Unit 6 Blog

Hello everyone,

Well as I post before I was not a fan of the Love Kindness exercise but I'm getting more comfortable with it and have been able to settle my mind a little bit more. I found it easier to get rid of the cluttered thought, feelings, and images that I was having trouble controlling before.  I'm doing well with the positive thoughts but still a little trouble when it comes to focusing that Love Kindness on the thoughts that concern the negative people in my past. I'll keep working on it! The integral Assessment showed me how I need to improve or stay the same when it comes to lifestyle and behavior.

I have discovered that there are aspects that I need to work on in order to improve my overall life. I need to learn how to let negative things go in order to reduce the amount of stress that " I " burden myself with. Put forgiveness in my heart and learn to hold my head up high and move forward. I need to give myself credit for being a good mother and solely carrying the head of household responsibilities. Emotionally I need to learn to forgive myself for the mistakes that I have made along the way. I do realize that I have no control over others and what they do but I do have control over how I react.

In all I am a good person and I always try to do things for others even though I keep getting burned. I am organized when it comes to finances and things. I need to take care of my physical person more because I let myself get run down and have a bad diet. I do know that my emotional aspect of life need to be improved before I try to improve my physical life because I have to get into the right frame of mind to implement a plan to work on my physical life. I do know that it goes both ways that if I improve by dieting and exercising it can release chemicals to my brain to improve my mental health as well. I will make a shopping list of good foods to get at the store and try not to eat after 9pm. I will start to walk our dog, Bailey at least three times a week.  I'll keep on pushing forward. Have a great week everyone!

Unit 5 Blog

Hello Everyone,

I really did enjoy the Subtle Mind exercise this week. I completely understood what they were trying to say there being three different levels of the subtle mind. Witnessing consciousness, calm - abiding, and unity consciousness. I can say that the man's voice is so annoying but the woman's voice I can handle. The breathing parts relaxed me and it was nice to get some peace and quiet. I have always used breathing to calm me ever since a child.  The background noise was helpful as well. So the first part witnessing consciousness I did get pulled back and forth with my cluttered thoughts, feelings, and images. I think because as a women we are taught at a young age it is a good to thing to learn how to master multi tasking but I think this is why I have a hard time slowing everything down enough to clear my mind. So there was a lot of clutter ed thoughts and i had to keep going back to the breathing but I got the just of it. The the calm - abiding a little more difficult for me and again had to keep returning to the breathing exercises.I did not achieve the unity consciousness, which I'm sure takes a long time to achieve. I will continue to try this exercise because I did find it relaxing and I would love to be able to reach a much calmer state of mind to help me reduce some stress.  All in all a positive experience with this exercise. Have a great day!

Unit 4 Blog (Mind, body, spirit)

Hello Everyone, I hope everyone is well. Well I found the first exercise Loving and Kindness the most difficult. When it started I was in my peaceful place and felt it filling my heart with love and kindness but the minute that they turned it to loving and kindness to one that had done us wrong or  someone that we had a bad experience it just brought back a lot of bad feelings and memories that I tried to forget. At that point I felt sad and cried and mad. I can say that the crying probabile was a great release because I have yet to cry about things and people that caused  me and my children harm. As the days went on i cried less and less. So on this point I do feel that the exercise was a success. I feel the emotional things that we keep inside cause the most physical damage to our wellbeing. Harboring bad feelings and not letting them out can cause a lot of physical pain and will continue to eat away at you even if you think you have put them in the past. Really they are just out away and not really gone at any moment they can resurface and cause us harm. In all ways. I would recommend these exercises to others especially people like me that have unresolved issues with myself and others. I do believe that when we harber bad feeling towards people in our past only gives those demands power over us and only we can forgive and move on giving us our power back and the and only then are we able to move on in a positive light. Therefore taking the power back that can be used to heal the past to move forward.

Mental workout id so important for ones overall health and even though I have not mastered the way to do mental workouts I do feel it is very important to our mind, body and spirit. I feel that if I can achieve a better mental workout on a routine basis  it will give me the tools to move forward with a clean slate and give integral health.  I think for me this will be a long process and I know that I have to try because stress can kill you. My goal is to learn to let go of the past and forgive myself and others or the things that i harbor and that still cause me mental and physical pain. I know if I can do this through mental workout i will improve my overall health and possibly save my life.

On this note I wish everyone the strength to love yourselves. Because if we don't love ourselves we will never be able to love others. Have a great week everyone!

Reflection Follow Up

Okay, so I tried  this weeks relaxation exercise again and it made me much more relaxed now that my antibiotics have kicked in. My favorite part is when he talks about the different beams of light for each different body section, each a different color. At the time I had a slight headache but it seemed to release some of the pressure in my head and I didn't take any medication for my headache. All in all a much better experience than the first time!

Have a great day!

Reflection

Well I can say that I tried to do this weeks exercise and It didn't make me feel as relaxed as the first one. I think the fact that myself and family have strep throat and I have an achy body it might have been why it didn't work. I will try to do it after a few days of antibiotics. But while we are talking about this it does bring up a good point, I think. If the exercises are supposed to make you relax and your mind can slow your heart rate and help heal your body then is that all tossed aside when there is a foreign body invading ones system. Like me right now with strep throat and maybe other bacteria in my system? What do you think?I only give myself a 2 on all the categories A,B,and C. Because I am physically sick. After feeling better I would like to have a goal of at least a 6 in all categories. The activities that I can implement will be eating right,  drink a lot of fluids and taking my antibiotics as prescribed. I really do enjoy the man's voice on the exercises and I will keep you all updated on the next time I try this exercise. Hopefully my antibiotica will kick in before this week is done. Have a great day!