Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Unit 8: Integral Exercises and Practices

After reviewing the exercises and practices experienced in this course, most of them were very beneficial in my life. It was hard to narrow it down to two, but I had to due to discussion purposes. The two that were the most beneficial to me were the Loving Kindness practice and the Subtle Mind Practice. The Loving Kindness has helped me realize one of my weaknesses and that would be negative behaviors due to me speaking my mind at anytime. It has helped me relax and work through these negative emotions and behaviors and share love and kindness instead of hatefulness toward myself or others. The second is the Subtle Mind practice. The Subtle Mind practice has aided in me finding my inner self and open my heart and mind to others and new experiences. This practice is so relaxing! To implement these practices into my personal life, I will continue performing these practices to train the mind to continue on the path of human flourishing. I will continue to at least practice three times weekly and more often as needed, especially if I realize that I am starting to wonder down the wrong path of fostering mental fitness. Also, I will change up the practices and exercises when needed to meet the need of the situation at hand. I look forward to continuing on this path to human flourishing, mental fitness, and integral health!

3 comments:

  1. Hi Chancey,

    I’m glad to hear that these exercises helped you a lot. It does help to get rid of hate and un-forgiveness because it makes the body sick. It’s also good that these exercises helped you keep you mouth on lock down. I know people can make you angry enough to stomp their big toe, but it is good your working past your situations.

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  2. Hi Chancey,

    I wrote about the same two meditations that you did. They have both helped me tremendously as well. I have my wedding coming up next week, and believe me, the stress is incredible. As a matter of fact, stress has me sleepless in Orlando tonight, so best to get this work done. And actually, getting up from tossing and turning and listening to some meditations to help me calm down has given me a clear head and I feel empowered now instead of agitated and frightened.

    What am I frightened about? I believe it is my own disappointments. But, I will learn to overcome all of those. Visualizations of this wedding have been Grand, and I have had these visualizations for many years, but as the time draws nearer, the wedding will not be what I have visioned. It will be very simple, but that's ok, because those I love will be here, except for my daughter who is planning her wedding this October up in Canada.

    Lucky for me, I have three children still to marry. I will save my visions for them! I hope to give my daughter the wedding of HER dreams.

    As for you, you said you will try to incorporate meditation at least 3x a week, and I submit to you, meditate every day. Two or three times. It is the only way to train the mind so that it comes second nature. Believe you me, I have been working on Integral health for many many years, and I still struggle with peace of mind and my negativity.

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  3. Hi Chancey,

    These are the same two exercises I chose and that I enjoy practicing each day. I do like how you stated you will choose them up a bit and make a variety out of them by experimenting with the different exercises you have learned about in this class so you can fully experience human flourishing. Good thought! We should alternate exercises as we feel we want to try something different because we need to experience what may work for us depending on what is going on in our life that day. Some exercises may help us to relax more on a day we need it such as the visualization exercise you mentioned. It's nice to take a trip in our minds to happier times or a happier place we've been to at some point in our life. By experiencing this happiness, we find that we begin to calm down and focus in on our breathing as we reach new heights in our minds. By experiencing these thoughts, we are experiencing inner love and kindness as well as inner peace. We can then turn these feelings outwards towards others and releive the stress we were feeling earlier or any negative thoughts we were having prior to the exercise. The key is to continue practicing meditation exercises no matter what to reach human flourishing and integral health. Good luck with your exercises!

    Jill Jernee

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