Goddess Dr. Myrna-Elois Washington

This paper presents a general overview of the MUSE Theory ME and its application as a national and international project. It is published on Academia.edu to make it accessible to students and professionals around the world who wish to research its components for further validation and application or to use it as the foundation for their own MUSE Projects ME. It is my belief as a seasoned professional health and wellness promoter and educator that the application of the MUSE Theory ME at the global level will lead to trust, collaboration, and peaceful coexistence among peoples, groups, and nations. What is MUSE Theory ME ? The acronym, MUSE, stands for Mutual Understanding through Self-Expression. From a theoretical perspective, MUSE is an evidence-based formula for self-mastery, sustainable health, conflict mediation, and world peace consisting of two basic components: 1) mutual understanding and 2) self-expression. MUSE Theory ME was developed by Myrna-Elois Davis Washington as part of her studies for masters and doctorate degrees in health and wellness psychology. A visionary healer, metaphysician, health minister, and psychologist with more than forty years as a certified health professional, Washington only returned to college in 2007 to qualify for what she described as the " call to heal " by studying the new biopsychosocial-spiritual model of psychology for its application as a transformative and mindful approach to health and healing. Washington presents MUSE Theory ME as her divinely inspired 'reward' for returning to school to qualify for the call to heal, first, herself and those closest to her, then, her community and ultimately, the world. With the goal of " qualifying for the call, " Washington focused her studies during her master's and doctorate on gathering empirical evidence to support MUSE Theory ME .

This paper presents the MUSE TheoryME and an overview of its application as a national and international project. It is published here to make it accessible to students and professionals around the world who wish to research its components for further validation or to use it as the foundation for their own MUSE ProjectsME. It is the author’s belief that application of this formula at the global level will lead to trust, collaboration, and peaceful coexistence among peoples, groups, and nations.

The paper contains a copy of an e-mail and Facebook message sent to President Obama on October 10, 2016. It represents a revised copy of a letter previously sent to Denver 9News and Denver Police Chief Robert C. White addressing the disproportionate rate at which law enforcers shoot and kill people of color.

Based on Coil’s and Rice’s 1993 article “Managing Work-force Diversity in the Nineties: The Impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1991,” this paper considers the following question: Do you believe individual or systemic change would have a greater impact on workplace diversity? Because it is written from a personal perspective, it is written in first person.

This paper is a self-selected topic paper on how the author, as a health and wellness consultant, would apply mindfulness to the optimal organizational setting. Based on previous assignments and research conducted throughout this course, the author employs a personal voice to critically analyze the topic of mindfulness, discuss the evidence base supporting the use of mindfulness as self-care for counselors and consultants in organizational settings, present a proposal for incorporating mindfulness into an optimal organizational setting, and conclude with specific bullets summarizing the information presented throughout the paper.
 

Noise-induced hearing loss is damage to the structures of the inner ear caused by long-lasting and high levels of environmental sound (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders [NIDCD], 2015). In the hospital operating room, for instance, these may be caused by high-pitched bone-cutting drills or suctioning devices (Friis. 2012).

Waste disposal is one of the most daunting problems facing industrialized countries today. As a byproduct of maintaining the associated advanced infrastructure required to support its industrial processes, the United States produced more than 254 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2014 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2015). In the context of waste disposal, these “solid wastes,” which are discarded or abandoned as having negative value, can be solid, liquid, semi-solid or containerized gaseous with significant potential for endangering human lives and the environment (Friis, 2012; New York State Department of Environmental Conservation [NYSDEC], 2015). Everyone here at this facility - employees, management, owners, families, and other stakeholders - should be concerned about the disposing of solid waste because there are significant health problems that can occur as the result of the ground, air, and water pollution caused by improper disposal or the disposal process itself (Friis, 2012). As informed citizens of this country, they have a right and an obligation to be informed about solid waste management and source reduction strategies (Friis, 2012).

This presentation looks at “dioxin,” the most highly-researched toxic byproduct of solid waste found in industrial and hazardous waste sites (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [NIH], 2012). Most of you will likely not remember the “Agent Orange” scare in 1982, when returning war veterans began to exhibit the symptoms of exposure to dioxin through herbicides and other byproducts of wartime combustion processes. However, here we are, almost 40 years later with dioxin emissions being reduced by 90%, and the familiar threat of dioxin is in the public’s view again and demands your – our – attention.

