Final Project

Jacob Davis

Unit 9 Project

1. Introduction:
   Why is it important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically? What areas do you need to develop to achieve the goals you have for yourself?

It is important for health and wellness professionals to develop themselves for a few reasons. Being in the health and medical field can cause a great deal of stress, and if you are not able to control that stress, you will constantly be held back from reaching your full potential. Also, it is important to ‘practice what you preach’. For example, a client would not trust a personal trainer as much if the trainer was overweight and out of shape rather than thin and very fit. If you want your clients to believe the importance of being in control of yourself spiritually and mentally as well as physically, you need to show them that you are able to have it together. Another reason it is important is because you will be able to put forth more effort into helping patients or clients if you do not have any emotional or mental issues going on. For example, if when you are seeing patients you keep getting distracted towards your own problems; you will not be able to help the client like you need to. The areas that I need to work on are the spiritual aspect and the psychological aspect. I plan to be a personal trainer; I work very hard on my physical fitness, but it can always use improvement and will need constant work in my field. In order to be more successful, I need to be more in touch with my spiritual self. I can reach this by practicing meditation and relaxing my mind.

2. Assessment:
   How have you assessed your health in each domain? How do you score your wellness spiritually, physically, and psychologically?

I would give my spiritual wellness a 5 on a scale of 1-10. I attend church regularly and pray occasionally, but I am not actively involved in my church and do not pray as often as I should. Physically, I would give myself 8 out of 10. I chose this score because I work out 6 times a week for more than an hour each time. I work hard on keeping myself physically fit and also keep a close eye on my nutrition. I would give my psychological wellness 6.5 out of 10. I gave myself this score because I feel like I can control my stress levels most of the time, but I sometimes have difficulty relaxing my mind. I am able to brush off a lot of things and keep them from bothering me, but sometimes I let things by that should not be an issue. I have really noticed, by doing the exercises in class, that I need to work on relaxing my mind more often.

3. Goal development:
   List at least one goal you have for yourself in each area, Physical, Psychological (mental health) and Spiritual.

A goal I have for myself in the physical area is to work on my cardiovascular fitness. This is definitely my weakest point; I weight lift five times a week but do not follow it with enough cardio work. A psychological goal I would like to reach is to practice meditation every morning before I go to work. I want to do this to relax and ease my mind in order to keep from getting stressed throughout the day. I feel this will be very beneficial for my mental health. For my spiritual health, I am setting a goal to volunteer for an activity in our church. I feel that volunteering will help me become more involved in my spiritual health. I would also like to get in the habit of praying every night before I go to bed.

4. Practices for personal health:
   What strategies can you implement to foster growth in each of the following domains; Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual. Provide at least two examples of exercises or practices in each domain. Explain how you will implement each example.

Exercises I can implement for my physical domain would be to run before I begin weightlifting every day. I could begin by running a mile and try to work up to two or three before I weight lift. This will help me improve my cardiovascular fitness and help me perform better on my PT tests. Another exercise I could implement would be riding the bike. On days that I do not weight lift or do not want to run, I could ride a stationary bike for an hour to help improve my health.

To improve my psychological health, I would like to practice mental exercises and meditation on a daily basis. One exercise I would like to do regularly is the “Loving Kindness” exercise we did in our Integral Health book. I felt this exercise was very beneficial and helped bring out the positive side of everything. I would implement this by doing the exercise every morning before leaving for work. I usually watch ESPN before work; I could simply switch my routine by instead doing this exercise. Another exercise I could do is the subtle mind exercise to practice clearing my mind and forgetting about all of the stress. This would be a great exercise to do at the end of a chaotic day. I could implement this by doing it every night before going to bed to ease my mind and forget about anything that was bothering me from the day.

Two practicing for improving my spiritual health would be meditation and yoga. I would like to meditate every morning to bring forth a positive outlook for the day and to get me in a more spiritual state of mind. I could also add yoga to my workout, possibly once a week, to improve my spiritual health as well as improve my balance and other aspects of my physical health.

5. Commitment:
   How will you assess your progress or lack of progress in the next six months? What strategies can you use to assist in maintaining your long-term practices for health and wellness?

To assess my progress over the next six months, I feel it would be very beneficial to keep a journal. I can write down how I feel I am doing and if I am keeping up with my goals on a regular basis. Then, if I begin to fall behind in my goals, I can look back and see what I am doing wrong and what I need to change. In order to maintain long-term practices, I would need to set small goals. For example, one of my goals is to improve my cardiovascular health. I can set a small goal of running one mile without stopping three times a week for the first month and improve my time by a few seconds every time. Then, the next month I can increase it to one and a half miles. By making these smaller goals, I will help myself to reach my main goal and get in a habit that will help me maintain this practice. I need to make these practices into habits in order to continue them in the future.