I think I met Aesclepius

In Wellness class this week, we were asked to listen to the Meeting Aesclepius mp3.  I kinda appreciated it but admittedly I struggled to conjure the image of a person who personified all the qualities listed, and the faces kept changing to different people I knew who I admire for various individual qualities.  It's hard to think of someone in my life who is the whole package, so i tried to create someone who embodied all those different qualities the way the people I know did, only jam-packed into a single person.

Overall the experience was calming, and I feel a bit freer.  What I love about this class is that the practices, when successfully completed, leave me feeling like a blank page.  I am finally able to free myself of the many worries that wander into my mind, even if I am only free for a couple minutes, hours, seconds.  It's like being able to vacation from my life without the stress of packing or going somewhere.  In me, mindfulness has fostered improved psychological and spiritual wellness because I have learned to control what I let into my mind, and I have learned to control how long I let the negativity linger.  Spiritually, I know that I can connect with my greater self, connect with the Universe, and tap into resources I never knew I had and resources I've taken for granted for a very long time. I can continue to foster my wellness in each of these areas by remaining mindful of the negativity that comes into my life and making the choice to not let myself become fixated on it.  I have learned to let things pass and 'keep on keepin' on' towards my goal of a better me.

"One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself."  This phrase basically means that you cannot guide others to a place of wellness when you have not reached that place yourself.  You can't help others effectively find solutions to their problems when you have not faced similar problems and sought out solutions to them yourself.  This applies to health and wellness professionals in a big way because sometimes professionals act as though they are unable to relate to their clients, unable to relate to their dispositions and all that has affected them throughout their lives, all that continues to affect them.  If, as professionals, we are unable to relate to our clients, we are not properly equipped to provide solutions to problems we do not understand.  We want to see our clients getting the most they can out of our services, and we must be able and/or willing to try and understand every single one of our clients, empathize with them, in order to truly help them deal and heal.

I want to have a sharper mind and be able to articulate anything I want to say in the most effective and basic manner possible, instead of 'half-murdering' my thoughts through my murky and wishy-washy speech.  There are a lot of things i want from myself, and up until being in this class, I never thought I could take control and meet my own goals because I settled and did not want to seek much more beyond my comfort zone.  I have realized what an error I have made in accepting comfort and achieving only the status quo.  I want a beautiful and meaningful and joyful life - something simple but not stagnant.  I continue working hard and cultivating this life, cultivating my spiritual, psychological, and physical strength.  I have a very long way to go but the fact that I have come as far as I have by stepping out of the cave that was my mundanely redundant life is a huge personal achievement, and I look forward to pursuing more with an Open mind and an Open soul and immersing myself in the concept of what it means to really Live a Life.