The Wellness Workbook: How to Achieve Enduring Health and Vitality
– Dr John W Travis and Regina Sara Ryan.

WHAT READERS SAY...

“Revised and updated, the book that started the wellness movement. And nearly 30 years later it’s still the best!”

“I love this book! With its new look and updated content I can now use the Wellness Workbook in my college health classes without fear of being labeled out of date.”

“View your health and well-being from the standards of wellness presented in this workbook with clarity and precision and take charge of your own case and your family’s.”

“While other wellness books look primarily at diet and exercise, this book looks at the multi-dimensionality of wellness. No family should be without this workbook.”

“Every once in a while something really special shows up about creating health. Well written and documented, this book touches on the basics of our lives with helpful pointers on developing healthy attitudes and practices. I found this to be a great book!”

“It’s a rich, well documented source of information, perspectives and questions that will, with a little self- responsible commitment on your part, change your life – I promise.”

“Jack Travis is a visionary extraordinaire and he just keeps doing it – looking to the possible and insisting it can be done. And sure enough, when you give it a try, it can be done and your life will never be the same.”

“Easy to read and the index was so detailed that I could locate specific concerns quickly as if Dr. Travis was personally answering my inquiry. I loved the personal pictures from the authors’ childhood and the last page deserves to be on everyone’s wall.”

“If more parents followed the information in this book, the result would be lots of happier children, better balanced and less angry teenagers and less violent and money/status starved adults in our world.”

“The most comprehensive book that I have ever seen on wellness. Inspires us to look at our own wellbeing from the widest perspective, including emotional, social, and spiritual perspectives. As a holistic GP (family MD) this book will be at the top of my recommended reading list.”

“The thoughtful writing is nonjudgmental and interesting, and the humor found throughout the book allows the book to ‘walk its talk’ and consider the many sides of every issue, and understand how the many facets of Wellness are related one to another.”

“I am sharing this with every person I know personally and every couple I come into contact professionally. I look forward to sharing it with my young daughter someday 10 years from now. I’m also planning to give copies as gifts since what it better but the gift of health!”

reviews from Amazon.com

By pioneering the idea that health was more than the absence of illness, The Wellness Workbook: How to Achieve Enduring Health and Vitality was one of the original shapers of the Wellness Movement in the early 1980s.

Now in this revised and updated edition, authors Dr John Travis and Regina Sara Ryan continue to encourage readers to ask themselves the question: “Why settle for getting by, when your one precious life could be so much more?”

What is ‘wellness’? The two authors present wellness as a journey, a way of living and thinking, rather than a destination. The Wellness Workbook gracefully suggests that we take a mindful look at our lifestyles, and consider the impact our lifestyles have, in every fine detail, on ourselves, our families, our communities, and our world.

The ‘well’ are not necessarily the strong, the brave, the successful, the young, the whole, or even the illness-free. A person can be living a process of wellness and yet be physically handicapped; aged; scared in the face of challenge; in pain; imperfect. No matter what your current state of health, you can begin to appreciate yourself as a growing, changing person and allow yourself to move toward a happier life and positive health.

The Wellness Workbook offers a practical whole-self approach to healthy living, and provides a comprehensive self-assessment and hundreds of exercises and ideas to help you take control of your health and happiness.

From how you breathe to how you view the world, the interconnected elements of wellness affect all aspects of your life: your disposition toward injury and illness, your relationships, your general level of happiness, and beyond. In an optimal state of wellness, you are less prone to disease, stress, and other life-depleting factors.

Wellness is not simply the absence of illness. While people often lack physical symptoms, they may still be bored, depressed, tense, anxious, or generally unhappy with their lives. These emotional states often set the stage for physical disease through the lowering of the body’s resistance. They are the surface indication of underlying human needs for such things as recognition from others, a stimulating environment, caring and affection from friends, a sense of purpose, and self-acceptance.

Much of modern medicine is about treating and eliminating the evidence of disease. This is important. But it is not enough. It is essential to look below the surface signs to address the real needs. Wellness extends the definition of health to encompass a process of integration characterized by awareness, education, and growth.

Fundamentally, wellness is a choice – and not a substitute religion, ideology of any kind of dogma. People cannot be lectured or bullied into becoming and being well. According to Dr John Travis: “There are nutrition nuts who want everyone to take high doses of a particular supplement or go on a certain diet. There are runners who want to make marathoners out of everyone. I do not want to be looked on as the expert dictating the one true way. Wellness is a paradigm that calls for options, individuality, and choices freely made.”

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