Last Week!

Well this was the last week to accomplish my second goal of earning my BSN and I do believe it has been accomplished! This was another one of my 5 year goals I can now cross of my list. I will now move onto my 10 year goals of running the Derby Marathon and completing my Masters Degree in Nursing..:). I am very excited. I have had a lot of bumps along the way, a lot of shocking discoveries in my family, a lot of crying and laughing! I hope as I grow a little older (yuck) I learn more about myself and learn more about integral health with myself. Learning about the mind, body, and spirit has made me very curious how much I can learn and use this in my life! I live my blog and will continue to use it more often! Off for retail therapy!

Unit 10

In Unit 3, I rated myself higher on physical than on spiritual or psychological. This is because I try very hard to stay physically active either by running or other means of exercise. I had always believed this kept my spiritual and psychosocial level higher. At this point I feel differently. Now that this class is over, I have a better understanding of what the other two areas of my life actually mean. I feel I have a lot of room to grow. I think now, for me spiritual means that I need to implement others into my life. I need to continue to work on forgiving people and learning to not let others bring me down. This also effects my psychological realms which also needs work. I do still do meditation as I have set my goal for. I do still continue to strive to get regular exercise and will continue to work on all areas of my life.

Unit 9 Assignment- Integral Health

Introduction There are many reasons it is important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically. One of the most important reasons, I believe, is because that is how we need to start diagnosis and mapping the care of our patients. We cannot teach what we do not know; therefore we need to learn it. In a video I watched Mind and Life XXV Part 2 (2012), Jimmie Holland talked about making the sixth vital sign distress. This is the direction health care is going in, to holistically treat patients. In my life, I have had many goals and feel like to develop in this sense is a lifelong process. Development of all areas will need to be worked on daily. Assessment To rate myself in each area would be difficult now that I have almost finished this course. I had a different number at the start of the course than I do now. I rated myself quite a bit higher and now I would not give myself more than a two or three in any of the three areas. I understand it more now and what each area really means and takes for full development. Goal Development My physical goal is to stay at a healthy weight. This is important for many reasons. Being a healthy weight lowers my risk for many diseases and also keeps me in better spirits. It also sets an example for my family and my patients. My psychological goal is to learn to stay calm in situations that make me mad. I have a hard time controlling my angry emotions when I work with nurses who do not take care of patients as they should be taken care of or who show they have no compassion for a patient. I wear my emotions on my sleeves I have been told. It is difficult because I honestly love my job and do not do it for the money; I do it because I care. My spiritual goal is to stay spiritual and to not let anyone take that away from me. I believe in GOD and believe HE has a plan for all of us. It took me a long time to feel that way after loosing my mother 5 weeks before I had my oldest child, the only grandchildren she never met. I felt betrayed. Patients sometimes can try to take that belief away from me by asking why HE would do this to someone. I just have to believe, it is done for a reason. Practices for personal health My physical strategy will stay as it was in the beginning of this course, to get as much exercise as possible. Sometimes that means just having enough energy to clean my house, but that is better than nothing. I also believe being physically healthy means eating right. This is not hard for me to do. I love healthy food ten times more than junk food, it does not upset my stomach like junk food and soda does. Psychologically, I have found a mentor to help me with questions I have and someone I can turn to when my anger or selfishness stands between having loving-kindness for others and myself. I believe this task is very hard to accomplish on its own, and feel failure would only be inevitable without someone to be able to call on. The second goal for psychologically is also meditation. There are many different exercises that can help me develop my own psych with this exercise. My spiritual goal is to continue to do my meditation. The websites in the book are excellent resources for information and also have many meditation exercises I can listen to. This is another important factor for me to continue my practices. I do not have a lot of time to go searching for ways to get meditation fitted into my schedule, so the Internet is a perfect resource. I pray every night before I go to bed for my children and family and friends. This is my exercise already implemented that I will continue to do. I think of it as my loving-kindness meditation. I do try to say a blessing for one person who mad me mad or aggravated me that day. Commitment To assess my progress I will print my paper that I am writing and mark my calendar to review what my goals were and see how far I have come with what I believe I wanted to accomplish. Right now I feel my biggest challenge is psychological. I am about to take a new position in management and need to work on the way I deal with situations or I will not be in this position long. I know some people think I will not be able to learn to deal with this type of person in the way that I am setting my goals to do, but I know I can. I think this class happened for me for a reason and am really glad I had the chance to take it, learn it, understand it, and utilize it in my everyday. My family has definitely seen a difference in my personality since taking this course. I do believe if I start to slack off of the meditation or my exercise routine, they will remind me of what I need to do to get back on track. I have also made a year calendar for my desk with inspirational integral health quotes at the top of each month as a reminder of what changes have been made in my life while learning it. Reference: Mind & Life (2012). Contemplative Practice and Health: Laboratory Findings and Real World Challenges with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Retrieved from: http://www.mindandlife.org/dialogues/past-conferences/ml25/

Sometimes life throws us curveballs, and we can either duck or get hit! Today I used what I have learned in this class and did not react to a situation like I would normally react and the outcome was awesome! So I guess when we learn what to react to and how to react, it really does benefit us in so many ways!

