don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

A few weeks ago, I had a pretty neat wellness adventure, and I'd like to tell you about it. I was in Austria to lecture at the FH Joanneum University of Applied Sciences in Bad Gleichenberg. As part of that trip, I also went to Germany to work with wellness leaders on a further expansion of REAL wellness applied to a small Bavarian village.

My mission, arranged by former University of Arkansas professor Jim Miller, now a faculty member at FH Joanneum, was to meet with six classes. I discussed wellness concepts in general and wellness applied to health promotion, aging, tourism and rural development. It was challenging and great fun, made more so by the presence of my colleague and good friend Judd Allen of Burlington, Vermont. Judd, as visitors to this site know, is a wellness pioneer and an authority on mentoring and creating supportive cultures.

I had boldly (and foolishly) stated that a few impressions from a wide-eyed American tourist in Graz and surrounding environs while touring about and doing lectures would be included in last week's E-AWR. Maybe you noticed that no such impressions were included. There was little time for writing a newsletter. I actually had to work. In any event, here are a few impressions, a week late but better organized than would have occurred if attempted from abroad.

If I were a young man looking for a good college, this small and relatively new school in a small Austrian town would be a strong possibility, once I learned the German language. In some classes with 40 students, only one was male. The women, not to be sexist about this, were all, like the children in Lake Woebegon, above average. Way above average - and friendly, positive, eager to learn and otherwise most impressive. Of course they all spoke English - being bilingual is an entry requirement.

In Europe, wellness is strongly associated with spas, so the term might be doomed in more serious contexts. After gathering a bit of information here and there, I organized the possibilities for wellness into six categories, based upon increasing levels of desirability and significance. Only the first few levels of this hierarchy are connected with reality at present, but the future lies ahead, I'd like to think.

1. Wellness as pampering and pleasure. That's spa wellness. 
2. Wellness as healing and rehabilitation. That's medical wellness. 
3. Wellness as a weight loss program. That's problem amelioration wellness.
4. Wellness as fitness testing and prescriptions. That's risk reduction wellness.
5. Wellness with a "real" wellness orientation. (I'll explain such wellness in a moment.
6. Wellness as a specialization for aging excellence. That's Aging Beyond Belief wellness - see the 69 tips.

In any case, I went on a bit about what each of these orientations might involve and what kinds of institutions were most likely to embrace each level, if the right incentives could be mustered to entice them to do so.

On the last day at FH-Joanneum, Dietmar Wallnerand and his team of mad scientists at the Sport Science Laboratory outfitted the two of us in Hannibal Lecter-like testing gear for medical experiments. We were run to exhaustion on a treadmill. Blood was drawn from our earlobes every one minute. I could say it was a lot of fun, but I'm trying to keep this report honest. It was very challenging. I got the results yesterday -- It's all very technical and interesting. The PDF report gives VO2 max, lactate levels, suggested aerobic heart rate training zone and all that jazz.

There was plenty of time reserved for riding bikes around the area and runs, as well as sampling the local cuisine and visiting other native highlights. All quite delightful. We visited and got to partake in a swim at a large spa. We also went to a chocolate factory, sampled a variety of vinegars at a facility famed for such a thing and stopped to observe the making of a genuine Styrian specialty - pumpkinseed oil. Not an everyday experience.

After our university work was done in Austria, I linked up with Dr. Mark Schmid-Neuhaus, long-time chairman of Deutscher Wellness Verband (the German Wellness Association) and Lutz Hertel, the executive of that organization. Both are wellness savants experienced in wellness promotion; both have attended summer National Wellness Conferences in Wisconsin. Together, we worked on ways to shape REAL wellness for quality of life enhancement as a philosophy for living well. The term REAL was selected for two reasons:

1. to separate quality of life-oriented wellness promotion from the use of the term in merchandising health products and services, however valuable - or not, and
2. for the ideas that are conveyed in the acronym, namely, reason, exuberance and liberty. These ideas are key to a conception of wellness as a mindset describing a disciplined and conscious approach to good living physically, psychologically and even spiritually in the sense of consciously seeking added meaning and purpose, wonder and joy in being.

REAL wellness, unlike the kind common at worksite wellness in America, includes certain elements of the human experience widely recognized as fundamental to a high quality of life, in addition to reason, exuberance, liberty or freedom. Among such elements are effective decision-making skills (critical thinking), relationship dynamics, humor, happiness and finding pleasure in vigorous physical expressions that contribute to fitness as well as extended physical capacities while aging. Thus, it includes all the elements offered today at spas throughout Europe, so there is no conflict with the status quo. However, the purposes of REAL wellness are broader than those that guide spa operators in selecting wellness offerings to clients.

The main project of the Deutscher Wellness Verband folks at present is facilitating the embrace of wellness by the entire tourist vilage of Bodenmais, situated on the edge of a mountain founded in 1300. The idea originated with the locals - isn't that amazing? Located near the German/Czech border, Bodenmais is in the storied Bavarian Forest. In process are plans for telling the story of the Bodenmais wellness focus with brochures, booklets, videos, a website and local performances. Two other projects in other parts of Europe are being assessed for similar REAL wellness activities.

The work done, my last day was spent enjoying Munich, particularly the center city and a retrospective show about the life and works of Mark Rothko (1903-1970), an American famous for large-format paintings with horizontally-layered color planes. That's a Rothko at the top of this essay. It's an untitled work dated 1949. When not on tour, it can be seen at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

It was a great trip. One surprise result of the discussions and plans to create a REAL wellness- inspired peaceful revolution - an appointment to the Board of Advisors of the Deutscher Wellness Verband. I hope they won't mind conducting future board meetings in English.

That's it. My report on an adventure promoting wellness lifestyles while enjoying one of my own, with a lot of help from Euro friends and a Yank from Vermont.

Be well. Always look on the bright side of life.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of factual knowledge. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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