Unit 4: Loving-kindness

     I found this week’s exercise to be a little bit long and I had a hard time concentrating on the speaker.  I understand that in order to have gain loving-kindness, I must show loving-kindness to others.  However, I must be able to love myself first; this will allow you to show others that same loving-kindness I would expect to receive from others.  Using deep breathing exercises, I found it pretty easy to get relaxed and shift my thoughts and attention to a place of inner peace.  It's was as if I could hear waves crashing on the beach as I sat in my hotel room in Waikiki.
     When I read the practice, I thought this is crazy because I don't need anymore pain and suffering in my life.  I have enough of my own.  Feeling calm and relaxed, I began to visualize the suffering of a friend or love one with every breath in and the thoughts of that pain turned to something deeper causing me to want to help in some way or another.  The more I breathed in and out I could feel the pain and suffering slowly slip away as I breathed out.  I wasn't sure if this was because I was thinking that with every breath out I was offering some type of emotional support that caused their pain to ease or what?  I just know I could visualize the pain slowly going away and I could imagine the smiles on their faces and the warmth in their hearts. 
     I found this to be a great workout for mental fitness because it makes you think of ways to use loving-kindness.  This exercise proves if you can show compassion for others, you can ease your mind and find inner peace with yourself.  I have seen firsthand what happens when I open my heart and show loving-kindness to others, it makes me happy to know that if only for a moment I was able to bring happiness to someone else in the form of a smile, gesture or emotional support.  After listening to this exercise, I feel at ease and more focused, I think I really like feeling this way.  It's much better than starting off my day feeling grumpy.  I'm really looking forward to doing more of these types of practices; I think I'm beginning to like this feeling of relaxation.                

Unit 3: Mind/Body Connection

     For this week’s blog entry I would like to start by saying I had the worst time getting through the reading for this week.  I find this book "Integral Health like reading the King James version of the Holy Bible.  This book is a tough read and very difficult to understand what the author is really saying.  I have to read the chapters several times to understand how to put this stuff in my own words.  I just hope it gets better as this course continues. 
     This unit is asking me to rate my physical, spiritual and psychological well-being on a scale of 1-10.  Develop goals for each and list some activities I can implement to assist my goals.  Fist, I would rate my physical well-being at 7 of 10 due the inherited high blood pressure and low back problems from serving 23 years in the United States Army.  I usually work out about 3 to 6 days a week and try to keep a pretty strict diet to keep my body looking a feeling good.  Second, I would rate my spiritual well-being at 5 of 10.  Although, I am a believer in a higher power I haven't attended church services in a long while.  Lastly, I would rate my psychological well-being at 5 of 10 due to the fact that I am dealing with recurring issues of PTSD which affect my family and myself as a result of combat related incidents in Iraq.  This is an ongoing fight every day and I am doing all I can to handle this situation to ease the pain and suffering on my family and myself. 
     The goals I have developed for my physical, spiritual and psychological well-being are on going and I plan to follow them as much as possible.  My goal for my physical well-being is to keep exercising 3 to 6 days a week to keep my mind and body feeling and look good.  I find that running help ease the stressors in my life and it helps me to relax afterwards which allows me to handle tough situations with a fresh mind.  My goal for my spiritual well-being is to continue to believe there is truly a higher power and continue to pray for good health and forgiveness for myself and others.  My goals for my psychological well-being is to keep my mind fresh, treat my family with the up most respect they deserve, keep associating with like minded individuals to improve my social status and keep studying in school to keep my mind off of disturbing events.  These are just a few goals I am currently using at this time, I'm sure I can list many more but I think this is enough for now. 
     What activities or exercises I can implement to assist my goals and keep moving forward.  As I mentioned already, running and working out is very good for my physical well-being.  I also attend an exercise class twice a week with local First Nations Aboriginals members.  This is another great way to engage socially with others in my community.  When it comes to my spiritual well-being, I treat this as a personal issue and I do not push my religion on others and I would hope others would have the same respect for me.  Exercises or activities I can use to implement my psychological well-being, I plan to doing as much as possible to stay active with my family, continue to attend meetings with my PTSD counselors, keep associating with like minded individuals and keep the disturbing events to a minimum. 
     This week’s relaxation exercise on Rainbow Meditation once again took me to a place of total relaxation, concentrating on all the different body parts with corresponding colors made the relaxation technique all the better.  I could actually feel the body parts relax as my breathing became deeper and deeper.  The most important area of relaxation for me was my forehead and the corresponding color indigo blue.  I had a bit of a headache and soon as I felt relaxed, I could feel the headache disappear and I indeed feel like my whole body was in balance with everything in the universe.  I'm starting to like this relaxation stuff, I didn't give it much thought before this class.  I think I'll continue, can't wait to see what comes next.    

    

Unit 2 Relaxation

    Hello everyone, I'd like to start by saying this whole blogging thing is new to me and I have no clue as to what I'm doing, so bare with me please.  I hope everyone is enjoying the class, thus far I'm a bit confused as to what this class is all about, but I'm trying to maintain some hope of figuring it all out from week to week even though we are only in week two.
     I don't know if anyone else is having a hard time reading theses books, but reading the text is like trying to break some code of enlightenment, freedom and wholeness.  All I know is that I have to push myself to get an understanding of what Integral Health is all about and try not to over think it as I tend to do.  Thus far, I've come to realize that my eyes are taking a beating from all the reading and I had to get some reading glasses to read the text.  I’m finding that learning about healing the whole body and flourishing to be pretty interesting.  I like the part about training the brain and consciousness & health.  This makes sense to me because in order to move forward, I have to push my limits to be the best I can be, even though I may dislike all this reading.  I'm learning my mind can be transformed from ordinary to exceptional if I keep training my brain.
     I'll be the first to say that I'm not a big fan of this whole relaxation, yoga, meditation journey that a lot of people are talking about.  I was brought up with the old school thought of if you want something you have to make it happen, no pain no gain, if you want to relax, sit down and take a break.  I guess I just have not bought into it.  I know there is some truth in deep breathing techniques because I've used them to calm myself down and focus on the task at hand.  When I was younger, I took up running as the sport of choice.  It was free and I will admit it hurt at times, even though I was in pain it was easier for me to sit in a cold bath to alleviate the pain.  To this day I still take cold showers after a long run to relax my body.  I've never really enjoyed a massage that made me feel good.  I've had about three in my life time and just do not get the feeling everyone talks about.  Getting back to the relaxation, and listing to the exercise.  I thought I would give it a serious go; I lay down on the floor and started my deep breathing techniques to relax.  At first I thought this was some kind of joke because all I could feel was the coldness of the floor radiating through my back side.  After a few minutes, I began to relax and the more I listened to the slow music and the calming voice I began to feel myself sinking into the floor.  I could feel the warmth of the sun shining through my window on my body and all of the thoughts of homework and stresses of the day stated to melt away.  I didn't really feel the heaviness he was talking about, but I was truly relaxed.  It just felt really good to just lie there and do absolutely nothing, when it came time to open my eyes I felt a real sense of calmness.  I took a big stretch and came to the realization it was time to sit back in this chair and continue my homework.  I think I'll find a quiet room and some nice relaxing music after the next time I go for a long run and see if this technique works for muscle relaxation.