Meeting Aesclepius

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?

I wasn't sure what to expect from the title of this weeks exercise so I loaded it up on the computer and within a minute or less of beginning the meditation I was easily able to visual someone. The minute the guide said to visualize someone older who was wise, etc a vision of my father came to mind. I thought that maybe I would visualize an ancient Greek or Roman God, but the persistent visual was my father. This made the exercise both easier and harder for me to complete than I anticipated. My father passed away in 2000 but is one of the most loving and wise men that I knew and I miss him, so I had to try and allow the wave of emotion to come and go so that I could meditate and complete the exercise. I was surprised that I was able to clear the “chatter” of my mind a lot quicker this week than in previous weeks, but my house was surprisingly quiet in comparison to "normal". Each week I am able to build upon the previous experiences and have used this to enhance my personal calm and internal emotional and mental health. As I continue to work on the exercises and become more proficient I feel that it will allow me to lift a weight from my shoulders and enhance my overall stillness and wellness.

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?

I am reminded of the saying I have often heard in life “Do as I say not as I do” and how often people say that it confuses children in a parent-child relationship when the parent does something contrary to what they are being told to do themselves. In the same way I feel that a practitioner can't effectively explain something to a client without attempting or being able to experience it themselves – even when all of our experiences are individualized. It allows us to relate to our clients/patients at a base level. I like the example from Schlitz, Amorock and Micozzi (2005) that says not to confuse the “map with the territory” saying having a map of Hawaii is not the same as being there. Even if we are not able to achieve what we attempt – for the example mindfully meditating and not being able to completely quiet the “chatter” of our mind – we still will be able to discuss and direct our clients/patients with more understanding than we could if we had never attempted to begin with. Another good point from our reading was that the client-professional relationship has been damaged over the year, we've taken the human factor out in the Western world and that's the most important part in my opinion. We are humans and our patients are as well, we should allow both ourselves and them some loving-kindness and understanding. I think as a professional it is our responsibility to work on ourselves before we teach someone else to do the same. For example I wouldn't take instruction from an obese personal trainer. If you can't apply the process to yourself how can you give advice to others? Isn't that hypocritical? To implement growth in my own personal life I just have to be consistent and persistent in following through with exercises and assessments, working on taking one step at a time and applying what I learn in my daily life.

Reference:

Schlitz, M., Amorock, T. & Micozzi, M. (2005). Consciousness & healing: Integral approaches to mind-body medicine. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Churchill Livingstone.