you all know from my first post, I am a student at Kaplan University and I created this site for the class. However, I have decided that I will continue on with this well after my classes end next week. Please feel free to join me in discussion. Questions will help make this site go forward at a better pace.

Last week we started on the topic of fitness and activity. I asked if anyone had any ideas as to what you would considered as physical activity. There are many different activities that can be included in this list. Some examples of physical activities could include but are not limited to: hiking, swimming, walking, running, frisbee, and even housework. Many people do not realize that a physical activity could include normal everyday things such as gardening or cleaning house. These aren't what are included in extreme energy workouts though.

One of my other questions was about what you felt was the amount of high intensity physical activity that you should perform in a day. The answer to that question is 30 minutes a day. This type of activity would be in the form of swimming, running, jogging and even sports. There is a whole list of high intensity activity that you can perform a day.

Do you have any physical activity that you perform that would be considered high intensity? How often do you perform these activities? How long do you perform these? Do you feel that you are getting enough activity in your normal day? What do you think you can do to improve the total of your activity?

I look forward to hear what everyone has to say this week. Feel free to post and even ask questions. Have a healthy week and see you next time.