Week 8

The two exercises I have found the most beneficial are the Loving Kindness and the Subtle Mind practices. The Loving Kindness because with the recent loss of my dad and watching my mom struggle, it made me still feel a connection to my dad and like I was doing something for my mom. The subtle mind practice because I have a lot of stress right now due to a busy schedule and some family drama that has been hard to deal with. The subtle mind practice helps to calm me down and improve my focus on what is important. I have already began to implement these in my life just by practicing them when I find myself getting stressed and needing to calm down. Also because at the local Buddhist temple, they offer mentorship programs for meditation and I have already contacted them to schedule some appointments and get started.

Aesclepius

               I actually struggled this week with the meditation. I have a lot on my mind this week due to a new position I started at work and a lot of things going on in my personal life so I am having problems slowing down my mind. I do believe the Aesclepius meditation helped me to slow down my mind, I just don't feel to the point where I was able to slow it down like before. I guess we all have our bad weeks and this is mine. But I do believe overall that meditation has helped me to better prioritize things in my life, and to improve my focus better and my mind. I plan to continue to use these methods in my life on a regular basis in order to continue to improve.

              I believe that saying means you need to practice what you preach. You need to truly believe in it yourself if you are going to advise others to do it. If you are acting as an advisor or consultant to clients, you need to show you believe in your own advise and it is attainable. I do believe you have an obligation to your clients because some of these topics can be uncomfortable to talk about to others due to conformist thoughts influenced by society and being uncomfortable thinking outside that box. You need to show you practice what you preach and have taken that path yourself so that your clients can be comfortable talking to you about their own struggles and confusion. I believe you can implement psychological and spiritual growth by seeking out your own advisors and mentors and putting the methods into practice in your own life.

Integral Assessment

I can say I always enjoy the loving kindness exercise. There is a lot of drama and anger happening in my family right now so it always helps me to keep my head on straight and to focus on what is important. The Integral Assessment practice helped me to create a goal to work on. I chose biological because I feel when I went through a lot of the drama in my family that I just went through, that biologically I let my health slip a little. I know that when I am excelling in that area, my mind is so much better due to the endorphins and the serotonin. Otherwise, I tend to be a downer towards myself. I want to get back to being happy. I absolutely love, love, love yoga and use to do a lot of it before all of this happened and it is my happy place. I use to do gymnastics when I was a kid and I think this is the closest thing I can get to feeling like that happy kid again, and it helps me to focus on my breathing and my mind so I have already started back to classes, but after this assessment I now aim to make it more of a point to schedule it as a part of my daily practice.

Subtle Mind

1. This weeks exercise was the Subtle Mind exercise and I really enjoyed it. I cannot say which of either the Subtle mind or the Loving Kindness exercises I liked better. I think I liked them evenly and think they both serve a great purpose. I think if I am needing to feel more connected to my loved ones, and am struggling with them due to conflicts, then the loving kindness exercise would be better. If I am wanting to feel more calm and still, then the subtle mind would feel more beneficial. The subtle mind exercise this evening was rather hard because I am tired, and then also my dishwasher, dryer, and furnace were all going at the same time and I have a small house so there were lots of noises all around. I was also trying to not fall asleep. My mind kept thinking "What about this am I going to blog about?" and "I wish the dishwasher would skip to a quieter cycle" and "don't fall asleep cause after this you have to take the dogs out to the bathroom then go to bed!" I think my mind finally calmed down at the unity part for some reason because it made me think of my dad for some reason and reuniting with him and that made me focus better. In the end I did feel more refreshed. And ready for bed! I will say her voice kind of startles me sometimes during the transitions and I will have a hard time getting into the next flow because her voice snaps me out of it. Spiritual wellness in my opinion seems to help calm and focus mental wellness. It keeps me from being so scatter-brained and focused on keeping things more rational and to better prioritize things. When my mind is better focused, I know my breathing is more calm which helps to control things like my body temperature and my blood pressure. My shoulders always feel more relaxed and my muscles less tense when I feel my spiritual wellness is at a more optimal level.