PSYC 508- SYLLABUS 

COURSE TITLE: Creating a healthy life style
1. College & Division:   College of Education/ Psychology and Counseling
2. Course Title:    Creating a Healthy Lifestyle
3. Course Number: Psyc 508
4. Credit Hours:  3 Credit Hours (graded)
5. Instructor’s Name/Originator’s Name:  Rachel Berg, Ph.D.
6. Catalog Description: Focus on our patterns of eating, exercise, sleep, stress management, and how those choices create our lives. Facilitate a classmate to make changes where needed in diet, exercise, meditation, stress management.  Guest presentations on aspects of nutrition, yoga, tai chi, stretching exercises, ayurvedic medicine, acupuncture will be included.  Course meets the nutritional requirement for the Stress Management certificate.
7. Prerequisites (if any): None
8. Restrictions (if any): None
9. Rationale:   Technology and abundance have provided us with opportunities for longer life.  How we deal with our opportunities, the choices we make, how we balance and care for ourselves will create the quality of our lives. Before we can help others, we must become aware of how we actually make changes in our own lives in areas that we deem needing some change.  What thoughts, attitudes and beliefs block us from making the changes we say we want to make?  How can we shift these?
10. Intended Audience: Undergraduate, graduate students, members of the community wanting to make changes in their life and improve their health especially with respect to diet, exercise, stress management skills.
11. Expected Student Outcomes: (undergraduate and graduate student competencies):
a. Recognize and evaluate when you eat, how you eat, and its affect on you. Create a program that works for you, working with inner parts and circumstances that sabotage your living your program. Evaluate your experience of nurturing yourself.
b. Recognize and evaluate how and when you exercise and rest.  Create a program that works for you, working with inner parts and circumstances that sabotage your living your program.
c. Coach another person to make changes in diet, exercise, meditative practices and evaluate your effectiveness.
d. Recognize and evaluate what lifts your spirits.  These might include: humor, shifting activities, making music, journal writing, painting, gardening, meditating, praying, dancing, talking to a friend, reading, walking, etc.
e. Recognize and evaluate how you create relationships.  How are you patterns of eating, exercise, stress management, and meditation affected by your relationships?
f. Recognize and evaluate your relationship to the cosmos.  How does your worldview create your life? Recognize ways of shifting assumptions, beliefs and feelings as a way to promote new learning opportunities and create better eating, exercise, and meditative habits.
g. Give feedback to other students that enable them to improve their performance and utilize feedback from the instructor and the other students to improve their coaching of another person and their presentations to groups on nutrition, exercise, and meditations.
h. Graduate students only: Interview a person from another culture on their eating habits, sleeping patterns, exercise preferences, and stress management techniques and report your results in a paper and to the class.

12. Instructional Modalities/Activities: This will be an experiential course where we will learn about how we nurture our bodies, minds, and spirit with the nutrition, rest, exercise, relationships, meditation, and other stress management techniques we engage in.  We will set intentions for change where needed and study how the plans actually operate in our daily lives.  We will explore what blocks us from achieving our goals.  There will be guest lectures/demonstrations by experts, mini lectures on topics.  Students will make presentations on nutrition and exercise as well as leading the group in meditations, and students will critique other students’ presentations so as to help them improve their performance to groups. Each student will coach another student in meeting their nutritional and exercise goals.

13. Texts:
Two required books on Nutrition are:
Rudolph Ballentine, Diet and Nutrition: A Holistic Approach.  Honesdale, Penn: The Himalayan International Institute, 1978.
Neal Barnard, Food For Life:  How the New Four Food Groups Can Save Your Life. New York: three Rivers Press, 1993.

Suggested books on Nutrition are:
Neal Barnard, The Power of Your Plate:  A Plan for Better Living. Summertown, Tenn.: Book Publishing Company, 1995
John Robbins.  A Diet for a New America:  How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness, and the Future of Life on Earth. Tiburon, Calif.:  H J Kramer, 1987.
Peter D’Adamo, Eat Right For Your Type. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1996.
Dean Ornish, Eat More, Weigh Less. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1993.
Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease. Ivy Books, 1996.
Dean Ornish. Stress, Diet and Your Heart. New American Library, 1991.
Gary Null, Ultimate Anti-Aging Program. New York: Kensington Books, 1999.

Books on Exercise:
Valerie O’Hara, Five Weeks to Healing Stress: The Wellness Option. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1996.
Gary Paruszkiewicz, Tai Chi for Wellness: a student workbook, (Second edition).  Self publication.

Books on Meditation are:
Belleruth Naparstek. Staying Well with Guided Imagery. New York: Werner Books, 1994.

Required reading on the importance of Interpersonal Relationships:
Dean Ornish.  Love and Survival. New York:  HarperCollins, 1998.
 

