Integrative Wellness™: Optimizing Well Being in the Workplace and in Community

A lack of integrative wellness skills is a deficit in our current education, workplace, health care and community settings. It is a missing link to facilitate personal and social resilience, vitality, stability, and recovery. Bauman Integrative Wellness™ aims to teach people to develop simple and consistent daily wellness practices that fit their needs and desire to feel better, manage stress and perform at a higher level.

Wellness has been a part of the American and European healing arts landscape for the past one hundred years when spas, natural therapies, specialized diet, and fitness programs came into fashion. Until recently, wellness has been a luxury for those with ample disposable income to afford concierge services, premium products and be insulated from survival issues. The fallout caused by the pandemics of CoVID-19, climate change, and socio-economic turbulence have rocked everyone’s world. In many ways, we are all in the same boat, adrift weathering the storms of change. Stress has led to burnout for youth, parents, and workers. Chronic health issues, (co-morbidities) have progressed into complex, inflammatory disorders. The visible dysfunction in society, the lack of security, trust and stability has frightened and wounded citizens across demographics and economic strata.

Mental illness is exploding among the young, the poor, the ailing, and disenfranchised. Bullying, prejudice, violence, blaming, shaming, and civil unrest is trending upward. Our advanced medical system is overwhelmed by emergency and life-threatening cases. Medicine can save lives but has little time or bandwidth to teach people to recover and become well.

Bauman Integrative Wellness™ brings health and medicine together, to provide cost effective solutions for people to become more self-reliant. Wellness programs called “lifestyle medicine” by the American Medical Association (AMA), have been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2020, to prevent and slow the progression of 75-90% of life-threatening illness, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, and immune dysfunction, plus debilitating mental health issues ranging from depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and tragic suicide, all of which are skyrocketing.

Dr. Bauman has developed a comprehensive integrative wellness program that allows for emotional awareness and release to be expressed in a safe space. Most of us know what to do, but fail to do so, due to overwhelm and a lack of guidance and accountability. We cannot access and incorporate learning on an individual level. Integrative Wellness™ facilitates social learning as a key to both personal growth, cultural sensitivity, and community building. In community, we find self-identity kindred friendships. Our antidote to loneliness, mistrust, and apathy is gaining skills and support to “grow together” rather than “go it alone.”

Integration of the Arts for Creative Expression

In communities large and small, the arts are used daily to reduce the experience of pain, help patients express needs and emotions, and create a welcoming and uplifting environment — a path to joy for those who may feel disheartened. Such moments are made possible by a diverse group of professions providing an ever-expanding array of initiatives that engage the arts, humanities, and design in the service of health and well-being. The Integrative Wellness™ program introduces these inspiring areas of practice and lays a foundation to connect, unify, and elevate the full arena of the arts, health, and well-being.

It is well known that engaging in creative experiences is vital to human health and well-being, to bridging the life experiences that divide people and society, and to helping people understand the human condition.[1] Throughout the United States, the arts — visual arts, creative movement, music, expressive writing, media arts and social justice arts, are being used to enhance personal healing, promote public health, and support community well-being, including relieving stress, decreasing feelings of loneliness, depression, and anxiety, encouraging creative thinking, and increasing greater life satisfaction. The marriage of the arts and wellness practices is a natural example of how creativity connects, in this case, with the science of recovery, resilience and longevity. The array of settings from medical and natural health schools and wellness centers, to extended living facilities, companies, and public schools. (2017, Janet Chu, Ph.D.)

Integration of Diverse Community Collaboration

We know that community wellness can be achieved by purposeful collaborations between individuals, workplaces, and institutions, who agree that wellness is a priority for everyone, if we are to create just, regenerative, and inclusive societies. Isolation and loneliness lead to mental/physical disease. Community creates immunity against despair and hopelessness.

Awareness of place, community, and practice
Creating a culture of workability
Distinction between inequality, equality, equity, and justice
Leveraging YOUR language
LEAP: listen and learn, engage, ask, provide
Becoming a JEDI: justice, equity, diversity, inclusion
Moving out of our comfort zone
Committing to brave spaces

Three Key Wellness Concepts

Beyond basic prevention, achieving balanced well being is an ongoing process. What is wellness? The word “wellness” is used by many people and organizations, especially since the sharp rise in healthcare costs, diabetes, and obesity during the past decade. Wellness has a history of being defined within a disease framework, meaning reducing health risks and preventing disease. Those are good goals, but it’s an outdated vision. A new vision was articulated by a few innovators, including Wellness Inventory creator Dr. John Travis.

A New Vision

Dr. Travis decided that rather than treating sick people, he would dedicate his life to inspiring people to be well. After creating his breakthrough wellness model, the Illness/Wellness Continuum (below), Dr. Travis opened the first wellness center in the United States in 1975, the Wellness Resource Center (Mill Valley, California) and met Dr. Ed Bauman.[2] Travis and Bauman shared the vision of an innovative program for personal lifestyle change that focused on self-responsibility and engaged the whole person — body, mind, and spirit as articulated in the landmark Holistic Health Handbook (Bauman et al. 1978 first edition).

