Final Project

As a health and wellness professional I believe it is very important to live the life and practice every aspect of being a health and wellness professional. You need to be living a healthy well balanced life psychologically, spiritually, and physically. I feel as though you cannot be successful with others or really gain their trust unless you are living that lifestyle yourself. I personally know there are many areas of my life that I need to improve upon to become a successful health and wellness professional. Physically and psychologically I am great, where I struggle is with spiritually. One of my goals is to become more in-tune with myself and learning and practicing meditation. I want to live a more balanced life and learn how to deal with everyday stressors better. By meditating and practicing things like the loving kindness exercises I will be able to apply what I learn, teach and explain my experiences with clients I may have as a personal trainer. You need to have that firsthand experience to be able to tell and explain the benefits to you clients and to gain their trust in you. 

Monitoring and assessing your health every so often is important because it keeps you in check of developing and a health and wellness professional. It gives you an opportunity to look at yourself, spiritually, physically and psychologically and see where you are and how you can improve in certain areas. When we look at these three areas each one holds its own importance. I think physically is a very important one because here we are looking at our physical appearance health wise. We are looking at things like are we active? Are you happy with yourself and your lifestyle? I personally feel very good in this area when it comes to my own personal assessment. If you were to ask me 2 years ago to asses myself I would have given myself a very poor score. I exercise 5 times a week for 60 minutes. I have very healthy eating habits and live a healthy active lifestyle. I still feel this is an area that I can improve in because I am still a bit over weight and would like to get a an even better and healthier lifestyle.  Exercise makes me feel good and is a great way for me to relive any stress in my life. Exercise has helped me psychologically because it is like therapy for me. It gives me the time I need to focus on myself and puts me in a great state of mind. I used to have problems with depression but ever since I started exercising and working out and feeling good about myself and my body. I do not have a problem anymore which is a wonderful feeling. When it comes to spirituality I am very much in touch with God and prayer. I could be better with meditation and being at peace with myself and just letting everything go, but that is not me. I feel that when it comes to spirituality I have a good balance to keep me in a good state. I feel as though sometimes if you have too much spirituality you can be unbalanced in other areas. I guess that can be true with anyone of the other areas as well. 

Goal development will help you striving to make improvements in your life physically, psychologically and spiritually. Everyone should make goals in these areas. When it comes to my physical goal I would like to see myself more toned and dedicating more time to working out. I already work out a lot but I would like to be able to push myself harder to accomplish quicker times when I run races. When it comes to psychological or mental health I would like to see myself with less stress in my life and working on being in a better state of mind. My mental state tends to waiver a lot. One day I am feeling great happy as can be and the other I am having the worst day and feeling very down. One of my goals is to get consistency in my mental wellbeing. So that is one thing I will work on, becoming more at peace with the way things are and become patient with change. When it comes to my spiritual health I would like to work on being more at peace and have a closer relationship with God through prayer. I often times with just pray in times of need but I personally would like to be better at praying and thanking God for all the wonderful things I have in my life. Taking moments to be thankful for what we have can be an important step to changing our spiritual wellbeing. 

There are many strategies that I can implement to foster growth in your physical, psychological and spiritual areas. When it comes to my physical there are two areas that I could implement to help me with attaining my physical goals. One is discipline, which is sticking to a schedule and saying with it and making sure that I commit time to work out toward my physical goal. Procrastination is my worst enemy and as longs as I stick to my plan and think of my workouts as an appointment I will be able to attain my goal of becoming even more fit and living a healthier lifestyle. When it comes to my psychological and mental health there are many strategies I can implement to foster growth in this area. One of the ways I can help myself deal with stress is meditation. This will give me time each day or even every other day to take a moment for myself and just let go of all my stresses and just focus on things like deep breathing and relaxing my body. Doing things like the loving kindness exercise, can help me achieve that peaceful state of mind. Another technique I can use to help my mental health is journaling. Journaling is a great way for you to be able to express your emotions and help you release feelings that you feel you can’t tell or say to others. I already do a lot of journaling because it helps me keep balanced and express feelings where I know I won’t be judged or frowned upon. Spirituality is one area where I find I do need improvement on and there are several strategies or things I can do to help improve my spirituality. The first thing I can do is make time everyday for prayer. I personally tend to only pray in times of need. Spiritually I would feel better if not only did I pray for times of need but pray to thank God for all the wonderful things in my life. By making time for prayer it will help me both spiritually and mentally as well. 

