Hello Fellow Bloggers,

The Loving Kindness exercise was a meditation with a mantra.  Repeating the mantra over and over helps to instill it into the memory.  Performing this mantra allows this behavior to become second nature.  The Integral Assessment was a lifestyle/behavior check to see which areas of someone’s life needs improving or changing. 

I have discovered that I would like to work on the aspects of my life that encompasses fitness goals, emotional development and just plain organization.  When it comes to fitness, I would like to lift heavier and at least get back to where I was earlier this year.  I know it won’t take me too much longer to achieve this goal, but I just have to stick to it.  Emotional development always needs to be improved.  Even though I have been working on my issues with anxiety, I need to become better at having a witnessing mind and not entertaining negative thoughts.  Meditation is an exercise that will definitely help with this. 

Organization will come in time.  Once my company has been sold and I know whether or not I will still be employed, I can decide what I will be doing about the other jobs and projects that I am involved with.  For this type of organization, I will formulate a list of jobs and related tasks to actually make a visual analysis of what I want to have happen.  I am also going to use this information to create a vision board to help with organizing and hopefully, manifesting my ideas.  Once I have achieved these things, I feel I will be a much more relaxed and organized individual. 

Unit 5 - Higher Thinking

Hello everyone!

 

1.   Compare and contrast the Loving Kindness exercise and the Subtle mind exercise. Explain your experience including the benefits, frustrations etc.

I liked both of the meditations; however, there were definite differences.  The Loving Kindness exercise was a good meditation even though I felt that the pauses were too long and some of the directions were difficult to accomplish.  It was hard to encompass people that I do not know into my thoughts. 

The Subtle Mind exercise was actually really relaxing for me.  I did not like the man’s voice that was in the beginning of the audio, but I did like the woman’s voice.  Her voice was perfect to guide us through the meditative breathing.  I prefer this meditation over The Loving Kindness meditation.  With it focused on breathing, it seemed a lot more tangible for me than the other one.   I know I will be doing that meditation again.

 

 

2.    Discuss the connection of the spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness. Explain how the connection is manifested in your personal life.

It seems as though that you cannot have spiritual wellness without having mental and physical wellness.  When your mind is clear and your body is working correctly, you have the capacity to allow for spiritual growth.  With your mind being free of negative mental chatter, it allows you to connect to your spiritual guide.  It also allows you to be able to put faith in to your spiritual guides as well as your intentions. 

I have not completely reached this level of mental awareness.  I know I still need a little bit of work and time to accomplish this goal.  I need to fully get a grasp on mental clarity and a more positive thought process.  This will take some time to achieve. 

Hello Fellow Bloggers,

 

I actually enjoyed this meditation more than I have the other ones.  It was relaxing and I was able to perform most of the directions.  It was very difficult for me to think about a group of people to help without putting faces to them.  I found the next segment even more difficult when it said to include my enemies. 

 

I would recommend this to other people, especially if they had someone special in their life that needed special help.  I think it will help someone be able to help their loved one.  The person that I immediately thought of was my son who has ADHD and some anger issues.  I secretly hope he felt
my love as I was exhaling. 


A mental workout is a very healthy thing to do.  When you go to the gym, you exercise your body, so it would make sense that performing a mental workout would be just as healthy.  Research has shown the benefits of empowering the mind.  When someone’s mental health is clear and stable, their body seems to follow suit.  Meditation has been a great way for me to have my mental workouts.  Even practicing deep breathing to push negative thoughts out of the brain is beneficial.  Anything that helps to clear the mind will help keep the body healthy.

Hello Readers:

I would say that overall I am probably a 7 as far as my rating towards optimal well-being.  For my physical well-being, I would rate myself at a 9; for spiritual well-being, I would rate myself at a 7 and for psychological well-being, I would be at a 7 as well.  Physically, I am in really good shape; however, since I want to compete in Physique eventually, I know that I need to add muscle and lose more of the fat.  As far as spirituality is concerned, there is definitely room for improvement.  I would like to get back in to Reiki as a practitioner to be connected in a spiritual manner.  Psychologically speaking, I need to improve my mental health.  I am working on stopping my feelings of anxiety, but even though I have curbed some of the anxiety, I haven’t been able to cut it out of my thoughts.

I will continue to work on my goals in these three areas.  For physical activity, I will continue to go to the gym and keep lifting heavier weight.  To help my spirituality aspect, I will start using Reiki on my family in order to help them heal.  For my mental health, I will continue to try to demolish thoughts of anxiousness and stop worrying about the things that I cannot control.

I actually enjoyed this one more than I did the last meditation.  I thought it was very relaxing.  I did get a bit impatient towards the end, but it is only because I do not sit still very well.  I am going to play this for my children to see how they receive it.  It will be interesting to see how they do.

Jean