The purpose of this paper Project is to create a workplace toxicant intervention for Metropolitan Hospital of Denver, a large top-rated surgical facility located in Denver, Colorado. The project lays out the steps necessary to make contact with and gain entry into the organization, assess their needs, create a series of educational and intervention workshops to meet those needs, and display mastery of interventions that will benefit the hospital’s employees in reducing exposure to hazardous noise and responding to the associated health condition. The sample letter/ e-mail introduction, the needs assessment (the ‘Noise and Risk of Hearing Loss Assessment’), the educational and intervention PowerPoint presentations (‘Your Hearing and the Effects of Hazardous Noise’ and ‘Preventing Noise-Induced Hearing Loss’), and the Hearing Conservation Program are included as Appendices following the references page.

Based on the knowledge garnered during an advanced statistics course for a doctoral program in health and wellness psychology, this paper presents an overview of inferential statistics detailing a basic procedure for choosing the appropriate statistical procedure to use for a study. Included in the paper are: 1) the statistical decision flowchart (attached); 2) the steps involved in creating the model; 3) two studies of interest utilizing the model; and 4) a demonstration of how the statistical decisions model will be used to determine the appropriate statistical test for the two studies described.

This paper presents a proposal for OMG! Obesity Must Go! (OMG!), an employee assistance program (EAP) to be implemented at Thereyouare University (TU), a large university located in Arkansas, one of the top five states for obesity in the United States.  It is intended for consideration by TU’s initial hiring entity, which is composed of the human resources and finance departments, the occupational health, labor/management, and leadership staff; and all entities within the EAP and health promotion communities. The mission of the OMG! program is to educate, inform, and raise the awareness of obesity and its impact on health, to encourage and empower employees to lead healthier, more meaningful lives; and to substantially improve the identified health outcomes by reducing the percent overweight by 5 points in the first year, reducing cholesterol and blood pressure levels, and providing a healthier environment for all.

The experience of chronic pain is a complex mind/body experience that is highly-subjective, socially-mediated and culturally-defined. Although it is known that chronic pain affects older people, women, and African Americans more frequently and intensely, little is known about the health threat or illness “representations” (the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs about chronic pain, coping behaviors, and the perceived barriers to seeking and receiving adequate treatment) that underpin its perceptions and guide its treatment and outcomes. The purpose of the proposed qualitative research is to explore how chronic pain is experienced by older African American women as captured in the descriptions of their representations and analyzed using the Common Sense Model (CSM), an organizing framework for knowledge development that postulates that people use common sense beliefs to construct these representations. Over the past ten years, an emerging concept has been that failure to provide pain management may not only be unethical and poor practice, but a violation of basic human rights. The current study aims to inform a culturally-competent healthcare delivery system in the development of culturally-sensitive and culturally-appropriate assessment tools and management strategies for chronic pain. This paper presents a proposal for the study and includes discussions on the rationale/problem statement, the research questions, a review of the literature, the research methodology, methods of achieving validity, potential ethical problems, and limitations.

Succession planning is a widely-used, effective, and efficient business and organizational practice that involves a clearly articulated definition of leadership potential and its key factors, assessing for career development, professional training, leadership development; and the internal processes of training, promotion, and the maintenance of leadership stability. The purpose of this paper is to describe a comprehensive assessment for succession planning for the Robinson Insurance Company, a 30-year-old, family-owned insurance company with 13 branch offices in five different cities in the greater Portland metropolitan area. Based upon the premise that Todd Robinson, the company’s president, has retained the services of this writer to help plan an assessment-based professional development program to identify people within the company who have the potential for greater levels of responsibility and authority, this paper discusses the key factors of leadership potential, identifies an assessment-based approach for identifying potential, examines three specific assessment instrument, and discusses the practical considerations and potential legal ramifications of the assessment approach.