Recommended reading on the importance of Spirituality and the Interpersonal connection:
Jo Kadlecek.  Spiritual Food for Balanced Living:  Feast of Life. Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI: 1999.
Rachel Naomi Remen.  My Grandfather’s Blessing: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging. New York: Riverhead Books, 2000.
Diane Goldner. Infinite Grace: where the worlds of science and spiritual healing meet. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 1999.
Peter Gold. Navajo & Tibetan Sacred Wisdom: The Circle of the Spirit.  Rochester, Vermont, 1994.
 

 Recommended book on Anatomy:
Wynn Kapit and Lawrence Elson. The Anatomy Coloring Book (Second Edition).  New York: Addison-Wesley, HarperCollins College Publishers, 1993.

 Recommended book on body-mind connection:
Stanley Keleman. Your Body Speaks Its Mind. Berkeley, CA: Center Press, 1981.

14. Topical Outline/Course Content:
a. Discussion of the expectations for the course; how the physical, emotional, cognitive, interpersonal, and spiritual dimensions are met for each student by the foods we select at different times, the exercises we do, the rest we get, and/or choices to meditate, pray, and engage in activities which lift our spirits; examples of types of meditations. Audio cassette by Herbert Benson, M.D. on his research on the relaxation response and integrative medicine presented as an invited address to the Evolution of Psychotherapy Convention, Anaheim, 2000.
b. Guest presentation and demonstration by Gary Paruszkiewicz of tai chi, chi gong exercises which we are to continue on our own.
c. Guest presentation by Davika Arya, M.D. on how we mentally nourish our mind by each thought we have; five sheaths in Indian philosophy.
d. Guest presentation and demonstration by Qiwing  Jiang, O.M.D. on Chinese diet, herbology, and acupuncture.
e. Rachel Berg will demonstrate some reflexology techniques which students can use on themselves and discuss chakras and show how the energy can be measured; practice tai chi exercises.
f. Rachel Berg will discuss chapters 1-3 in the Ballentine nutrition book; a student will lead the group in a yoga exercise.
g. Discussion of giving oneself feedback after a presentation, and giving  feedback to each presenter; two students will  report on highlights in chapters 4 and 5, give and receive feedback from the group.
h. J P Dave will make a presentation on his research with the relaxation response; two students will present chapters 6 and 7 and give and receive feedback to help improve their performance.
i. Gary Paruszkiewicz will review and critic our demonstration exercise techniques.
j. Marla Brodsky, a clinical nutritionist, will speak about nutrition, her research on nutrition in the older person, and spiritual eating.
k. Jaya Adiga, M.D. will demonstrate yoga techniques and, ayurvedic medical techniques.
l. Students will present on various chapters in the books, conduct an exercise session, and lead a meditation followed by giving and receiving feedback.
m. Students will coach each other to facilitate their partners in changing the foods they consume, the exercise they engage in, and the rest and meditations they engage in.  They will critique their coaching performance and receive feedback from their partner.
n. Graduate students will present their interview with a person from another culture about their diet, choice of exercise, and spiritual/meditative practices.
o. Presentation by Lynn Bement on composting and gardening to enrich our nutrition and care for the environment.

Papers and Projects:
Students will be responsible for a 20-30 minute presentation to the class on an aspect of nutrition, exercise, and meditation.  These presentations will give them practice in teaching others.  It is expected that students will consult with the professor before the presentations so that they can utilize feedback to enhance the presentations.  Students and the instructor will give feedback to each presenter using the “sandwich” method after the presenter has already given his/her own feedback on his/her performance using the “sandwich” method. [The “sandwich” method involves giving feedback about what is working well, followed by constructive criticism—areas which could be improved upon, ending with more positive feedback.]  The professor will assign a letter grade to each presentation—A = excellent, B = good, C = fair, D = poor, F = failure.

Students are expected to keep a record of their eating, exercise, sleep, meditation habits, and journal about how they feel as a result.  In the second half of the course, students will also journal about your experiences coaching a colleague to make the changes in diet, exercise, meditation he/she desires.  At the end of the course students will submit a paper or project which discusses their experiences in the course, what they’ve learned, the changes they were able to make in their lifestyle, the ways they’ve slipped into old patterns, how they’ve motivated themselves, and their intentions for the future.  The professor will assign a letter grade to each paper or project according the quality of the paper/project.

 Students will also be assigned a letter grade for the quality and quantity on their in-class participation including the quality of the self-evaluations and feedback to other students on their presentations.

Graduate students will present their paper/project to the rest of the class, critique their performance, and receive feedback from the professor and the other students in class.

I use the following grading system for all papers and exams: A=4 A-= 3.75, B+=3.5, B=3, B-=2.75, C+=2.5, C=2, C-=1.75, D+=1.5, D=1.  Students’ presentations, coaching, feedback, and papers will be graded, and their grades will be averaged to arrive at their final grade

15. Disability Statement:
Students who have a disability or special needs and require accommodation in order to have equal access to the classroom, must register with the designated staff member in the Division of Student Development.  Please go to Room 1201 or call (708) 534-4090 and ask for the Coordinator of Disability Services.  Students will be required to provide documentation of any disability when accommodation is requested.