Self-Care is Health Care

“I see people who have abused their bodies for decades. Just give a pause. Do a couple of short-term fasts, give yourself a break, give the immune system a break, get away from chemicals, grow your own food, just make these simple little decisions. And suddenly decades of damage are reversed in hours, weeks, and months. That’s grace at the cellular level.”

— Zach Bush, MD. (2024)

KEY CONCEPT #1: Illness/Wellness Continuum

Wellness is a process, never a static state.

The Illness/Wellness Continuum is the first of the three key wellness concepts. Most of us think of “wellness” in terms of “illness” and assume that the absence of illness indicates wellness. There are actually many degrees of wellness, just as there are many degrees of illness. The Illness/Wellness Continuum illustrates the relationship of the treatment paradigm to the wellness paradigm. An individual can move beyond the “neutral” point to increasingly higher levels of wellness.

Moving from the center to the left shows a progressively worsening state of health. Moving to the right of center indicates increasing levels of health and well being. The treatment paradigm (drugs, surgery, psychotherapy, and so on) can bring you up to the neutral point, where the symptoms of disease have been alleviated. That’s all it’s designed to do.

On the other hand, the Wellness Paradigm, which can be used at any point on the continuum, helps you move toward higher levels of wellness for individuals and organizations. The Wellness Paradigm directs you beyond the neutral point and encourages you to move as far toward wellness as possible. If you are ill, then treatment is important, but don’t stop at the neutral point.

Use the Wellness Paradigm to move toward high-level wellness! This makes all the difference in quality of life! Even though people often lack physical symptoms, they may still be bored, depressed, tense, anxious, or simply unhappy with their lives. Such emotional states often set the stage for physical and mental disease.

High-level wellness involves giving diligent care to your physical self, using your mind constructively, expressing your emotions effectively, being creatively involved with those around you, and being concerned about your physical, psychological, and spiritual environments. In fact, it less important where you are on the continuum; it’s more important which direction you’re facing — toward illness or wellness.

High-level wellness doesn’t preclude periods of illness and weakness, nor in today’s age, crisis, and trauma. Nor does it attempt to deny that death is a natural part of life. We know that genetics and other factors can cause disease. High-level wellness simply defines choices we can make over things we can control in our life, including our behaviors and partnerships.

KEY CONCEPT #2: Iceberg Model

Illness and Health are only the beginning. To understand their causes, you must look below the surface.

Icebergs reveal only a small part of their true size above water — about 90% submerged. Your current state of personal, social, or organizational health, be it one of disease or vitality, is the apparent (visible) portion. If you don’t like your state, you can attempt to change it, do things to it, chisel away at an unwanted condition such as weight. But, like an iceberg if you chip away a piece, another portion rises to the surface!

For true whole person, whole work-life balance and well being, you need to dive deeper. To understand all that creates and supports your current state of health, you have to look below the surface of your wellness state. Science has clearly demonstrated that our conscious and unconscious can impact our mental and physical health.

KEY CONCEPT #3: Wellness Energy System

We are all energy transformers, connected with the whole universe. All our life processes, including illness, depend on how we manage energy.

Each part is an aspect of the whole. When all the parts are acknowledged, the who becomes integrated. A cycle of innovation, repair, renewal, and new growth can be activated, as life begets life, and wellness is reconnection with nature, self, society, shared vision, and goals. Improved vitality, mood, and resilience are the outcomes of well-being achieved through personal wellness practice with creative expression within just, diverse, and inclusive community life.

Integrative Wellness Core Program: Ways to Be Well™ — Tools for Healing

Ways to Be Well™ is an interactive core skills training for individuals, families, organizations, wellness professionals and the workplace, as part of our comprehensive Integrative Wellness™ program. Each lesson in this introductory training is facilitated by three diverse collaborators, with special guest activity leaders in the areas of eating for health, joyful movement, mindfulness, healing relationships and soulful service, integrated with the arts for creative expression and diverse community collaboration.

Wellness Practice and Mental Wellness Research

International peer reviewed research documents the substantial value of wellness practices to control mental health issues, most notably anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Below are abstracts showing how the absence of any of the five key wellness practices can contribute to poor mental health. The addition of any, and preferably all of these health promoting behaviors, can have excellent value when sustained across time. The effect of daily practice of several or all of these wellness practices has yet to be measured. Bauman Wellness aims to test the hypothesis that people, groups and companies that engage in group wellness practice will show a measurable improvement in mental health, energy and resilience.

WELLNESS PRACTICE #1: Eating for Health™

Understanding nutrition, depression and mental illnesses

Nutrition can play a key role in the onset as well as severity and duration of depression. Many of the easily noticeable food patterns that precede depression are the same as those that occur during depression. These may include poor appetite, skipping meals, and a dominant desire for sweet foods. Nutritional neuroscience is an emerging discipline shedding light on the fact that nutritional factors are intertwined with human cognition, behavior, and emotions.

The most common mental disorders that are currently prevalent in numerous countries are depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The dietary intake pattern of the general population in many Asian and American countries reflects that they are often deficient in many nutrients, especially essential vitamins, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids. A notable feature of the diets of patients suffering from mental disorders is the severity of deficiency in these nutrients. Studies have indicated that daily supplements of vital nutrients are often effective in reducing patients’ symptoms. Supplements containing amino acids have been found to reduce symptoms, as they are converted to neurotransmitters which in turn alleviate depression and other mental health problems.

