Final thoughts, week 9

Unit 9 Final Project

I Introduction: Why is it important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically? What areas do you need to develop to achieve the goals you have for yourself?

As a health and wellness professional it is important to the profession that as an individual you try to constantly better yourself physically, spiritually, and psychologically. No individual will ever be perfect and become a perfect model of fitness and wellness, however what is important is that we constantly increase our level of self awareness and try different approaches to forwarding our well being. By having a high level of awareness and taking the effort to do different activities to further your health, you are not only doing good for yourself but setting the example for others and gaining valuable experience that enables you to help others as well. A health and wellness professional is on a life time journey toward wellness, and it is not something that can be mastered in a day or ever completed. The more experience you share with others and the more you inspire those you are trying to help, the more effective you will be as a professional that is trying to help other people.

II Assessment:How have you assessed your health in each domain? How do you score your wellness spiritually, physically, and psychologically?

Throughout the duration of this course I have assessed my own physical, mental, and spiritual health. Physically, I am strong and constantly seek to better myself in this area. I exercise regularly throughout the week, make more of an effort to watch what I eat, and make better lifestyle choices. Although I am not exactly where I would like to be as far as physical fitness, I constantly maintain a high level of awareness and seek constant improvement. Overall I would rate my physical health at an 8 on a scale of one to ten.

Spiritual health is where I have improved the most during the course of this class. My spiritual awareness was quite low until taking this class and participating in the different activities during the course. However I did achieve a higher level of awareness about my spiritual health and was at least able to recognize different changes that I needed to make and things that I need to do in order to bring my spiritual level back up to speed. I would say that my spiritual health is about at a 5 or 6.

Psychological health has also been a strong point for me during this course. I have always held a high level of self awareness in this area and do my best to maintain a positive attitude and outlook on life. I also seem to handle stress and adversity rather well, but I am also just human so I do have my thresholds. This class has been helpful in providing additional techniques and methods to deal with stress and help keep a positive mental outlook. I would currently rate my mental health at about an 8.

III Goal development:List at least one goal you have for yourself in each area, Physical, Psychological (mental health) and Spiritual.

Physically my goal is to be able to complete a half marathon within six months. I have been running several times a week recently after not running for quite a long time. Mentally, my goal is to increase my stress threshold by using various stress reducing techniques such as breathing exercises. Spiritually, I have grown fond of the idea of meditation, and would like to incorporate that into my daily routine, even if I can only do it for 15 minutes a day.

IV Practices for personal health:What strategies can you implement to foster growth in each of the following domains; Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual. Provide at least two examples of exercises or practices in each domain. Explain how you will implement each example.

To foster growth in the physical domain, I plan on incorporating various aerobic and anaerobic exercises into my workout routine. I like a variety of exercises to do so I do not get bored. For aerobic exercises I will do swimming, boxing, and jogging. For anaerobic exercise, I plan on lifting weights, doing sprints, and doing different movement exercises such as rope climbing. I will implement these exercises into my fitness routine according to weather, activity availability, and any physical limitations I might have at the moment.

To foster spiritual growth I intend to incorporate meditation into my daily routine. I will strive to do this everyday in the evening time, when the daily activities start to die down a little bit. My goal is to do a minimum of fifteen minutes each session. I will also try to re-establish my faith and start praying again on a regular basis. This one will be hard to schedule in, because some level of inspiration is required to pray. But I will try to do it at least once a day.

To foster mental growth I will incorporate different stress reduction exercises into my day when I am feeling stress to help bring me down a little bit. I can deal with stress, but being a high level of stress isn’t good for the body, so I will try to work at a lower level. I can do this by using various breathing techniques and thinking of different things to maintain a positive attitude. By trying to find the good in any situation, you can avoid a lot of stress.

V Commitment:How will you assess your progress or lack of progress in the next six months? What strategies can you use to assist in maintaining your long-term practices for health and wellness?

To assess my progress in regard to physical fitness, I set small goals to constantly work toward my big goals. I will periodically take fitness screenings to see if I have improved in different areas and by how much, this way I know where I need to concentrate the majority of my effort. I will also keep a record of the types of exercises I have been doing so I can look back and see which ones have been the most effective.

To assess my spiritual development, I will see how my progression goes with meditation and prayer. I will keep a written journal of my experiences and feelings with each activity, and document the amount of time I have spent each day doing so. Periodically I can read this journal and see where I was a month or two ago and see how I am improving my level of spiritual fitness.

In order to assess my mental fitness and development, I will also keep a written journal rating how I felt in different situations, and rate them on a scale of one to ten. As I continue to incorporate stress reduction exercises into my daily routine, I will also be able to measure my progression over time by looking through my journal and seeing how I react to a similar situation later on after doing this. I should see some line of progression where the mental and physical symptoms of stress are not as intense or frequent.