unit 9 project

Total Body Wellness

     Elliot Dacher talks about how Western Society has gained mastery over the physical and lost touch with the spiritual.  Dacher states To transform health and life we must shift our gaze inward, where we will find the ever-present source of exceptional health and healing (Dacher, 2006 p1).  In just the past couple of years we have all heard of medical mishaps that have taken the lives many people.  To be specific we have heard of many celebrities who have died as a result of a problem with prescription medication.  Many people in Western Society are getting fed up with band-aid type solutions that address only the symptoms of illnesses.  As practices such as yoga and tai-chi are becoming more common, mainstream informative programs such as The Dr. Oz show have been stressing the importance of integral health and inner development and the positve impact it can have on our overall health.  Integral health is best taught by example and that is why it is so important that the wellness professionals have reached such a level of inner development that will make people want to follow the example they have set.  One area of health that I would like to improve is my spiritual health.  I feel like my psychological health has been put to the test in the recent years and while I have not had the time to dwell on it, I have had to keep on moving forward.  Fortunately for me, my physical health has always been there for me and I have used fitness for much more than just staying in shape. 

     I will use a point system from one to ten, ten being the best to rate my psychological, spiritual, and physical health.  As I stated before my spiritual health is the lowest in these three domains.  I rate my spiritual health to be at about a four.  I often look at spiritual health and faith as being the same thing.  I do not consider going to church and having faith as the

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same thing.  While I have all the faith in myself, my faith in a higher being is under question.  I think the reason why my spiritual health is the lowest is also the same reason my psychological health is so strong.  My two daughters ages 8 and 6 have been diagnosed with a rare mitochondria disease.  The girls have had this since they were born and has left them severly handicapped from spending their life in wheelchairs, to not being able to speak or even support their body weight.  Basically they are 100% dependent on my wife and I for every need they have.  This has made me question my faith in higher beings or whatever you want to call it but not the faith in myself.  Their disease has taught me not to take anything for granted like the simple ability to walk and talk.  Still, this has made me question my spirituality.  I would rate my psychological health at a seven.  It is devastating for a parent to see their children suffer, which I have seen for many years and this experience has been nothing short of both a mental and emotional ultra-marathon but this experience has had to keep me on top of my psychological game just to deal with all the extened hospital stays and other downfalls  that with come with a situation like this.  Do not get me wrong, these girls are a blessing.  Physcial health has never been a problem for me, I would rate my current physical health to be an eight.  Although I have been more fit in the past, I am happy with my current fitness and the health of my physical body.  Getting in shape was always lower on the list of why I have been consistant with my fitness over the years.  I would use fitness as a means of moving meditation, the staying in shape part is a nice side effect.  Although, if I did not use fitness as a means of meditation, I would still recognize the importance of exercise and would engage in it to stay healthy, luckily for me it´s like a hobby and the good part is that I am not compulsive about it because too much has its dangers just like too little has its dangers. 

 

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     There are many benefits to having goals in your life.  Goals give you something to strive for, they keep you on track and motivated.  A goal that I have for my psychological health is to keep my mind sharp.  I know that is pretty general, so to be specific, my goal is to be able to speak and understand an Icelandic conversation by Christmas 2012.  Learning a language is a great way to keep the mind activated and sharp.  It seems like I have been going to school for so long that it is just normal, I can´t wait for it to be done, so that all this information has a chance to sink in.  I want or need to learn Icelandic because I am living here with my family who speaks Icelandic and I am tired of my wife or son having to do all the speaking for me.  I guess this goal will serve a couple of different purposes.  One goal that I have for my spiritual health would be to be more understanding and patient of people who might not be as physically fit as myself.  To reach this goal, I will need to be able to get more in touch with the practice of loving-kindness.  Because my daughters were never given the opportunity to walk, play, run or do anything normal, I have lost some compassion in a sense because I do not feel sorry for people who do not use their able body to it´s fullest.  I know it might sound cold but I do not feel sorry for people who are diagnosed with lifestyle related conditions when the fact is that they could have prevented it.  My goal is to gain some of that compassion back and help people get on track or back on track.  I often wonder if gaining some compassion back in my life if it would help with my spirtitual health.  I think that it would, although I do not feel bad for people who get out of shape and all that, I do love to help them get back on track.  I currently have two physical goals that I am working on.  One is a program called Convict Conditioning which involves mastering the six big body weight movements.  I would say that I am really good and strong in three of these but every movement has a progression of ten steps starting from easier to more advanced.  My goal is to start at the bottom of every movement and work through the progressions.     

