Journey On Response and Welcome!

Hello, classmates and fellow bloggers! Hooray for our first blog posts! Now we have another skill to add to our resumes! :)

This class, Creating Wellness: Psychological and Spiritual Aspects of Healing, has been enlightening so far. I have already found myself wandering down the paths of my own psychological and spiritual wellness and I'm excited to see what changes occur throughout this course. In addition to this blog post, I've also been journaling about my own wellness and the events that may be affecting it. I felt as though a separate, personal journal would be better than opening all the closet doors of my mind to my classmates. I need my personal space even in a world full of so much social media.

Since it seems relevant to the relaxation exercise we were to do, I will mention that today has been a challenge because I have been in a high level of pain due to acute muscle spasms in my upper back. This has in turn given me quite the headache as well. Before you say it, yes, I've been paying attention to my body and have been doing some self care this afternoon and will do some more tonight including a hot bath with epsom salts and stretching. The Journey On exercise was part of my self care today. I used the techniques in the exercise to release tension and pain from my neck, shoulder, back, and head. This was the second relaxation exercise I have done today, and it did have some noticeable effects. I did feel the warm, tingling sensation in the muscles I was focusing on. Because of my experience in massage therapy, I went deeper into the body and focused on individual muscles and single muscle fibers at times. When I was complete, they did feel more relaxed and seemed to have less pain, so I would say it was a success! Hopefully all of you had pleasant experiences as well.