Chronic pain (CP) is a widespread, complex, and highly-subjective health problem that affects more people than diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined; 1.5 people globally and 116 million Americans. Due to its ability to undermine quality of life and its reliance on neural, cognitive, behavioral, and biochemical processes; studies have shown CP to be highly correlated with self-efficacy (SE), a highly-researched construct which has long been associated with academic, social, and job/career success. Research has also demonstrated that the perception, coping behaviors, and treatment outcomes of chronic pain are socially-defined and culturally-mediated. In response to a “call-to-arms” for the development of culturally-competent pain treatment to ensure each citizen’s inalienable “right to health,” this paper presents a proposal for an instrument to measure the construct of  “chronic pain self-efficacy” (CPSE) from a cultural perspective. The proposed instrument (the Cultural Chronic Pain Self-efficacy Scale, CCPSES) is a 15-item, Likert-type rating scale that assesses participants’ beliefs about their abilities to function on specific tasks despite their pain and their beliefs about their healthcare providers’ cultural competencies in six key areas. The test development proposal contains the following sections: 1) Rationale/Problem Statement; 2) Research Question; 3) Literature Review; 4) Methodology; and 5) a Discussion of CCPSES’s  Strengths and Weaknesses, Ethical Considerations, and Limitations.

The human body has approximately 1 trillion neurons, each of which has a cell body with a nucleus that contains the genetic material that determines how the cell functions (Feldman, 2008).  By thinking of the nervous system as the highway and the neurons as the vehicles on that highway, we can see how “the nervous system is (considered to be) the pathway for the instructions that permit our bodies to carry out such precise activities” (p. 61). In this paper, we discover why neurons are called “the basic elements of behavior” by examining them as the nerve cells that allow our brains to transport and coordinate the messages of our thoughts, actions, and deeds.

In this paper, we gather more information for our international comparison of health insurance systems by exploring the healthcare system in the US as it exists for the elderly today and discussing the effectiveness of the Medicare program. We also discuss what effect the Affordable Care Act has on older adults.

In this paper, we continue the international comparison of health insurance systems by examining healthcare spending in the United States and comparing it to another developed country (Sweden) and one underdeveloped or developing country (South Africa). In the first section, we discuss the healthcare spending of the U.S., in the second we examine Sweden’s healthcare expenditures and discuss how U.S. and Swedish spending differ, and in the third, we describe healthcare spending in South Africa and discuss how it is similar or different to the U.S.

In this paper, we examine the healthcare systems of two developed countries: the United States (ranked 11th of 11 countries surveyed in international comparison surveys) and the United Kingdom (ranked number 1). Our discussion begins with an overview of each country’s healthcare system and concludes with a discussion of the similarities and differences between the two systems. Specifically, the following topics will be addressed: 1) the government’s role; 2) the key governing entities; 3) who and what is covered; 4) how the system is financed; and 5) how health care services are organized, financed, and delivered (Thomson, Osborn, Squires, and Jun, 2013). The goal of this comparison is to enhance our understanding of healthcare in the United States and another developed country (Holtz, 2013; Thomson et al., 2013).

In light of recent health reform legislation, this paper describes how community based health organizations can be utilized to implement health care reform, provide specific examples and then compare and contrasts the strengths and limitations of this approach.

In this paper, we describe the role of integrative medicine in promoting health and well-being and provide one example of a health intervention or program that utilizes integrative medicine in its approach to preventing or treating illness or disability.

One of the central features of the American Dream is the belief that success in society is based on merit (meritocracy). Simply put, meritocracy assumes that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed; that those who succeed do so because they work hard and those who fail are responsible for their failure because they do not work hard enough. In this paper, we discuss whether meritocracy is fact of myth by exploring the author’s position on whether organizations should hire individuals for leadership positions based solely on merit.

Although this paper was written as part of my undergraduate studies, it points the way to the current paradigm shift in health and wellness. The purpose of this paper is to explore how resilience interventions and resilience training can affect health and well-being.  Our exploration will take the form of an annotated bibliography, in which we analyze and examine four scholarly articles and their approaches to the promotion of resilience training in health psychology: a concept analysis of resilience, building inner resilience, promoting resilience in displaced persons, and positive psychology.  We will conclude with the knowledge, skill insights and overall learning that were gained from these four articles and the exploration of the possibility and impact of the existence of resilience training and resilience interventions in the future.

Based on Coil’s and Rice’s 1993 article “Managing Work-force Diversity in the nineties: The Impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1991,” this paper considers the following question: Do you believe individual or systemic change would have a greater impact on workplace diversity? Because it is written from a personal perspective, it is written in first person.