When it comes to assessing my progress it is going to be key that I look at it every few months or maybe even weeks at first. With any change that you make you need to set short term and long term goals as to where you would like to be and then follow through and track whether or not you have achieved them. For me when it comes to me physically there are many ways that I can track my progress. I could utilize tools like weight loss applications or even something as simple as writing my weight down in a journal to see my progress over the next 6 months. There are several strategies that I can use do assist in maintaining my long-term practices for health and wellness. One of the strategies I can utilize is setting up a schedule almost like an appointment. Thinking of exercise makes it important having the mentality that it is something you cannot miss. You are able to say I am busy during this time because I am exercising. This is a great practice to make sure you make time for yourself everyday and to keep yourself going strong in your wellness goals. 

Unit 8 Post

Over the time of this course we have been able to practice many beneficial meditation practices. Each one was very unique I think the two that I found the most beneficial was the visualization and the subtle mind. Visualization helped me focus just on  and trying to block my mind from all the mental chatter. Meeting Aesclepius was probably my favorite exercises because of the fact for it they had you focus on someone strong and I chose to focus on my grandfather who has passed on. It made my mind just focus on nothing but my grandfather and the love that I had and still have for him. It gave me the moments I needed to calm my mind and just forget about everything. 

These exercises were wonderful and I can implement these into my life by practicing them every day or every other day. You have to think of it like a exercise program to gain better fitness and balance in your life you need to practice. If you schedule time everyday you could easily improve your mental health. The main thing with mental fitness is the discipline. you have to be committed to it and make time for it otherwise you will never improve and come to have that peace of mind. 

Unit 7 Blog Post

I found this week’s listening meditation exercise very nice to do. I liked the imagery that they had us use. I found it very easy to think of a person what is a strong influence and someone that you admire and can focus on. For this exercise I choose to focus on my grandfather who has passed away. It was a nice exercise because after I was done I felt so much better because my grandfather always brought a smile to my face and could make me feel better.

“One cannot lead another where on has not gone himself” This saying applies to a health and wellness professional in many ways. It is basically saying that it is difficult for you to help someone else with their health and wellness goals if you have not been through a journey yourself. I think as a health and wellness professional if you are going to help someone with their goals you have to have your own experiences where you can relate to your client. It is hard to understand some of the challenges your client might be having unless you have gone through a similar journey. I believe you do have an obligation to your clients to be developing your health psychologically,  physically, and spiritually. As a healthy care professional you should be constantly training to grow yourself health wise. I think that spiritually and psychologically is the most challenging of al the ways to develop which is why it is important for a health professional to understand that aspect of wellness. 

Unit 6 Post

Greetings everyone. So this week we had to practice the Loving kindness meditation exercises and also had to complete the intregal assessment. Lets start with the Loving Kindness exercise. I personally after the exercises did not feel more loving- kindness running though me. I can understand how others it may bring comfort and make them feel more loving-kindness in there life. I am one who is more focused on actions to show loving-kindness. Being there for a friend, listening to a co-worker, overall just generally caring for others helps me feel a sense of loving kindness not only for myself but others. I understand taking the time to meditate loving-kindness may help take anger and stress away, but it can only do so much. 

The next assessment we had to take was the integral assessment. For this we had to take a look at ourselves and figures out things like what do we want to discover about ourselves and what we can do to grown and develop that area. I personally feel as though I would focus on interpersonal right now the relationship with my family. I am one who as gotten really good at separating emotions from myself. Where I keep all my thoughts and feelings inside or with in my journal. Journaling is the only way for me to truly express my thoughts and get myself to a calmer mind. Another way I could help calm my mind from thoughts and let go of emotions would be through meditation. Taking the time everyday to have a few moments to just sit in peace would calm my mind. 

Unit 5 Exercise

This week we had to compare and contrast the the Loving kindness exercise and subtle mind exercise. Honestly I did not get much out of either one of the exercises really.  Both seemed very similar in many ways. I guess that that would be one of my frustrations is that they all seem so similar the exercises. Maybe I am just not understanding them correctly. I understand the importance of loving and kindness and it is something I feel in my heart not so much in my mind. 

 One thing I have learned just in my own personal experience and not from a book is that spiritual, mental and physical wellness are all connected. Mental and Physical are very closely connected because it takes a lot of mental power to work our physically. Meaning getting the sometimes motivation to do it and then also having the ability to push yourself through a hard workout. For example I run half marathons and there is point in which your mind thinks that you can’t go any farther. You learn to use your mental power to push past it because you really know what you can handle. In running before a race I always pray, mainly to my grandfather asking him to be with me as I run. It gives me a mental peace before I run and is a way for me to calm my mind and nerves before a race and it makes me happy thinking about how proud he would be of me. 

Unit 3 Exercise

Their are 3 specific skills and individual can develop to prepare to incorporate integral health into your life. They are Loving-Kindness, Skillful action and silence and stillness.It is very important for a person to have each one of these skills to have integral health in your life. These three things can help you live a more balanced and happier life. The first skill to develop is loving-kindness. Being loving and embracing others is one of life's natural remedies for helping someone with stress, anger, pride and several other emotions and feelings. Some ways to display loving-kindness are thing's like prayer, thoughts, generosity as well as fairness, honesty, respect and patience (Dacher, 2006).

