ski mountains

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” This cheery tune becomes an earwig for many of us as we wander through any kind of store playing holiday muzak. However, “According to a survey, 45% of…people living in the United States would choose to skip out on the holidays, rather than deal with the stress of it all.” (https://www.claritychi.com/holiday-stress/

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relaxing lifestyle wine cheese

How trapped are we in the limitations of the culture we have experienced most of our lives? Greater travel and today’s technologically shrunken world has immensely increased our awareness of alternative ways of living. We do, in fact, have a world of lifestyle choices to draw upon. Let’s look at some cultural concepts and practices we might draw upon and…

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earth hands

Its a ten and a half hour plane flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Chicago, and then two and a half more to Denver. Home for two days I’m finally catching up on some real rest, and also catching up with perspective. Our dream of taking wellness worldwide continues to happen.

brazil coaching group 2012Wellness & Health Coach Intensive, Sao Paulo, Brazil

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teach ballroom

Sometimes I find that the coaching I am doing with my  clients flows into a combination of elements in their lives, their own wellness, their businesses, their families and their leadership opportunities.  Such a client related a story today that unexpectedly led us into talking about what worked so well in our coaching relationship.  She had just recently attended a…

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line danc

I never did get the Cha Cha. It looks like line dancing is a lot of fun, but I’ve got two left feet that seem to always get in everyone’s way. Following prescribed steps in a precise way is just not how I like to dance. Now, fire up some swing, some impromptu, totally kicking it up blues or Telluride…

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Wellness Coaching: Bringing Light To Lifestyle Medicine

“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.”
Hippocrates 420 B.C – 370 B.C.

Healthcare providers have been prescribing lifestyle improvement for thousands of years. The evidence has been built from the observations of Hippocrates all the way…

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wine glasses on the beach

“Summertime and the livin’ is easy.” How long has it been since the words of that old song rang true? In response to the accelerated pace of life a conscious movement has emerged to help us slow down and reclaim our quality of life again.

In my last post I shared about Time Affluence (http://wp.me/pUi2y-hV) and how…

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various human emotions wood abstract

One of the first things we learn about in the fields of Wellness & Health Promotion and Health & Wellness Coaching, is that our lifestyle choices are a primary determinant of our health and wellbeing. It seems straightforward that making the right or healthy choice is a rational process based upon having the best information. We often then address…

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Effective coach training teaches about   the power of relationship, of person-to-person connection, not just because it’s warm and “nice”, but because all the evidence from coaching and psychotherapy says it works! We each need to feel truly heard by others that we are attempting to be in relationship with. When we share our lives, our experiences and our feelings we

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It’s time to cut a new trail…innovate wellness!

Attending Lifestyle Medicine 2013 (http://lifestylemedicine.org/lifestylemedicine2013) in the Washington, D.C. area this week I was heartened to be around so many enthusiastic people from the medical world who have embraced the realization of just how behavioral health is. The conference was “small but mighty” and had doubled in size since the previous year.

Dean Ornish (http://www.ornishspectrum.com

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Projection – A Freudian Classic

Our previous blog post: Getting Yourself Out Of The Way: The Self-Vigilant Coach – Part One (https://wp.me/pUi2y-mu)  explored the many ways in which the coach can interfere in the coaching process and “get in the way” of the client’s own coaching work. Our own agendas, attitudes, beliefs, prejudices, projections and unfinished emotional business can all impede the coaching…

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holiday weight gain scale

The fear of adding those holiday-midwinter pounds often drives people to the bookstore for yet another dieting best-seller. The desire for quick results is understandable and nothing delivers like a low-calorie diet. The infomercials promise miracles and we keep on seeking a solution that we know sounds too good to be true. Of course those same low-calorie diets are impossible…

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In our last post we featured Part One on this topic:

A New Code of Ethics For Health & Wellness Coaches: Healthy Boundaries Part One   http://wp.me/pUi2y-kb There we introduced the new NCCHWC Code (National Consortium for Credentialing Health and Wellness Coaches) and began the discussion of boundaries with a look at ethics, appropriate relationships, touch and self-disclosure…

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Rocky Mountain National Park, Glacier Gorge. Elevation at Trailhead 9,240 ft.  Photo by M. Arloski

Whether it’s a trek in the Alps or a time to be “Rocky Mountain High”, getting up in the mountains is a great way to be well physically, mentally and spiritually. Being well at higher altitude however requires some important knowledge and sometimes, some caution. The people a wellness coach works with may face some challenges at higher elevation…

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airplane traveling

More and more jobs are requiring people to engage in travel as a continual part of their work. High tech solutions to communication have made it easier to travel and get the job done, and, to our stress-level’s demise, travel and never get away from working on that job. As I flew from Newark to Denver on the way back…

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answers

When faced with overwhelming, frightening and ultimately complex problems we tend to search for simplistic answers. Perhaps this is an adaptive attempt originating in the deep part of our brain known as the amygdala, where fear triggers our survival instincts (and our flight/fight/freeze response). In our ancestral days near our cave, taking action to freeze, run or fight like…

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linking hands

Suzanne Ballantyne, Wellness and Health Coach and Yoga Teacher, recently shared this piece below with me and her classmates from her Wellness Mapping 360° training course.

“I am taking more anatomy classes for my yoga teaching and Thursday the topic was breathing anatomy.  The first thing the teacher did was have us breathe – no big surprise there.  Anyway…

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Albert Bandura

“Self-efficacy or belief in one’s ability to perform determines whether behavior will be initiated, how much effort will be expended, and whether the effort will be sustained.”

"People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided."        Albert Bandura

From ancient philosophers…

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clouds vista perspective

We meet our coaching client with the very best of intentions. We want to help. And help sometimes means throwing ourselves into doing what the client seems to be unable to do themselves up to this point – figure out solutions. Instead of empowering our clients to come to their own solutions, we seek to fix it for them. We…

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Michael Arloski, Ph.D., PCC, CWP, NBC-HWC

The profession of health and wellness coaching is fully engaged in a process of transformation. As we grow to be of service to wellness programs, lifestyle medicine practices, employee assistance programs, insurance carriers, disease management companies, and all manner of healthcare providers, around the globe, the demand for greater quality coaching only builds. We are moving from a need for

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Dr. Michael Arloski

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