WELLNESS PRACTICE #2: Joyful Movement and Balanced Lifestyle

Regular exercise, anxiety, depression, and personality

The overall prevalence of exercise participation (with a minimum of 60 minutes weekly at 4 METs (Metabolic Energy Expenditure Index) in our sample was 51.4%. Exercise participation strongly declined with age from about 70% in young adolescents to 30% in older adults. Among adolescents, males exercised more, whereas, among older adults, females exercised more. Exercisers were on average less anxious (-0.18 SD), depressed (-0.29 SD) and neurotic (-0.14 SD), more extraverted {+0.32 SD). This study corroborates and extends previous findings: regular exercise is cross-sectionally associated with lower neuroticism, anxiety and depression and higher extraversion.

Anxiety and depression are associated with unhealthy lifestyle in patients at risk of cardiovascular disease

Both anxiety and depression were significantly associated with physical inactivity in both sexes and with an unhealthy diet in men but not in women. Anxiety and depression were both significantly correlated to smoking habits in men whereas only depression was related to smoking in women. In both sexes, the score reflecting unhealthy lifestyles was positively associated with the degree of anxiety and depression.

Sleep and Depression: Of all the psychiatric disorders associated with insomnia, depression is the most common.

It has been estimated that 90% of patients with depression complain about sleep quality. Two hundred five papers provided findings indicating the remarkable relationship between sleep alterations and depression. Although the existing hypotheses are not likely to explain all aspects of the sleep alterations in depression, each may be worth being maintained for refinements of pathophysiologic models of depression as new data accumulate.

WELLNESS PRACTICE #3: Mindfulness

Effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression

Our meta-analysis was based on 39 studies totaling 1,140 participants receiving mindfulness-based therapy for a range of conditions, including cancer, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and other psychiatric or medical conditions.

RESULTS: Effect size estimates suggest that mindfulness-based therapy was moderately effective for improving anxiety and mood symptoms from pre- to post-treatment in the overall sample.

CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that mindfulness-based therapy is a promising intervention for treating anxiety and mood problems in clinical populations.

WELLNESS PRACTICE #4: Healing Relationships

This study investigated the effect of loneliness on depression and further tested the mediating effect of social support. A total of 320 elderly persons completed the Emotional and Social Loneliness Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and Self-Rating Depression Scale. Results revealed that loneliness and social support significantly correlated with depression. Structural Equation Modeling indicated that social support partially mediates loneliness and depression. This study sheds light on the concurrent effects of loneliness and social support on depression, providing evidence on how to reduce depression among the elderly.

This study examined the relationship of self-efficacy and social support to adjustment in aging. Fifty-two community residents participated in an initial structured interview and a follow-up interview one year later. Measures of depression and self-efficacy relating to social support were included in the initial interview, with measures of depression and actual social support included at follow-up. Results showed that initial self-efficacy was related to social support one year later. A path analysis showed that self-efficacy functions directly as well as indirectly through its effect on social support in preventing depression.

WELLNESS PRACTICE #5 Service and Spiritual Practice

Spiritual Wellness and Depression

With a growing appreciation for the holism of human functioning, interest in the spiritual dimension as it relates to depression has increased. In this article, I review medical wellness literature and counseling literature for insight into the nature of spirituality and propose four dimensions of spiritual wellness as a result of this review: a sense of meaning in life, a transcendent perspective, an intrinsic value system, and a sense of belonging to a spiritual community of shared values and support. These dimensions are examined as they relate to the clinical literature and empirical research on depression. Implications for research, counseling, and counselor education also are reviewed.

Daily Wellness Practices Are Good For Everyone

For all people, young or old, well or ill, at home and at work. Let’s bring delightful food and healing arts practices to children before they become drug dependent or violent. By age 16, 46% of children have a chronic disease (Zach Bush, MD).[3] How you live today will determine how long and how well you will live tomorrow. Your genetics load the gun. Your lifestyle pulls the trigger. Over 80% of disease comes from poor diet and lifestyle (Mark Hyman, MD): stacking up decades of being over-stressed, undernourished, sedentary, toxic, and lacking meaningful community.

Our approach is to teach people how to think, and not what to think; how to make conscious diet and lifestyle choices, and work on their inner game to achieve optimal performance. We teach powerful physical and mental exercises to strengthen and align body, mind, and spirit that stimulate intelligence, innovation, and natural energy. We aim to help people save time and money, and enable them to spend far less on drugs, supplements, and therapy sessions. The Bauman approach is to connect people to their essential self and inner healer, so they can know what to do rather than relying on so-called experts or the flavor of the month diet, health product or healing device.

WHITE PAPER PDF

RESOURCES

Clift & Camic, 2016; Hanna, Rollins, & Lewis, 2017; Lambert, 2016; State of the Field Committee, 2009
Dr. John Travis and Regina Sara Ryan, 2004
Dr. Zach Bush MD. Vital Health with Zach Bush, MD