Unit 9 Project- Hope you all enjoy

Introduction

Health and Wellness professionals spend their lives helping others become the healthiest they can be. In order to do this, it is essential for the health and wellness professional to practice what she preaches and teaches. This is important for a number of reasons. To be the best health care professional, the first step is to be working on your own personal health. If you are not healthy yourself, how can you help someone else? I believe there are many reasons why this is important, and I would like to focus on two of them. It is essential to be a role model in this profession and in maintaining your own health; you are better able to help your clientele.
In the health and wellness realm, we will have many clients coming to us seeking assistance in living a better, more whole life. Whether we like it or not, from the time we meet our client, he or she is judging us too. The client wants to make sure that they are going to someone who is living and modeling a healthy lifestyle too. How can we ask someone to do something we aren’t doing ourselves? The reality is we can’t. So, in order to help our client fully, we need to model the lifestyle for our client. It enhances our credibility.
Along with enhancing our credibility, practicing what we know in all three areas of health, we are able to take care of ourselves. Working with other people is a stressful thing. Sometimes we take their problems on ourselves and try to fix them for the client. Reality is that this will not help anyone involved. Having the knowledge base to not allow this to happen is important. On top of that, the everyday stress of our jobs can catch up to us. I believe practicing Integral Health skills will allow me to become a better professional by enhancing my personal life. When I am performing at my optimum level, I am better prepared to help my clients. This becomes a win-win situation for both sides.
I can always work to improve myself. Over my time in school, I have learned many skills that will allow me to enhance my own health and life while helping others at the same time. Yet, I know that I am far from perfect. I have goals in all three areas of my health and wellness. I want to continue losing weight and improving my physical fitness level. I want to learn and incorporate more mind-body techniques such as meditation. And, I want to grow closer to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. A little bit later, I will go into detail about how I plan to do this.
Assessment
I know that in order to improve and meet my goals, I must first assess where I am. By doing so, I will be able to set a plan in place that will allow me the opportunity for maximum growth.
For my physical health, I have weighed myself, looked at my eating habits, and assessed my exercise habits. I am nowhere near my goal weight. Over the summer, I have had moments where I have eaten well, and there have been times when I have completely splurged. As for my exercise level, it has gone in spurts over the summer as well. One of the areas that really held me back was getting a tattoo on my foot and not getting the exercise I needed while it was healing. My cardiovascular health allows me to participate in an hour-long Zumba class without getting winded or overly tired. My strength is average to above average of women my age when I compare it on charts from a former class that I took. Right now, I would rate my physical fitness at a seven out of ten.
To assess my mental health, I utilize past blog and journal entries to see where my thoughts have been and where I am now. I ask myself if I feel hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. I look at my relationships with the people around me such as my husband, co-workers, athletes, and friends. I use meditation exercises and analyze how well I am able to focus. And, I take the time to ask myself if I feel stressed or overwhelmed. Right now, I feel pretty good about this area of my life. I have reduced a lot of stress in my life, and I am taking more time to focus on making myself mentally fit. I would say that my mental fitness is at an eight right now.
Spiritual fitness is an area that I struggle with assessing. Do I feel connected to the earth and people around me? Do I feel close to God? These are the two main areas that I think of when assessing my spiritual health. At this moment in time, I would say that I am drawing closer to those around me, and I absolutely love to be in nature. It is where I feel most at ease (other than at a gym). Today I found this especially true as we hosted friends for a get together. As for feeling close to God, I go in and out. I know that is because I do not take the time I need to, nor do I make it a priority. As I start the new school year (work), I am planning on making this a part of my change. My spiritual health is currently around 6.5.
Goal development:

My goal this year in the area of physical fitness is to eat a more balanced diet, lose at least twenty pounds, and to get to the gym, or do something active, four days of the week. My psychological goal is to use meditation or visualization exercises twice to three times a week. And, my spiritual goal is to spend at least ten minutes a day in concentrated prayer.
Practices for personal health

The two strategies that I will implement to grow in the area of physical fitness are to plan my meals and activities for the week. I currently spend every waking hour doing something that is planned. In order to ensure that I eat properly and get the exercise I need, I have to put them into a plan. What I will do is take the time on Sunday of each week to create a plan of action. This will include meal planning and implementing a schedule that will allow me to get my exercise in. By taking the time each week to sit down and put it in an actual plan, I am much more likely to carry it out throughout the week.
For my psychological health, I am going to research meditation and visualization practices that I can do. I will also plan when I will do these throughout the week, and I will have them on hand to do when I feel that I need them as well. Another thing that I plan on doing to improve my psychological health is make a concentrated effort to cultivate positive relationships in my life. This could be by having conversations with friends or family by phone, inviting someone over for a meal, or developing appropriate relationships at work.
For my Spiritual health, I am going attend church each Sunday and take the time to truly apply what I learned there. This includes prayer, benevolent practice, and more. I will also take the time each week to get out into nature or to find the moment to look at my pictures of nature. By doing this, I will be opening my mind and being quiet to find my center and focus.
Commitment

Although I have set up a plan to begin developing my health and wellness over the next few months and year, I hope that I continue to be dynamic and evolutionary. I know that it will be important to ensure that I am growing and not standing still. In order to do this, I will take the time on the last Sunday of each month to see where I stand. I will ask myself whether I have achieved my goals set out, stayed where I am, or if I have fallen back. From there, I will make a plan of action for the upcoming month.
I believe it is essential as a professional and a person to never stop growing. I have learned so much from the classes that I have taken at Kaplan, and I will continue to use all of the resources at my fingertips. I will also take the time to seek out new sources, whether they are on the Internet, at the library, by taking a new class, or asking other professionals and friends. What I do know is that every class I have taken at Kaplan has been beneficial. I have learned something that I can use both personally and professionally. I already had an interest in holistic health and the mind-body connection, and I want to keep on learning and applying. I truly want to flourish, and in doing so help others do the same.