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Although very few people ever reach to final step of the 10th progression, my goal is to work through each progression, even if I can easily do most of the first four to five progressions of every movement.  My second fitness goal is to run at least three days every week.  Running used to be my favorite thing and I would run about 6 miles every day and about 15 miles on a Saturday.  The past few years I have not done any running until just a couple of weeks ago.  As I started again, I asked myself why I ever stopped in the first place.  My goal is to run at least three days per week and work up to four miles per day. 

     To foster growth into my fitness regime I can focus more on my weaknesses.  I would say my greatest weakness is my flexibility.  Two ways that I can achieve this is by becoming more consistant with yoga which I will do every so often but not enough.  The second way to obtain greater flexibility is to use my foam roller everynight before I go to sleep.  Rolling on a foam roller will help workout any adhesions in the tissue and help to lengthen the muscle.  To implement these practices into my day I will participate in the joga that is offered to the guest at the hotel where I work and will do this two times per week.  To implement the foam rolling I will finish and put aside any activities or homework that I am working on about 10 to 15 minutes earlier than what I normally would do and I will use this extra time to roll on the roller which will help improve the quality of my sleep.  To foster growth into my psychological health I can better open up to my wife and tell her how I feel more often.  Because the situation with my daughters I have become a little reserved and have not opened up about how I feel as much as I should.  One thing that I can do to change this is to set up a time with my wife where the purpose would be to talk about how we are feeling.  I feel that another area of my psychological wellness that could use some growth is for me to laugh more often.  Between work, school, and children, my brain seems like there is no opportunity

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for it to just have fun and laugh a little more.  Although I would say that I am very laid back, I still need this down time to just to help bring more balance into my life. 

     The area of spiritual health that I could foster growth is to understand and have more compassion for somebody who has gotten off track.  At this moment I am more concerned with someone and the state they are currently in and not so much as to how they might have come to this state of being.  What I´m trying to say is that I really do love helping people get back on track, helping them fell better and help them put a plan into place to continue the progress that has been made.  I want to be more caring and understanding as to why they fell off track or never got on in the first place.  The health hotel where I work is a great place to work with people in this regard.  I get to spend a lot of time with the clients who come to the hotel and I lead them in morning walks and joint mobility exercises.  I also have a lecture on fitness.  One way I can add more compassion to what I do is to remember that fitness does not come easy for everyone and also that not everyone has had a major life altering event like sick children to put things into perspective.  By keeping this in mind, I can practice loving-kindness which will also help me remember that no two people are the same and that everyone needs individual attention. 

     An easy way to assess my progress for most of what I talked about here is to put my goals into the S.M.A.R.T goal format.  By using this format I will be able to see if I am still on track and what I need to do to attain the goal.  As far as my fitness goals are concerned, I will continue to log my workouts into my journal as I have in the past.  It was through trial and error that I realized that keeping a workout journal is crucial to keep advancing and also to avoid mistakes from the past.  My work at the health hotel is another means that keep me true

 

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to myself.  Because I spend a lot of time working and educating the clients, I must stay true to myself so that I can continue to preach what I practice.  Another stategy that I can use to keep these areas of health to stay strong is to keep my copy of Integral Health in my pile of books that I will frequently look through.  I have a pile of books that I have found to be very helpful and I have a place in my house where I leave these books so that I can access them on a regular basis and read through the highlighted sections to help remember key terms and practices.