"Mental Workouts" & Relaxation

Describe your experience. Did you find it beneficial? Difficult? Why or why not? Would you recommend this to others? Why or why not?

I would describe this experience to be peaceful and calming, although I meditated before I did this exercise so I think that helped. I liked the sound of the ocean in the background which was a peaceful sound to me. I think that this exercise was no more beneficial than meditating and focusing on my body relaxing. This exercise was geared more towards “inner love” and feelings that are associated with love and those feelings that are associated with discomfort. I don’t know if I would recommend this exercise over some of the others that we have done. I like the relaxation techniques that are more focused on breathing rather than thought. I find this to be more peaceful to my mind.

What is the concept of "mental workout"? What does the research indicate are the proven benefits of a mental workout? How can you implement mental workouts to foster your psychological health?

The concept of “mental work” is that we focus time out of every day to evolve our minds towards human flourishing. This means that we take time to meditate and focus on our mind, body, and spirit and open our minds to loving kindness and the subtle mind. We can focus our thoughts to help tame our minds to allow us to cultivate wisdom and inner peace. We also need to feel love towards ourselves in order to fully love others which is a part of mental workout and attaining a goal of loving kindness. Our minds can be trained just like our bodies, in the era we are more focused on training our bodies for the physical appearance and forget to train our minds as well. Dacher talks about how mental workouts should not just be for relaxation but to expand our consciousness and become more in tune with our minds healing capacities. A way that we can implement mental workouts to contribute to our health would be to not only focus on our relaxation and breathing but to focus on certain parts of our bodies that may need help. An example would be if someone had high blood pressure. Focus on breathing techniques and mental workouts to try and calm the mind and body.

food thats good for the mind and body!

I know this blog is a project for our class, but I figured why not put some fun stuff on here as well for those who I am in class with?! Here is a good recipe that can be used in place for chips, and its much healthier and its delicious!:) Chili lime kale chips, here is the link to the blog that has the recipe..enjoy! http://www.inspiredtaste.net/10207/chili-lime-kale-chips-recipe/

Reflections for HW420

-This post is for my HW420 class based on questions for the class.

Based on your reflections, and on a scale of 1 to 10 (ten being optimal wellbeing), where do you rate your A-physical wellbeing, B-spiritual well-being, C-psychological well-being? Why?

Physical wellbeing- 7 Spiritual- 5 Psychological-7 I rated myself at these because I feel that I am fairly healthy, I work out regularly and try to eat healthy but sometimes I do eat things that are unhealthy which also affects how I feel psychologically. I am not the most spiritual person and feel that this is a trait that I could work on and it would affect my psychological well-being for the greater good.

Develop a goal for yourself in each area (physical, spiritual, psychological).

A goal in each area would be to be more physical or try something new like do yoga more which would help my spiritual and psychological being as well. Spiritual- pray more, to help psychologically I should try and meditate for at least 10 minutes every day.

What activities or exercise can you implement in your life to assist in moving toward each goal?

I would like to increase the amount of yoga I do, now I just run and do insanity (circuit workouts) and I need to spend more time relaxing during my workouts which would assist me spiritually and psychologically as well.

Complete the relaxation exercise The Crime of the Century. To hear this exercise, click here. Describe your experience. (What it beneficial? Frustrating? etc.) I got pretty relaxed during this exercise but I don’t know if I liked linking the colors to certain parts of my body. Maybe if I did this before I went to bed I would have felt like I was in a hurry, I just wanted to relax without thinking about certain colors or parts of my body. I did like the breathing part of the exercise though. I think that any sort of relaxation I get in is beneficial for me.

Inspiration for the day

100-year-old Fauja Singh became the oldest person to complete a full-distance marathon when he finished a race in Toronto.  -Inspiration for the day!                 

The purpose of this post is to reflect and discuss the relaxation technique that was used this week in unit 2. First off, I think that the voice used for the meditation was very relaxing so that helped. I think that for some people it is hard to "get into" the art of meditation or relaxation, especially if you are not used to it. I found the meditation/relaxation a good experience although it is different than what I am used to doing as far as relaxation techniques go. This technique was based on using suggestion toward the body and moving blood from our cores to our arms and hands along with deep breathing. I had an easy time relaxing and felt that my arms and hands did get very heavy, warm, and relaxed by decreasing the muscle tension in my body. I still think I favor trying to clear my mind and focusing on breathing exercises though.

Welcome

I would like to welcome everyone from class to my blog, this is the first blog that I have ever done so I hope everyone enjoys & I look forward to reading everyone else's as well.

Intro post

This blog is about finding out about the mind/body connection and how it affects our health. I also want to focus on healthy living and how the food we eat and the environment can affect our health as well. Enjoy:)