My personal path to mental and spiritual fitness!

After considering all of the exercises we have had to endure over the past weeks, I have come to the conclusion that both Loving Kindness and the Subtle Mind was most beneficial to me.  I've come to this conclusion because I felt as though I just could not stay focused and my mind either wanted to drift on another random thought of chatter or I wanted to fall asleep in the other exercises.  Either way, I've just been struggling to even get a chance to see what works for me.  In spite of this trouble, the speakers in both Loving Kindness and Subtle Mind did a great job at guiding my focal points as I've mentioned before.  This was a huge help for me.

I've realized that family is a major motivator for me, like many other people I'm sure.  Learning how to treat others should not only exist within the family unit but transcend to others I may encounter on a daily basis.  I have learned that this is very important especially with a career guided toward health and wellness.  I've also come to realize that establishing and maintaining overall health has so much more to do with gaining inner stability over outer physical stability.  With this is mind, these exercises can be a huge help for clients that are struggling with people on their job or just struggling to manage a heavy load of responsibility.  Some of the methods that have not worked for me, may just as well be perfect for some of my clients and their progress toward integral health.

Subtle Mind Exercise

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

As I've completed both the Loving Kindness and Subtle Mind exercises, I noticed that I was more easily frustrated while the speakers spoke.  However, I appreciated the fact that they briefly gave me my focal point during the exercise.  I also really like the periods where you only heard the sounds of water, as it was very calming.  As I stated last time, it was quite hard to get into loving kindness at first since I was dealing with such a stressful situation.  It was also difficult to complete the subtle mind exercise, because I went into it with the worst migraine you could imagine probably as a result of the stress following the effects of Hurricane Isaac.  I noticed that as I completed the exercise it felt like a struggle and it felt like my blood flow was trying to change inside my body.  As I felt this, it was almost scary and almost made me want to discontinue. As I continued on, the speaker mentioned how it would seemed like a forceful struggle to get through the exercise and that is exactly what I felt.  However, as I stuck it out to the end I found that my mind had found so much more stillness and the migraine was completely diminished.

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

In my opinion, spiritual wellness is an integral tool to mental and physical wellness. I feel as though the three coexist and/or thrive off of the others.  When one piece is missing, we will eventually find ourselves hungry for something that we cannot explain and spirituality will be it.  According to Dacher (2006), it is virtually impossible to reach the subtle mind-body experience without development psychospiritually and I firmly agree with that.