Journey to Meeting Aesclepius exercise

This exercise by Dacher (2006) can be a very emotional exercise.  This exercise touches one’s inner heart and reaches out to it in order to heal it.  This exercise helps touches and reaches out to the natural essence of our heart and mind.  This exercise helps guide and heal our innerselves guiding us to positive choices and actions through deep wisdom.  This exercise will fill one’s mind body, spirit by eradicating confusion and stress and giving happiness and fullness within oneself.  Overall this is an exercise of inner essence towards integral health.

With that said, despite the similarities of the voice of the woman and the background of the water hitting the shores, this exercise left me very emotional.  Visualizing a very wise and loving individual, I started to think about my grandmother from my mother’s side.  This is an individual I truly respect, love wholeheartedly and feel as my hero.  My grandmother just reached her 90^th birthday and all I can think of is her as soon as this exercise started. 

I start to think of all the things my grandmother underwent with my grandfather to get their family where they are today.  You see, my grandmother is a great woman who worked during World War II in order to feed and support her family when she was still in the Philippines.  My grandmother was left with nine children to care for while my grandfather helped the Americans fight the war against the Japanese.  When the war was over, my grandparents were offered land and transport of them and their family to the United States or one of its U. S territory (Guam) since my grandfather was one of the men who fought with the Americans and helped the American’s escape the Japanese in the Philippines.  Besides that, my grandmother cared for her nine children and her grandchildren including myself and my brothers and sister.   Even with nine children of her own and all the grandchildren she inherited, she still had the heart to adopt more children from the Philippines and support them while she was in Guam. My grandmother has a big heart.  Also, even though she was hurt by my grandfather’s affair with another woman which resulted in a child where the woman didn’t want anything to do with the child, my grandmother took in the child as her own.  In addition, my grandmother remained strong despite the death of my grandfather.  Therefore this exercise left me emotional because it made me realize that I may never see my grandmother again.  Also, my children will never get to meet their great grandmother one last time.  As a result, as I complete the whole exercise, this exercise truly reached the inner essence of my heart because I am left heartbroken and helpless with this experience and I don’t know what to do. 

Having said that, this experience has fostered an increase in my psychological and spiritual wellness because it made me realize that whenever I am stressed and feeling hopeless, all I have to do is think of my grandmother and that nothing can be as difficult as what she went through.  Therefore this practice is something I can apply in my life to foster greater health and wellness by appreciating what I have and to do my best regardless of the consequences. 

Dacher, E. S. (2006). Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Laguna Beach, CA:

Basic Health Publications.