Loving Kindness and Meditation

After reviewing all these exercises, loving kindness and meditation exercises are most beneficial for me. Personally, I enjoyed doing both exercises. It makes me feel so relax and tension free. Meditation has both physical and spiritual benefits. Physically, it can help to reduce blood pressure, relaxes tense muscles, and enables better sleep. Spiritually, it can reduce stress, enables us to think more clearly, and substantially increases productivity. Best thing about these exercise is does not require lot of time. You can just do it for 10 minutes before bedtime will do wonders for a night’s sleep. If you do ten minutes in the morning will help you have a much better day. So either morning or night, it can help you to feel relax and peace. The practice of loving kindness is an excellent tool for breaking down barriers as well as restoring humanity and kindness when your mind feels like a battlefield. The benefits are also that you re-train your mind to let go of stress far more easily when the mind is more calm and happy and come up with mutually beneficial solutions to challenges you may be facing.

Asclepius practice

 

1.                Complete the Meeting Aesclepius mp3 (located in the Doc Sharing area). Describe your meditative practices for the week and discuss the experience. Explain how mindfulness or meditation has fostered an increase in your psychological or spiritual wellness. How can you continue to apply these practices in your life to foster greater health and wellness?

It is the wise healer who resides within each of us who will help guide us through the preparations and the integral process itself. That wise one the ancient Greeks called Asclepius. I tried this exercise to the first time and did not succeed. I got hard time to sit in communicate with this wise person and feel his/her presence. After 24 hrs, I tried again this exercise and realized concentration is very important do this practice. I always wanted to become a top dancing start so I imaged that person and enjoyed every second of loving healer in body, mind and speech. I enjoyed doing this exercise and I would definitely recommend to my friends if they feel down about their life. It helps a lot to achieve our goal.

2.                Describe the saying: "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" (p.477). How does this apply to the health and wellness professional? Do you have an obligation to your clients to be developing your health psychologically, physically, and spiritually? Why or why not? How can you implement psychological and spiritual growth in your personal life?

One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself. I totally agree to this sentence because if you never had an experience, then you don’t have rights to advice anybody. For example, if somebody is going trough divorce, nobody will understand that pain unless personally you have gone through that pain. That person is already feeling sad so physically we should be helping them like tell them to divert their minds to some activities. Spiritually we can advice them to do some yoga class or massage to help them relieve pain and clear their mind. Psychologically we can share their feelings and make them feel good. 

Blog 6 ...Universal loving kindness

I just loved this exercise. The development of universal loving kindness is the final leap in our interpersonal development. Integral health requires that we begin to extend these capacities beyond our close group of loved ones to all of humankind. I tried this exercise for the first time, I actually felt really good about myself. I closed my eyes for a minute and repeated those phrases 10 times. My favorite phrase is “may all individuals gain freedom from suffering”. This slogan is just touched my heart.

                        Integral health helps into the ease and stillness of our mind and body, releasing all mental activity. Integral health involves a new way of thinking about oneself. It's not just another self-help remedy, therapy, or technique. It's taking responsibility for one's health and life in a completely new, holistic way. It requires a dynamic, intentional transformation of mind and heart that leads to a profound shift in health and healing. Integral health is the next evolutionary step in human development.

I always wanted to focus on my mind, because I change my thoughts every second and its horrible. I wanted to learn how to believe in my decisions and follow it without changing in every second. That’s one the reason I started doing yoga. It was so hard for me to do yoga in the beginning because I couldn’t control my mind. But after few months, I started concentrate more and stop changing my thoughts. I love doing it now and it is helping to focus in my career.

Loving kindness Vs Subtle mind

1.                Compare and contrast the Loving Kindness exercise and the Subtle mind exercise. Explain your experience including the benefits, frustrations etc.

Answer: Loving kindness exercise resting comfortably in your natural state of peace and ease, bring to mind an individual, someone close to you, who you hold with great love and tenderness. Loving kindness exercise does not mean feeling love at the exclusion of any other emotions. Rather, it means calling upon loving kindness to enrobe all or the emotions inhabiting us in the present moment. Our emotions are shaped by our thoughts. The subtle mind exercise explains we use the breath for two reasons. First, there is direct relationship between the breath and mind. Peaceful breathing pattern leads to a peaceful mind. Second, the breath is always with us so we can work with it even in the midst of a meeting, using the breath, we will learn how to tame and stabilize the mind by developing a witnessing consciousness. I tried both exercise and it is beneficial for our health. I tried both exercise for 10 to 15 minutes and it was hard doing it first time. Loving kindness and subtle mind exercise both helps to relief stress and clear our mind and thoughts with peace and ease.

2.                Discuss the connection of the spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness. Explain how the connection is manifested in your personal life.

Spiritual wellness is a personal matter involving values and beliefs that provide a purpose in our lives. While different individuals may have different views of what spiritualism is, it is generally considered to be the search for meaning and purpose in human existence, leading one to strive for a state of harmony with oneself and others while working to balance inner needs with the rest of the world. It is connection between mental and physical wellness. Mental wellness is depending on us how we live our life. I always try to think positive when I am stressed out with work and school so it won’t cause me any health problem. I have seen people that when they get stressed out, they start drinking alcohol and ruining their life. I really don’t want to part of that life. I should be thankful to god that gives me beautiful with wonderful friends and family. Physical wellness is the ability to maintain a healthy quality of life that allows us to get through our daily activities without physical stress. I do physical activities five days a week and help me to relief stress and maintain my weight.