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