Based on my reflections of my physical being 7 weeks ago I would have rated myself a 4. My asthma was way out of control, I was experiencing anxiety attacks more than a few times a week and was having cold or flu like symptoms.  My spiritual well being would have been a 6 because I kept my faith that I would get better someday and I knew my trials were apart of some kind of learning experience I needed.  I would have rated my psychological well being at a 2 at that time. I was going through things I didn't even understand in regards to anxiety and depression and I did not know how to cope with any of it. It's hard to help yourself when you don't understand how or why you are experiencing things you can't control.
Things are much different now. Back then I didn't even want to reflect on rating myself because the results would have depressed me even more. I can rate myself now. I rate my physical well being at a 7, I've been doing my meditation exercises whenever I can, in the car when we are headed somewhere, when I am lieing in bed, when I find myself sitting at the computer overwhelmed with work, I just shut my eyes, take a few deep breaths and silence my mind. My spiritual well-being would rate at a healthy 9. I can't say its perfect but I am in touch with my faith and am more trusting about where my life is headed. My psychological well being is now a 6, I am still trying to find balance in my life but have learned to better control my feelings, stressors and worry through meditation.
I have made progress towards my goals, in all areas. I had no goals for my spiritual, physical and psychological well being. Seven weeks ago I was in a really bad place and could not place goals on where I wanted to be in those areas because I didn't know where I wanted to be nor did I care about where I would be in my spiritual, physical or psychological well being. I wanted to just give up and let life do what it wanted with me. My goals for the past couple of weeks have been to better myself in these areas and I have been doing better.
Through implementing the activities I've learned and practicing repeatedly the exercises I've had to do, I have developed a much greater sense of importance in my well being. It is important for me to be healthy in all areas of my life for my sake and my family's sake. Being able to enjoy my kids is rewarding. I have learned to control my stress a lot better and am enjoying doing activities with the kids instead of dragging myself through the day. It was difficult at first trying to meditate. I can remember very well the feeling I had 9 weeks ago when I first closed my eyes, I was so fidgety I thought it impossible to sit there and silence my mind in any way, shape or form.
Through this course I can help my family learn how to develop loving-kindness, forgiveness and help them calm their minds. My kids are around me all the time and I can see they have picked up on some of my bad habits on how to deal with things and I refuse to let them grow up like that. I am going to implement these exercises as a family activity so they will be able to cope with things and have a healthy life.

Everything I have learned

It is important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically because it helps to achieve the overall goal of being a better, healthier, happier more whole person. If we want to professioanlly be able to help thers in regards to their health and wellness then we must first start taking care of ourselves and putting into practice all that we have learned for our own lives. In order to be a professional that can help others achieve their goals of health, happiness and wholeness we must first know how to apply the principles by integrating them into our own lives and then teaching others how to apply the meditations and principles to their lives. I have goals that I want to achieve in my own personal life. I would like to be more loving and kind to others. I would also love to be more peaceful and be able to control the amount of stress I feel under certain situations. The areas that I need to develop to achieve the goals I have for myself are the areas of loving-kindness and silence and stillness.
I prefer no to assess myself yet. The reason for this is because I honestly am afraid of what I would find out about myself and I am not prepared to face that yet. What I am doing is putting into practice the meditations and the guiding principles we have been taught so I can improve myself so far. When I am brave enough I will assess each domain of my health. I know that physically I am not a very healthy person, I let stress overcome me very easily and have always had a hard time learning how to cope with things. This means psychologically I am not strong enough to help myself when things get difficult and this means stress affects me physically. Spiritually I am capable of trying to better myself and become a healthier person.
My goals for achieving personal growth spiritually are to meditate and learn to silence my mind so I can learn to be able to reach a higher level of understanding how things are connected and things are bigger than the small things I let over come me. My goal for my physical being is to become healthier in terms of my asthma. I am trying to use breathing techniques during my meditation to control how deeply I breathe in and how slowly I exhale so I can control my asthma attacks without having to take medicine. I know this is ambitious but I am tired of taking medicine and I would much rather help myself than continue to be medicated for the rest of my life. I also have heard of people's asthma becoming dormant after learning how to breathe correctly through yoga practices. My goal to help myself psychologically is to start speaking to a social worker so I can get past those issues that cause me anxiety and being able to progess  and move forward from there.
Startegies that I can implement to help foster growth in my physical, psychological, and spiritual self are to meditate daily and remember my vow and principles. All these things have to be a daily part of my life until they become an innate part of the way I am. You can not achieve your highest level of being in any area if you use these concepts and practices sparatically. They have to be consistent in order to become life changing.
I will assess my progress or lack of progress by charting and graphing my levels of development. I will make a chart to graph my fitness, nutrition and self-regulation and make note of specific milestones I achieve over the next six months. I will also make a graph outlining my apsects, lines and levels of ddevelopment in my emotional, personal, family, community, etc. so I can see which are the sources of needless suffering and distress so I can change that. Some startegies I wil use to assisst me in maintaining my long term practices for health and wellness are to utilize the web resources in the back of our text book. I will attend workshops and a retreat to help me achieve my goals and keep me on track. I also want to get more books to continue learning about health and wellness because this is something that will help me become healthy and help others in the future.

