UNIT 9: Final Project

Unit 9: Final Assessment

Donna Colello

HW420: Creating Wellness

Kaplan University

Unit 9: Final Assessment

            It is so very important that health professionals develop and experience the same skills to the aspects of human flourishing so they can have a closer bond in the patient caring relationship. Being physically healthy, spiritually sound and psychologically stable are the key elements of the whole healing process within. Seeing all that has been taught in this class about the process of healing within, I find I still have a great deal in each of the subjects to endure.

            From doing an assessment on my health from the inside out, I still have an enormous challenge ahead of me. Early in the class I have rated my physical health as a 5 because of being overweight although I could probably run circles around most, I could still do better. The lifestyle change simply scares me, because it is the biggest change I have to make in order for all the other pieces of integral health to fit. Spiritually I have rated myself a 1, because of thinking that having spiritually meant being religious. Learning that having spirit can mean much more than that so I feel proud to up my score. Psychologically is deemed an 8, which is my best quality because of my life experiences taught who I truly am, and the caring and loving person I now share. How I react to life daily trails have made me process to take calming actions that has resulted in less stressful situations from the silent killer.

            Goals are my worst enemy when it comes to setting for myself. I can become very overwhelmed and give up entirely because I have too many responsibilities on my plate. Prioritizing I may have all wrong, but also understand if I do not put myself first for optimal health I can not pass my goodwill and prosperity on. One goal I have for myself is to physically lose weight. Secondly, my spirituality goal is to become more at peace with true meanings of my path taken and to be more open with my heart to associate with others. Psychologically my goal is not to over process situations with the “what ifs” in life. I tend to always over think and am always prepared for the worst, when I do not spend the quality of the moment to be a positive one.

The strategies of these goals will have to start by baby steps so my overwhelming feelings will not shut down entirely. My plan to start losing weight is to stop drinking so much coffee. I drink coffee to the excess loaded with of course cream and sugar right from the local Dunkin Donuts shop, and I do not realize why because it certainly does not keep me awake. I can surely implement this by drinking more water and flavored decaffeinated teas without any cream and sugar. I can also implement taking a short walk around the neighborhood now that is it almost summer. Spiritually I can implement growth by praying not only when things are bad, but also pray that of the moments I am grateful for. I can apply more meditative states when out in nature or on the water to verify my higher power clarity. Lastly, psychologically is an easy goal to grow upon. My exercises are to focus implementing more time peaceful times to organize my thoughts by mindfulness mediations. The awareness of changing negative emotions with positive ones will be exercised as showing more love and kindness to others.

The personal assessment I will take in the next six months, is to see measure myself for weight loss, rate myself on how many times I pray for the good and how many times I pay it forward with love and kindness to others. Knowing this is certainly not going to be an easy task, I will create a checklist of easy x’s when my positive reinforcements have been completed. I will also combine the effects of my health issues now and look for positive changes in my medical history. The awareness of this class has brought me to understanding there are many different aspects of integral health that need to work together.  The long-term strategies I have set are simple and easy to follow for my optimal health and wellness plan. I will succeed.

Unit 8: Reflections

The reflections of the exercises of the Loving-Kindness, Subtle-Mind, Visualizations and meditations are very hard for me. I can honestly say, I have tried all of them and decided that plain old mindfulness meditation instead of the guided meditations worked best. I can implement mindful mediation while I am walking around, even when I am at work. Mindful meditation is just being aware to live in the moment and an awareness of your thoughts and emotion without passing judgements. This one is for me!

While it has been a tough but also proud week for me because my daughter had her first two awards and graduation ceremonies with yet another set to follow in a couple weeks. At her award ceremony I was also honored for the work I have done with students in her Culinary program. My stress level hit the roof when I was asked up on stage, my blood pressure, temperature,  and pulse skyrocketed, and I immediately felt sick to my stomach. I realized from this class I could control my feelings and instantly became aware of my breathing and started to calm myself. Needless to say, I did not get sick nor did I pass out, but I was sure grateful the honors had ended. I am thankful of what I have learned in all these exercises, although it felt like nothing really worked, but now I know better. Yes, it did work!

I have been extremely proud and overjoyed with emotions and I still have 2 more weeks until she graduates high school for good. On Tuesday of this week, she has her last "Final Word" presentation to share with the entire school body. The last speech she did, I ended up with half of the audience as well balling because it was so-real and heart-felt. I will have to all keep you posted to see what kind of mediation techniques I can pull out of my hat for this one....

Wish me luck--for living in the moment.

Have a sweet week classmates :)

Donna

Unit 7: Meeting Aesclepius

This weeks meditative practice has failed once again. First of all when I look at the 20 minute length of this practice I panic. I have tried these exercises numerous times and just can not image the men of wisdom nor the light. When speaking about the "white" light, I image not calmness, but death. Yes, some may call it weird but I'm really trying to be as honest as I can. The only meditation that has worked for me is my own of being by myself enjoying everything that nature was to offer which brings me back to the love, kindness and calmness.

Describing "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself," is a powerful sentence. If one does not experience certain aspects of life, then how does one understand it to pass it on? With health professionals I believe in order for them to teach wellness, they must experience the findings of their own psychological, physical and spirituality. The understanding process of each will better serve both the patient and the physician and will make the patient feel more comfortable and trust what the healthcare professional are saying.

