Unit 8

1.       Review the exercises and practice sessions you have completed in this course. (Loving Kindness, Subtle mind, Visualization, meditation etc.) Choose two practices that you have determined to be most beneficial. How can you implement these practices in your personal life to foster “mental fitness”? Provide specific examples.

The Loving Kindness practice is one that I choose because, According to ( Dacher, Pg.68) Resting comfortably in your natural state of peace and ease, bring to mind an individual, someone close to you, who you hold with great love and tenderness. Allow these loving feelings to expand within your heart as if a faucet of loving-kindness were being fully turned on. Take a few moments to fully experience these feelings. With these feelings filling your heart, begin to turn them toward yourself. Start with your body and its sensations, pleasant and unpleasant. Give each of them your love, your kindness, and a sense of ease, spaciousness, and care. You want to loosen any grasping or attachment to your sensations. Experiencing this practice makes me love first my personal being and then forgive and love my fellow companion and people that surrounds me every day. The second practice is a subtle mind (Dacher, pg. 75) we begin with a simple yet profound ancient practice related to the breath. We use the breath for two reasons. First, there is a direct relationship between the breath and the mind. You will notice early in practice that as your breathing becomes more easy and rhythmic, your mind will follow. Peaceful breathing pattern leads to a peaceful mind. Still the breath and you still the mind. Second, the breath is always with us so we can work with it even in the midst of a meeting. Using the breath, we will learn how to tame and stabilize the mind by developing a witnessing consciousness. As witnessing replaces grasping and clinging, we progressively experience calm-abiding, and calm-abiding gradually evolves into unity consciousness. Subtle mind practice help me focus and relax my breathing it control the flow of oxygen going into my body and exhaling the negative that has make me discomfort .

Reference: Elliott S. Dacher, M. (2006). Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Laguna Beach: Basic Health Publication.