Visulaization and Meditation

Visualization and meditation are my two most beneficial exercises. I am able to meditate now for only a few minutes without having a though run through my mind. I couldn't even do it for 30 seconds at first. It has been very helpful to me in so many ways. I am learning to control my breathing when I have asthma attacks, my skin is clearing up and I don't get frustrated and angry that easily anymore. I am a much calmer person through meditation.
Visualization has also helped me so much. I learned this technique when I took a stress class. I used to use this technique when I began to get anxious and visualizing a calming, serene scene in my head would help put me somewhere else away from the chaos. I would use different scenes over time because at somepoint my images just wouldn't work anymore. I have begun to use this technique once again to help me learn to push the noise out of my head and to clear my thoughts. This has helped me find meditating easier. Visualizing my outcomes versus visualizing just a scene (tropical paradise, mountains) has proved more beneficial in helping me move forward instead of simply keeping me calm.
The other exercises were also beneficial but these two were the most beneficial in my life. I use them all the time now.

This meditation exercise was easier for me this week than some of the ones in the past. Practice does make perfect. I am finding it easier and easier every time. I'm learning how to let go of negative feelings and learning how to relax so I'm not so anxious all the time. I am going to continue to repeat the exercises because the more I do them the better I get the hang of it. I do still figit and my mind tries to take me to other places but I am learning to come right back and clear my mind for longer periods of time. 

The saying "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" means you have to have been there and experienced something and come out on top in order to be able to advise others on how to work through that problem. In other words, practice what you preach. If you are a health and wellness professional you have to live by what you are trying to teach others. As a professional I do feel that you should always be improving upon your own self in order to be enlightened enough to help others. In my personal life I can implement psychological and spiritual growth by facing my troubles and working through them rather than pushing them away and not confronting them head on. 

I chose to say "May all individuals gain freedom from suffering" for 10 minutes. While I was saying that I wasn't just thinking about other individuals but I was mostly thinking about the phrase towards myself. It made me feel like I cared to help myself heal.

The area I thought needed development was my mind and how to cope with things. which is thee same area that needs healing. The development that I really gravitate towards that can help me is to learn to meditate and clear my mind as well so I can learn to let things go and not hold them inside. It makes me sick. All I can do is practice forgiving and loving kindness towards myself and others. This will take a lot of practice and I need to be more consistent about it. The same way I take my medicine everyday is the same way I will approach healing myself with the steps Dacher suggests in our book.

The audio, Journey on Relaxation exercise did not go well

I believe I don't know how to relax. I thought I knew what helps me to relax but trying to sit still listening to someone tell me how to relax frustrated me more than helped. My idea of relaxing was reading, watching tv with my dinner at the end of a long day, or laying still at the beach. My experience with the Journey on Relaxation exercise did not go well. I have to be honest the whole time I kept trying to figure out what the narrator looked like. I can imagine him sitting somewhere with a microphone very close to his mouth. I thought what he was saying sometimes was not very relaxing because it didn't flow well. Words like perhaps, merely or mere, like, actually and GI tract.
Explaining about the blood flow and the resting state, the GI tract were all very informational and that is more interesting and kept my mind going instead of letting me relax. His explanation about a sponge was not very effective in helping me relax. Not for this.
I had so much to do I couldn't relax I just kept wondering at what time this would be over or how much time I had left. The music may have been more relaxing to me without the narrator trying to educate me on blood flow.