This project involves practicing a body/ mind activity, experiment or discipline for at least two weeks during the summer session. You can think of this as a behavioral change experiment. You should plan on something you can do daily and make time as part of your activity to log and reflect on this in your journal. The “log” part can simply be a description of your activity of the day. Most important is the “reflection,” which invites you to describe your inner process of thoughts, feelings, and sensations as you consider your experience of that day and practice. The reflection gives you a chance to track your experience and notice patterns such as when you encounter frustration, self-doubt, excitement, obstacles, old patterns, and anything else that gets activated in your change experiment. By the way, keep in mind that by definition, experiments do not succeed or fail they just give outcomes or data. So your work is to engage this earnestly, honestly, and thoughtfully and track what happens. In writing up the journal feel free to be as creative and playful as you would like. Sometimes drawings, images, poetry or other media can capture inner experiences better than prose, so have license to use a variety of approaches to express your lived experience. The mind/body project is a chance for you to experiment with behavioral change and notice your own patterns. It is also an opportunity to consider how you might help others in the future as they attempt change.
In addition to your daily freewritten log and reflections be sure to “bookend” your journal project
with the following first and last entries.
As your first entry in your journal respond to the following questions:
• Describe your project in detail.
• How will you know if you achieved your goals?
• Why are you doing this?
• Have you attempted this or something like it before? If so, what happened? What did
you learn? What will be different this time?
• What will get in the way of meeting your goals? How might you address this?
• What part of you is “all in”? That is, what part of you is fully committed to this? What
part of you is not? Explain. You may want to have a dialogue in writing between these parts as a
component of this first journal entry.
For your last journal entry answer the following in a page or more single-spaced reflection.
Though you may have additional things to say, be sure to cover the following in your summary:
• Summarize your project.
• Did you meet your goals?
• What stands out to you about this?
• What did you learn about you?
• What did you learn about behavioral change that you might apply to others?
• What was the experience of reflecting in the journal?
• What concepts or practices from Siegel’s MindSight, are relevant to your experiment?
Explain.
• If there was something that you want to remember about this–a “takeaway”–what would
it be?
Mind and Body Journal
10 June: My goal for the next two weeks is to get back in the gym and workout at least 3 to 4 days a week, start taking vitamins and supplements to help with my energy levels, brain fog and overall wellness. I know it will take longer than 2 weeks to see a really difference in my body, but I should at least feel a difference in my energy levels and brain fog within a couple of days. My goal is to continue staying in the gym and taking my supplements to help lose the baby weight from having my son, to help my focus and improve my overall health. I initially started trying to lose weight after I had my son but couldn’t stick with it for long because my husband and I had opposing schedules and then we were separating from the military, so I had to take a break, but I want to try and get back to working out to feel more like myself again. I could potentially see my husband’s coaching schedule getting in the way my routine, if my son’s daycare has a closure for teacher break and even my classes could potentially get in my way. If any of these events happen to get in the way, I may have to work with my husband to take our son to practice one day or maybe switch my workout to be in the evening instead of my usual morning workout.