Of all the exercises we have covered in this class the Subtle Mind and Meeting Aesclepius were my two favorite. The ones in the book that we had to read and then repeat were difficult because I kept forgetting the words or phrases...not my thing. Since going over these listening meditation exercises I have downloaded a couple of apps from Itunes on meditation so when I do have 15 minutes (usually not at home) I can take that break and calm my mind. I really love these listening type of meditation sessions. I did try to listen to one while I was running...that did not work, it was not motivating in the right way. I hope in my Master's classes for nursing I encounter more of these type of classes. I would highly recommend integral health for any nursing student.

My dearest friend....

I just want to say that life is short and we must stop and think about the life we have and the life we want before it is to late. I lost a good friend of mine and a great nurse yesterday at a very young age. I miss her smile, laughter, and joy already. She was great with my students in the learning environment and was held high at her place of employment as a bedside nurse. She left behind a young son, to whom life will never be the same. I pray that all will just keep in your prayers those who take care of everyone else's families while we put ourselves to the side. Nurses make great sacrifices to share their love and compassion for others...Sharon Matthews will be missed... Thank You...

Meeting Aesclepius

This exercise was interesting. I had to listen to it two times to actually feel like I was doing it right. When it tells you to picture a greater person, this always leads me to spiritual thinking of GOD. And when it tells you to picture the white light..it reminds me of Sylvia Browne and her meditation CD. She says when you pray or meditate you should ask GOD to surround yourself and loved ones in the white light of the Holy Spirit as it will protect you from evil. So in the same sense the white light and the greater being I picture were the same as the ones I picture when I meditate to her disk, it was very familiar to me. I will continue to listen to the exercises in this class and probably seek out more. I will also continue to work on my own integral health so that I may be able to help my clients learn about it and begin in their own Integral life challenge. "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" (Sclitz, Amorok, & Micozzi, 2006, P. 477). I believe this is true in so many aspects of life. It seems to be a saying that has been around and interpreted in many different ways for many years. I believe it to be very true. If I cannot achieve Integral Health myself, how will I ever be able to suggest such values to my patients, friends, family, or anyone? I would not be able to. I believe in order to achieve psychological and spiritual growth in my life, I must continue to meditate and exercise. I need to re-assess my goals along with strengths and weaknesses at points to know where I need to adjust. Goals will always be important to me, so this will be my way of reminding myself that Integral Health is important.

Integral Assessment

Well this exercise made no sense to me...I found it difficult to keep my eyes closed because I had to keep opening them to remember what I was supposed to be repeating! I guess if I had time to do it everyday, I would have memorized them but did not get that chance. I think I do feel universal loving-kindness, maybe not to the full extent that is involved in the Integral Healing, but to a point. The Integral Assessment was interesting to me. I know there are things in all areas of my life I could work on. The one area of focus I feel maybe needs the most focus would probably be interpersonal, which I honestly feel I am already working on. I really love to run, so I have tried some new things with my running. When I focus on my breathing I focus on my inner self. I think about my day or week and think about the things I could have done differently, how I could have handled situations differently. I feel like this helps better myself. I have also been considering going to a life coach. These are counselors that focus more on the present and the future instead of tearing through your past, I really don't need to re-live that. I learn from my mistakes, but they also make you the person you really are. The only way to change or improve is to have someone help you, to give you feedback and ideas. Well...that is the only way I feel I can improve myself.

The Subtle Mind

I felt like this exercise was a world easier than the Loving Kindness Exercise. I did not find it very useful to relax thinking about the negatives of my loved ones or the hatred of others. The ocean waves and the flute music makes it very easy to relax and keep your mind focused and my breathing in tune with the exercise. This type of meditation exercise is one I could sit and do every day and concentrate on my mind and body instead of the things around me keeping my mind busy. The Loving Kindness exercise seemed to constantly shift focus from one thing to the next several times throughout the entire time. Overall, this is my favorite of the three we have had to listen to.

Loving Kindness

This meditation session was a bit easier for me to stay awake for. I found that meditating for my loved ones made me feel like I had purpose for doing it, sending love and spirituality their way. I do have a hard time with the enemy thing...I have not quite got to that part of my spirituality yet. I do pray each and every night for my family and friends so I looked at this session like that. I did try very hard to incorporate this every day but did not accomplish it. I am a very busy person and no matter how hard I try to find time...other things always come up. I am going to try harder to take a little longer then my exercise time to sit and meditate for maybe 15 minutes after my workouts. I believe that a mental workout is just like my physical workout...something that takes hard work and practice. I could not run on the treadmill for 45 minutes when I first started like I can now. So I am not disappointed I have a hard time sitting through a meditation session for longer than 10 minutes. It takes time and training. It also takes a commitment to want to do it and be better at it.