The other skill that is a key part of loving kindness is skillful behavior. Which is an example of changing our behaviors and how we react to the world around us. All behaviors are learned and can be changed the difference is being able and willing to change. Removing things like anger and revenge you will live a happier life. This is something I implement all the time in my life because there is no point to getting angry and looking for revenge sometimes you have to just take things the way they are and just go with the flow. No reason to stress over certain things. 

The last skill to prepare incorporating integral health into your life is Silence and Stillness. The other two skills really prepare you for this because you have to have a peace mind in order to practice silence and stillness. By practicing silence and stillness you can calm your mind and be at peace with yourself and maybe whats going on. This is something I recently have been trying to incorporate into my life because there are times in which I would just like to be completely relaxed and forget the world and whats going on. I have incorporated both meditation and yoga into my life to help me achieve silence and stillness. 

How I got started...

You never know how far you can go unless you run!

 My running journey started out simply as a weight-loss goal and life change.  It has been almost 2 years this coming October that I started my weight-loss journey. I am one who is not ashamed to tell you where I started because I am proud of how far I have come. I look at my journey as a very important life lesson and through the process I learned many and discovered a new me. I had just recently moved back to Chicago from Orlando, FL and well, I was not taking care of myself because I was in I guess you could say a rut. I am one who has always battled with weight and have been a yo-yo. It has been frustration all through life because I am youngest in my family and I am the only one who struggles with weight problems. My cousin and I have both struggled with the same problem. So when I moved back to Chicago we both decided it was time for things to change!

 So, it was about 2 brave years ago I decided to step on the scale and see how overweight I was. I had been dreading the moment for a long time, because part of me was not ready to recognize how out of hand I let things get. When I stepped on the scale I was shocked and appalled at myself. The scale read 236 pounds. Yikes. It was a number I was not exactly prepared for. It was time to take action. Since my cousin and I were in the same boat and started out right at the same numbers we decided to become workout buddies. If their is any one tip I would give to a person starting to workout it would be HAVE A WORKOUT BUDDY! It is my cousin who helped push me to work harder and do more reps. I have always had a competitive spirit and having someone there just brought that out in me. I would like to think I did the same for her as well. We would meet each other after our work day was done and be at the gym for a good 2 hrs. We started out slow doing fast walking on the treadmill and slowly increased it to doing higher levels in the hills option and of course we added in weight training. My first week of exercising and diet change I lost 10 pounds. When it came to the food I ate I made the change in easy to do ways. I first cut my portion size and followed the actual guidelines according to packaging. That alone made a big difference for the long term.  By just cutting my portion sizes my diet change didn’t seem all that different because I was still eating the foods I had been just not as much. It made the diet transition of phasing in better healthier foods a lot easier. 

Thus all of the changes and preparations have brought me up to how I began running. I remember it very clearly in March of 2011 I went on vacation to California and during my vacation I refused to stop working out. So while I was on vacation at night or sometimes in the morning I would go work out. One of the days when I was working out I was curious to see how far I could run on the treadmil. So I took a shot at it. I ran at a 12 min/mi pace for 1/2 mile and I was exhausted and out of breath.  I was still very proud of myself though because that was about 5 min straight of running which I had never done before in my life. My fastest mile ever was in high school and it was 9min and 45 sec. Which compare to the rest of the class was very slow. Now, that half mile that I ran did not feel good by any means because I felt like I couldn’t breath. But for some reason I kept trying to go farther and farther and farther. Until I was excited when I ran my first mile with out stopping on the treadmill. That was a big step for me. Now I was not training for anything at the time. I just wanted to see how far I could run and that is where my running turned into something more. One of my friends told me how she was going to be doing the Disneyland Half Marathon and my first thought was “No way would I ever be able to run 13.1 miles, Its crazy”. Well crazy me decided it would be a really great goal to work twards. So I signed up for my first Half Marathon. Sadly it was not the Disneyland Half Marathon but I did sign up for the Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathon which ironically took place on the 1 year anniversary of when I decided to make my life change. I will talk more about this race in another post but lets just say it was one of the best feelings I have ever encountered! 

So, it has been a long process but because of the life change I made and my new found passion for running, 2 years later I have lost 80 pounds! I would ideally like to lose a little bit more, but I am very happy of where I am now compared to where I was! And now with this blog I would like to share my new goal of running my very first Marathon in January. I want to share my training journey with others so they can see how "your dreams can come true if you have the courage to peruse them!”( Walt Disney).

My cousin and I before

My cousin and I after