A team is a group of diverse individuals working together for a common goal. Awareness of this diversity can have positive and negative effects on how well the team members work together to achieve that goal. Diversity consciousness evolves over time so that, as it grows, team builders become better able to deal with the variations in values, personalities, behaviors, and abilities among team members and, consequently, alter their concepts and perspectives of team building. Using the discussion in Bucher (2010), this paper discusses how diversity impacts teamwork and explores effective ways to enhance work as part of a diverse team.

In their article “Rethinking Diversity in Public Organizations for the 21st Century”, Selden & Selden present a multicultural model to promote organizational diversity.  This paper identifies and defends the paradigm the author feels would be most effective in promoting organizational diversity and suggests components she feels would enhance the paradigm to make it even more effective.

As the United States becomes increasingly diverse, organizations have recognized the need to hire individuals with the ability to communicate across culture lines. Based on a review of the cultural iceberg at http://www.hsp.org/files/culturaliceberg2.pdf, this paper considers the multiple layers of cultural identity (surface, folk, and deep culture) and addresses the following questions: (1) How does culture impact communication? and (2) Why might it be a good idea for all organizations to have diversity training to assist employees in this area?

This paper presents the author’s reaction to watching the Jane Elliot’s “Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment” and answers the question: Do you believe that it is still necessary to teach children about prejudice, racism, discrimination and "difference," in a classroom setting? Note: Because this is a reaction paper, it is written in first person.

One of the central features of the American Dream is the belief that success in society is based on merit (meritocracy). Simply put, meritocracy assumes that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed; that those who succeed do so because they work hard and those who fail are responsible for their failure because they do not work hard enough. In this paper, we discuss whether meritocracy is fact of myth by exploring the author’s position on whether organizations should hire individuals for leadership positions based solely on merit.

As the American workforce becomes increasingly more diverse, many companies have begun to keep Diversity Managers on staff.  This paper explores Diversity Management and discusses the skills, qualities, duties, and level of education and experience required to become a successful Diversity Manager (DM).

This paper discusses the following statement: “Without awareness and knowledge of gender, race, culture, and ethnicity, therapists and other helping professionals could unwittingly engage in cultural oppression.” In addition, it examines the concepts of “Ethnocentric Monoculturalism” and “Microaggressions” and explores how they might be oppressive to people of color, gays, lesbians, and women.

Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow were two of the founders of the Humanistic movement in modern psychology. While the Humanistic approach has persisted since the 1950’s, its use in the United States has been seen by some as controversial. This paper explores the history of the Humanistic approach, briefly explores the contributions of its founders, and discusses how humanistic theory is currently being utilized in the practice of modern psychology.

While Freud’s theory of Psychoanalysis is widely-accepted and validated in the field of psychology, there are some people who do not accept his work as ‘scientific.’ In this paper, we identify two o Freud’s principles or theories and provide an analysis supporting their validity and explaining why others may not accept the validity of these principles.

Stereotypes and biases are learned from numerous sources including family, friends, colleagues, the media, or biases that people have about an individual you based on his or her race, class, culture, sexual orientation, gender, phenotype, or religion. This paper addresses the question of how the author has been impacted by biases and stereotypes, discusses the author’s reaction(s) to such treatment, and examines the attractiveness/beauty stereotype as the stereotype that has most significantly impacted the author’s life.

This paper discusses the author’s views on race by presenting her reaction to the following statement: “If we could all put on blinders and ignore race we would not have any problems. Our goal should be to live in a colorblind society. Will ignoring race give us an equal playing field?”

In this paper, we explore a systematic approach of specific guidelines that will enhance anyone’s efforts to succeed in the business environment.  Our examination follows a logical flow of events that includes: 1) Preparation, 2) Communicating with Others, 3) Working in Groups, 4) Leadership in the Workplace, and 5) Balancing Our Personal and Business Worlds.  In addition, we also explore the implications of this new knowledge by integrating theoretical concepts, research, and class discussions into work and life experience, including explanations and examples from previous experience, as well as implications for future application.  Finally, we discover that we create our own opportunities by the quality and quantity of the investments we make into our own careers.  Our success equals our investments.  Bottom line:  Balance is number one! ... Expectation = Outcome.

This paper discusses the introduction of behaviorism as a major contribution to the world of psychology by comparing and contrasting the contributions and perspectives of three of psychology’s “premiere figures” - Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, and B. F. Skinner

It is historical fact that early intelligence tests were normed primarily on Caucasian, middle-class populations.  This paper provides an analysis of the issues of validity in applying these intelligence theories and tests to minority groups.