I implement psychological and spiritual growth by practicing listening, caring, learning and giving to others. If I can learn something everyday, I feel that I have become more of a complete person. If I take just that little time to consider others and learn from them the feeling is immense and gratifying.

UNIT 6

The exercises and the assessment process asked very specific questions which our honesty must take presence. These exercises has shown me that I could do much better in my spiritual presence. The area of psycho-spiritual flourishing I will be focusing on, because without this quality it is hard to complete the processes of integral health. A specific activity that would help me to develop the skills needed is to pray for not only when I am in dire straights but to pray for other and the greater good in people. I feel by practicing everyday will lead me to a better non stressful life and a healthy mind and body. It makes perfect sense to practice, practice, practice-- even though you feel you're not doing it correctly it will end up being right for you!

Have a happy week everyone!

Donna

UNIT 5: Loving-Kindness/The Subtle Mind

With the comparison of both exercises, I still found them to be not helpful with my mind submissions. I felt the instructions from the people talking not only threw me of course, because I seem to focus on directions rather than following them. I still did like the sounds of the wilderness and the ocean and would probably do better with only the sounds rather than people talking through an exercise. The differences between them was to only focus on one thing with The Subtle mind exercise rather than to put focuses on multiple things from the loving-kindness exercise.

The spiritual connection inter-twines all aspects of all integral health aspects are established. If you only have one of these pieces, it is like a broken piece of the puzzle to the completion of learning the health and wellness amongst yourself. Even though I think of myself is not a spiritual person, but I guess I am. I do exercises without even knowing it, because I am not instructed to. People call me very calm and patient in situations that would put people over the edge of a meltdown. I believe in my personal life, having little  to no control to what is happening around me has made me this way. As I have said many times and will say it again "Everything happens for a reason, and what you do with that experience can be so beneficial to your soul"

Have a great week anyone!

Donna

UNIT 4: Love and Kindness

The exercise for the week, I thought was really going to work, but failed half way through. Either these exercises are way too long, or I am just not getting the benefit of hanging in there. I did not find this exercise beneficial not because it was difficult, but because of how long the exercise was. I loved the background music of the waves, and the gentle voice of the woman that spoke. It reminded me of how I spend my summers basking in the sunshine sitting close to the water and just thinking about nothing. I think for me it will have to take actually going to the beach, finding a quiet space and then I could probably do my mental workout with the sounds of nature real and present. I would recommend this to others as one could only try.
The concept of the mental workout is by regulating yourself to take time and do some sort of prayer or meditation each and every day. The research indicates that doing mental workouts be improve your health and well-being to make you a happier wholesome soul. The way I could implement my mental workouts is doing it early in the morning when I first wake up and doing it right before I go to bed. I also need to find an exercise that works for me because quite frankly, I have not grasped the exercises. Anyone else have this problem?

Have a great healthy week <3

Donna

UNIT 3

As I reflect on my optimal well-being, I think I have some work to do.

To rate myself on my physical well-being I would give myself a 7 although I am overweight I still am in better shape than most and my endurance level is greater than most. I maintain a physical job of being on my feet all day, moving every which way. The goal I would implement myself is to lose some weight and watch what I eat more carefully, and an exercise to do would be to get out and walk more, even though after work I just would like to go home.

To rate myself on my spiritual well-being I would rate a 3. I am not a spiritual person by any means, but I do believe there is something out there guiding my path. Do I think about it, of course I do, but I really have no idea what makes being a spiritual person can change me. The goal to myself would be taking time to figure out what I look up to and an exercise I could do better is read about it and maybe some day I can fully understand the meaning of spirituality.

Finally to rate myself on psychological wellness,  I would give myself a 7. I say this because I know who I am and the goals I push myself too, and am understanding of feelings and emotions for myself as well as others. I would develop a goal to better understand to process of the mind and how it affects our bodies. An exercise I would endure is to be more outspoken but to process what I am thinking before speaking.

The relaxation exercise was again frustrating for me because of 2 points. The exercise was too long, and I really do not have an imagination to pretend that these exercises work. I think I am too much of a sceptic, and will not allow myself to believe this could actually work.

Any suggestions are gladly welcome!

Unit 2: Exercise

Classmates...

When you listen at the first few minutes of the exercise, the harsh sound of the chime just made me cringe. I thought to myself ok let's give it a few more minutes and the chiming turned into a lovely tone for relaxation. I am a skeptic when it comes to these types of relieving exercises, but I totally made it through it. I can't say that it helped much but it was an experience. I never take what seems to be enough time for myself, and when I get frustrated all I have to do is breathe. I remember when I was in labor my breathing exercises got me though. Believing in the power of the natural wonders of breath can completely take you away.
So get out there, do something nice, be positive and have a great day!

Donna

Why fish?

Welcome,

I bet you are wondering why I have fish on my blog?

They are interactive because you can feed them with a click of your mouse!

I have had two fish tanks for a long time, and always wondered why I could never get rid of them, they are relaxing to watch, and the flowing of the water is calming as well!