Final Project

Here it is, my project. I hope that I was able to answer all of the questions thoroughly enough :)

1. Introduction:
   Why is it important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically? What areas do you need to develop to achieve the goals you have for yourself?

It is important for health and wellness professionals to develop all of the aspects of their life to have balance and to continually grow toward health, happiness, and wholeness. To live a more balanced life is not only beneficial to the professional themselves, but also to their clients as it sets a good example of how to be truly healthy. Not only giving advice to clients, but actually living it is much more convincing, and this provides a way to relate to the client as they also work toward integral health. Through practices like the ones we participated in during this class a health and wellness professional would also be able to extend loving-kindness to all clients and give them nonjudgmental attention and the individual care that they need for their situation. Being balanced and continually growing in all areas of our own lives would help us to come to understand the full capacity of the human as well and allow us to help clients to live up to their full potential and use their full human capacity.

2. Assessment:
   How have you assessed your health in each domain? How do you score your wellness spiritually, physically, and psychologically?

My spiritual wellness could use some work, and it is something that I have been trying to work on for a few years now. I wasn’t raised in a religious household so I feel like my spiritual growth has really come over the last ten or fewer years. I have been trying to learn more, pray more, and ask questions of those who I see as spiritually “wise”. I do know that spiritual growth is a continually on-going process, and I love to continually learn and I look forward to the rest of my spiritual journey, wherever it may lead me.

Since I have started earning my degree in nutrition, physical health has become more and more important to me. I have always thought that I was a fairly healthy person, physically speaking, but the more I learn, the more I would like to improve my health. I have always believed in eating healthy and everything in moderation, but only recently I have been learning how extremely important physical fitness is as well. To be physically healthy and reduce risk factors for chronic disease we need a good balance of nutrition and fitness, not just a focus on one or the other. Overall, I do think I am pretty physically healthy, but I think I could really benefit from a good exercise routine.

Psychologically I think that I am at a pretty good place, which isn’t to say that there is no need for improvement. Currently in my life I don’t have a lot of major stressors, and when I do encounter stressful situations I try my best to deal with them as calmly as I can and even use meditation and focus on my breathing when I need to. I could definitely work on my subtle mind so that I am not so overwhelmed with thoughts all of the time and so that when I do have a lot going on I can take thing one step at a time more easily.

3. Goal development:
   List at least one goal you have for yourself in each area, Physical, Psychological (mental health) and Spiritual.

For my physical health I would like to develop some sort of an exercise routine. I am fairly active chasing my kids around and I do some yoga and I like hiking, but I definitely don’t so any sort of regular, routine exercise and I think I could benefit from some regularity and really pushing myself physically.

For my spiritual well-being I need to pray more, as I think it allows for reflection, gratefulness, and a sense of something greater, beyond just oneself. I would also like to seek out more knowledge and/or thoughts and maybe even some answers to questions that I have from people who I trust and admire on a spiritual level, my father-in-law is one of those people for me.

For my psychological health I could continue to work on how I deal with stress, especially when it comes to having a lot of things going on around me at once. I especially need to work on how I respond to my kids and other people in general when I am stressed or feeling overwhelmed.

4. Practices for personal health:
   What strategies can you implement to foster growth in each of the following domains; Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual. Provide at least two examples of exercises or practices in each domain. Explain how you will implement each example.

For the physical domain I would like to create an exercise prescription for myself. The other class I am in this term happens to be and exercise and fitness course and it is centered around developing exercise programs tailored to individuals no matter what their age or health condition. From the course I am learning how important it is that I start making a point to have a routine exercise plan. I now have an good idea of how intensely, how often, and what kinds of exercises I should be doing; now it is just a matter of getting myself started.

For the psychological domain I would like to work on using the practices that we learned in class. Meditation and especially the subtle mind exercise I think could be very helpful to me in learning to manage my stress and how I react to overwhelming situations.

For the Spiritual domain I would like to be more active in my pursuit of spirituality. I need to start asking more questions and just putting more focus on the spiritual side of my life.

5. Commitment:
   How will you assess your progress or lack of progress in the next six months? What strategies can you use to assist in maintaining your long-term practices for health and wellness?

I liked the assessment process that we used from our Integral Health book. The integral assessment really helped me to lay out in front of me the different aspects of my life and see where I was at with each of them and from there get an idea of where I could use improvement and what I could do to focus on those areas. I think that having a routine in my long-term practices is also going to be key. I know that if I don’t have some-what of a schedule laid out I am likely to stray from the practices and lose any balance that I have already created.