Throughout the history of psychology, the contributions of minority theorists, such as African Americans and females, have often been overlooked.  This paper analyzes these omissions and discusses how they have affected the field of psychology.

In this paper, we compare and contrast the theories of Structuralism, which was structuralism developed out of early attempts to establish psychology as a separate discipline from philosophy and biology, and Functionalism, which was developed by American psychologists in response to the theory of Structuralism.  Additionally, this discussion includes the contributions and relevance of these theories to contemporary psychology.

For many centuries, philosophers have attempted to answer questions regarding the roles of the mind and body and their interactions with each other. This paper provides an analysis of the debate between the theories of dualism and monism. The author then chooses the theory he/she believes to be most credible and supports that belief with the required text and at least one journal article from an online journal databases and specific examples.

Fullan (2001) wrote, “leaders in all organizations, whether they know it or not, contribute for better or for worse to moral purpose in their organizations and society as a whole” (p.15).
In this discussion, we examine ways in which a specific leader, historical or contemporary, has contributed to the health and wellness culture of an organization or system by comparing and contrasting the leader’s strategic health and wellness process to Fullan’s (2001) guidelines to understanding The Change Process.

The concept of the health promoting workplace is becoming increasingly relevant as more private and public organizations recognize future success in a globalizing marketplace can only be achieved with a healthy, qualified, and motivated workforce.  In this discussion, we explore the ‘politics of small’ (Greenberg, Chapter 4) in relation to such a global concept as workplace wellness.

The global marketplace, the push to reduce travel time to save costs, and technological advances has pushed a relatively new kind of team/group, the virtual team/group to the forefront. In this paper, we discuss how the author thinks the use of communication technology supports or detracts from creating a successful team environment and elaborate on the team/group issues that are associated with leading a Virtual Team/Group.

In this paper, we discuss how organizations/leaders can use performance management tools and reward systems to create an environment where teams can succeed, talk about the advantages and disadvantages of individual vs team reward systems, and include the author’s personal experience in a “rewarding or non-rewarding” team/group environment.

Experiential therapy helps clients get beneath the surface of their interactions to explore the feelings that drive them, drop their defenses, and come together with more immediacy and authenticity (Nichols, 2010). This paper presents a discussion of “Carl Rogers Humanistic Family Therapy Video”, a sample scenario of Rogers’ person-centered therapeutic approach about a man facing problems with a transition in his marital life and with family interactions. In addition to reflecting on the actions and questions of the therapist as she interacts with the client and personal impressions about the sessions or treatment, this paper explores the experiential humanistic approach to life transitions by discussing the client’s problem, the effectiveness of the therapeutic approach, the therapist’s technique, and the solution; and supports these points by incorporating information from two peer-reviewed journal articles and relative textbooks.

The paper contains a copy of an e-mail and Facebook message sent to President Obama on October 10, 2016. It represents a revised copy of a letter previously sent to Denver 9News and Denver Police Chief Robert C. White addressing the disproportionate rate at which law enforcers shoot and kill people of color.

This Workbook is designed to help you PRACTICE your Winning Spread in The Solitary Game of Life. It is based on the book:
Winning Ways (2nd Ed.) The ART & SCIENCE OF Philautiology:
Mindful Practices for Programming Your Mind to WIN at the Game of Life  In Health, Happiness, Transformation, and Self-Mastery

An Introduction to the second edition of "Winning Ways: The Art and Science of Philautiology." This book, Introduces the emerging field of Philautiology, which is based on the study and practice of Philautia, the Greek word for Self-Love, which is considered to be the highest and most powerful form of LOVE. Written in easy-to-understand language, this book presents tried-and-proven, evidence-based, heuristic, neuro-linguistic "Mind Hacks" for developing a winning mindset for winning at health, happiness, self-mastery, and world peace.

This Paper Presents the second of twenty-six Modules in a 28-Day Self-Love Challenge: Awakening the Goddess Within, implemented February 1 -28, 2019, in the closed FaceBook group:#Philautiology: The Art and Science of Self-Love as Self-Care.

This Paper Presents the first of twenty-six Modules in a 28-Day Self-Love Challenge: Awakening the Goddess Within, implemented February 1 -28, 2019, in the closed FaceBook group:#Philautiology: The Art and Science of Self-Love as Self-Care.