Integral Health
Approach
Part I
It is important that health and wellness professionals understand
the importance of integral health and healing to be able to teach others. In order to teach others, a professional must
have developed psychologically, spiritually, and physically. Since one cannot see the spiritual and the
psychological aspects of healing, there must be an understanding or a
self-awareness of these areas. The
physical aspect can be seen by what someone looks like, but may have a
different level of health inside, depending on how the person copes with
stress, what the person eats, and whether or not they exercise. In order to improve this author’s levels,
psychologically, spiritually, and physically, a personal assessment must be
done to evaluate areas that are deficient.
This author has a good physical state of health at the current moment,
so there is a great need to modify and or improve her psychological and
spiritual areas the most.
Part II
This author has rated her psychological development at a
three star on a five star scale rating system.
She lacks self-control when angered at times and is unable to alter her
mood at times when grumpy. Stress is her
enemy and she does not cope well with a lot of it. This author rates her spiritual health at a
four star on a five star rating system, because she has a sense of awareness
that there is a higher being to go to with her problems, God. This is a way to feel a sense of oneness with
ourselves, through prayer and meditation.
This author doesn’t read scripture enough to broaden her knowledge base
for spiritual growth and development.
This author believes everything happens for a reason, which helps to
reduce her anxiety and fear accompanied with change or the unknown
circumstances that face her. Physically
this author rates her physical level of health at a five star on a five star
rating system, because she has made the necessary changes necessary to maintain
a healthy weight and BMI. Her vitals are
all normal and she has had a stress test recently that demonstrates she has a
healthy heart. The only fault that this
author has is her dietary habits. She
likes sweets a little too much.
Part II
Psychologically- a goal for this author would be to think
about the necessary worries and the worries that cannot be changed, before
letting them get to her psychologically.
This will help her to cope with them on a more reasonable level with
intention. When we understand our
feelings we tend to practice this much better.
Spiritually- a goal for this author would be to read the
Bible every morning at least ten minutes for six out of seven days each week to
grow in knowledge and spirit.
Physically- a goal for this author would be to challenge her
daily dietary habits, by reducing the allowance of sweets to two days a week
and replace the temptations on the other five days with a fruit or vegetable.
Part IV
To be able to meet the psychological goal, this author will
use relaxation techniques, such as, deep breathing, to calm down and become
more reasonable when agitated. Another
way to become less agitated would be to learn to count to ten before responding
to a frustrating situation. To meet the
spiritual goal set forth for this author, she can use guided visual imagery, to
improve her self-awareness and emotions.
The second activity that will help this author meet her spiritual goal
would be using the loving-kindness approach of visualizing a loved one that has
been a wise person from her past and reminiscing on the loved one’s role to her
to develop an increased sense of compassion and love towards others. Physical activities that can be performed to
help this author reach her healthier nutritional status are to choose healthy
alternatives to sweets, such as, an apple or a pear, instead of cake or
doughnuts. Another thing that this
author could do to improve her physical health through nutrition is to make a
grocery list minimizing items that are unhealthy and packing meals ahead of
time to limit desire to use vending machines or to reach for other unhealthy
items out of convenience.
Psychological activities, such as, deep breathing and
counting can be done anywhere and anytime when this author becomes agitated to
help in calming her emotional state.
This author plans to keep a note or reminder in view at work for quick
reference to remember to perform these practices, until they become learned
practices.
Spiritual activities including; guided visual imagery, and
reminiscing of a wise loved one to become more compassionate and loving, can be
practiced every morning or evening on a daily basis.
Physically, the practices set forth for this author will
have to be by means of planning ahead and through the use of
self-discipline. This author plans to
reward herself for staying on track with the goals established regarding her
dietary habits. The reward will not be a
food item, rather a piece of exercise equipment or clothing, to stay on track.
Part V
In order to assess this author’s progress she will keep a
tracking sheet and a writing journal on her emotions for every day of the
week. The tracking form will list
psychological, spiritual, and physical areas with the goals listed under each
one of them with a tab for each day of the week to mark if she stayed on track
or not. The writing journal will be
utilized to jot down emotions throughout the day to see what activities affected
each area, psychological, spiritual, and physical, to alter lifestyle so that
those activities can be reduced, avoided, or eliminated from her schedule and
life. This way both tools can be used to
enhance psychological, spiritual, and physical health and wellness and allow
her to continually evaluate and modify her goals as necessary to sustain
optimal health and wellness as a health and wellness role model for her
clients.
Tracy
Hi using a journal is a great way to track progress and continue to assessing the mentioned health areas. To stay on track with nutrition planning ahead, packing and shopping with a list are excellent ways to keep a healthy diet. I like the idea of rewarding healthy choices with tools that can be used to further progress.
ReplyDeleteWhen tempted to stray off a nutrition plan it is good to ask the following questions,
Am I really hungry or am I upset or bored? How will I feel after I eat this? Is this something I would want my children to eat? (Moms usually make better choices for kids than themselves)
Another strategy is walk away and if you still want it in 20 minutes have half. But best way to eat clean is to shop clean. We can’t eat what we don’t have.
Best wishes Tracy!