slide show on mental fitness-unit 5- HW420

1. Mental Fitness
“Mental Fitness”
Hw420:Psychological and Spiritual
Aspects of Healing
Unit 5 Project
Sherry Slatosky

2. Introduction
• What is mental fitness?
• Benefits of Mental Fitness….
• 3 studies which demonstrate the healing
qualities of psychological and spiritual means
• Finally, two exercises which demonstrate
practice of mental fitness
• summary

3. What is Mental Fitness?
• Mental fitness is training we use to prepare us
for our path and physical actins we take
ahead.
• Mental fitness is exercising different areas of
the mind to keep them in shape as an athlete
would his body to be competitive.
• Mental fitness is our ability to cope with the
obstacles and stimulus in our daily lives and
road ahead.

4. Benefits of Mental Fitness
• Ability to obtain optimal function in mind,
body and spirit.
• Ability to become more aware of your inner-
self and surroundings from a non-attached
stand point.
• Sustainable happiness, love and kindness to
others

5. Randolph Byrd’s Prayer Study
• Double blind study of 393 coronary patients in
San Francisco, who showed noticeable
improvement within one month of adopting his
lifestyle changing program
• Ralph proved that prayer does help heal and also
that the spiritual mind is connected to the
biological body in cause and effect.
• Demonstrated that there was an increase in
health but the experiment couldn’t be totally
controlled since the outside influence of prayer
could not be restricted on the patients.

6. Research in Forgiveness
• Dr.’s Warren Jones and Kathleen Lawler discovered through their
studies in forgiveness through the University of Tennessee that
forgiveness reduced stress and also those holding onto anger and
other negative emotions have a tendency to also have higher blood
pressure than those who don’t.
• University of Michigan scientists conducted some social research
and realized that forgiving others correlated also with increased
mental and physical health.
• Stanford University researcher Dr. Fred Luskin concluded that
forgiveness can be learned as a skill. He also reported that when
people were taught this skill, their levels of stress decreased as
well.

7. Loving Kindness Exercise
(Dacher .E. 2006)
• Sitting comfortably visualize a person who you love and feel that love overwhelm
you.
• Transition this energy to yourself and pay attention to the love you are giving
yourself.
• Give all thoughts equal care and allow them to pass both negative and positive in
nature
• Feel this deeper place within the mind and appreciate yourself for who you are
and this life which we are living
• Once this feeling is the basis of your being, on an in-breath take in the person’s
suffering and do not allow it to affect you but notice it as it is.
• Then on the out-breath send loving kindness, health and happiness to them
• Then address a group of stranger you don’t know and do this same practice for
them as well for a few minutes
• The exercise total should be around 15-20 minutes and can be practiced each day.

8. Yoga as a mental practice
• Yoga can be used to enhance mental activity
• It can help balance our energies within our bodies and
teach us how to be aware of our mind/body
connection
• Breath work helps to regulate the bodily functions and
control emotions to help bring one deeper into the
subtle mind.
• A video to follow in beginner yoga:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o0kNeOyH98
• The key points of Yoga are making sure your
positioning is correct even if you cannot fully do the
position and working on awareness of the breath and
centering the energy of the body and strengthening

9. Summary
• The mind and the body are connected. What you
do to one affects the other and visa versa.
• Science has proven that managing and training
the mind can have drastic side-affects on health,
wellness and longevity
• Science has also shown that spiritual focus can
have an impact on our psychospiritual
development.
• Yoga and Mental workouts can help optimize our
health, functioning and longevity.