Wellness Wednesday – “Health And Wellness Coaching”
Since the beginning of the new year, I’ve been going through a new Health & Wellness Coaching certification to better serve you in my new role here in the SED in empowering church workers and congregational wellness. This certification is through the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching (NBHWC) in partnership with the National Board of Medical Examiners, the same group that certifies doctors and other medical professionals.
You might be asking yourself, what does a Health & Wellness Coach do? According to the NBHWC, “Health and Wellness Coaches partner with clients seeking self-directed, lasting changes, aligned to their values, which promote health and wellness and, thereby, enhance well-being. In the course of their work, health and wellness coaches display unconditional positive regard for their clients and a belief in their capacity for change, and honor that each client is an expert on his or her life, while ensuring that all interactions are respectful and non-judgmental.”
As such, Health & Wellness Coaches work with individuals and groups in a client-centered process to facilitate and empower the client to develop and achieve self-determined goals related to health and wellness. Coaches support clients in mobilizing internal strengths and external resources and developing self-management strategies for making sustainable, healthy lifestyle and behavior changes. While health and wellness coaches per se do not diagnose conditions, prescribe treatments, or provide psychological therapeutic interventions, they may provide expert guidance in areas in which they hold active nationally recognized authorities, such as those referenced in the NBHWC’s healthy lifestyle curriculum. As partners and facilitators, Health & Wellness Coaches support their clients in achieving health goals and behavioral changes based on their client’s goals and consistent with treatment plans prescribed by individual clients’ professional healthcare providers. In addition, coaches assist clients in using their insight, personal strengths and resources, goal setting, action steps, and accountability toward healthy lifestyle change.
I share all this with you today because I completed my training program last week, and I am in the final steps of working toward my NBHWC certification. To that end, I am seeking your help. As part of the certification process, besides completing a four examination, I need to log fifty 20-minute health and wellness coaching sessions (though typically, my coaching sessions are up to 1 hour long). Therefore, I am looking for individuals serving in the SED who might be interested in working with me as your coach around health and wellness goals. By helping me with my certification, you would be helping yourself in working towards improving your overall health, wellness, and well-being.
What health and wellness goals are within the scope of the coaching we can do together? Here are some examples:
– Spiritual well-being
– Career/ministry well-being
– Social well-being
– Community well-being
– Financial well-being
– Emotional wellness
– Managing stress
– Mental well-being
– Physical wellness
– Exercise and sedentary lifestyle
– Healthy eating
– Alcohol and substance abuse
– Managing cholesterol
– Managing blood pressure and hypertension
– Managing arthritis and inflammation
– Healthy sleeping
– Managing coronary artery health
– Managing diabetes
– Weight management
If you are interested in improving any of these areas of your own personal health and wellness, help me to help you by reaching out to schedule a coaching session today. I would love to partner with you to help empower you in your overall wellness and well-being so that you can show up as the best version of you seek to live out your calling in Christ in love and service to others in each of your different callings in life (church, career/ministry, family, and community). And the best part is that these coaching sessions are free of charge to you as part of my ministry here in the SED. So, you can contact me at tguse@se.lcms.org to schedule your health and wellness coaching session today.
