All About Wellness Consulting
What is Wellness?
What is Wellness Consulting?
Why Work with a Wellness Consultant?
Is Wellness Consulting the Same Thing as Life Coaching?
How Can Wellness Consulting Help with Medical and Health Issues or Problems?
Who Can Benefit the Most from Wellness Consulting?
How Many Sessions Are Needed?
Where Are Sessions Held and How Much does a Session Cost?
How Can I Get Started?
What is Wellness?
At first glance Wellness can seem to be a set of instructions you need to follow in order to experience well-being. As a mental concept, wellness encompasses all the things you should do in order to attain well-being. The mental concept, or idea of wellness, easily operates autonomously and remains external to the individual. Keeping wellness confined to a mental concept does not work; true wellness is to be internalized and lived.
The mental concept of wellness and all the many directives contained therein results in the assumption that leads to, "I will feel better when…I do all these things I know I should be doing to feel better." When wellness is conceptualized like this, it amounts to nothing more than the latest self-development trend used to determine what a person's current to-do list should include. At this level, wellness simply turns into more "doing" and less "being." It puts added stress on the individual which is counterproductive to what wellness really all about. True wellness is not about doing this thing or that thing so you may achieve or obtain and experience the rewards that wellness promises. True wellness is an inner way of being; it is an inner state that allows you to become one with the essence of health and well-being.
Wellness is not a goal or object to be obtained, owned, or possessed. Wellness does not exist separate from the person open to having the experience of wellness. Wellness includes the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of well-being. From the inner state of wellness, positive action and conscious doing automatically flow. The many activities associated with wellness merely reflect the expression of this deeper, more fundamental inner state of authentic wellness, which is in direct relationship to "being."
The understanding that wellness originates from within and expresses outwardly allows well-being to emerge. Rather than enslaving a person into needing to do more or strive harder to become healthier, true wellness serves to liberate the person from that which blocks, limits, restricts, or prevents well-being from being present and finding natural, lived expression in oneself and one's life—regardless of the outer circumstances the person is dealing with, involuntarily or by choice.
An important factor in wellness is an individual's relationship between "being" and "doing." For wellness to be experienced, being must come first and doing will naturally follow. Western cultural conditioning does not support this important quality. The being–doing relationship is quite fundamental and includes one's relation to attachment versus detachment, action to non-action, analysis versus synthesis (left brain/right brain), surrendering versus fighting, acceptance versus non-acceptance. In finding and discovering one's balance or center point with respect to being and doing, the conditions and inner space for wellness to emerge are brought through giving the person a natural sense of well-being. (back to top)
What is Wellness Consulting?
Wellness Consulting is not therapy. It is not about isolating and fixing a problem. It is not about telling someone how they need to live or who they should be in order to feel better. With that said, specific problems, challenges, and issues are addressed and resolved in the consulting process, but such are not the focal point of attention. A Wellness Consultant serves as a guide who, through experience and knowledge, works with you to bring forth and develop the conditions to support your lived experience of well-being.
A Wellness Consultant performs many valuable functions. They help you move beyond blocks or restrictions that prevent wellness from coming through easily and naturally. The consultant serves to bring forth awareness, understanding, and insight that directly relates to the unique and specific circumstances of your life. Support is provided to help you develop a healthy relationship to being and doing. Working together, you will develop a foundation that is authentic and supportive of well-being. The consultant is there to listen, observe, notice, educate, inform, motivate, support, and encourage the client on all matters pertaining to wellness and well-being. (back to top)
Why a Wellness Consultant?
Working directly with a Wellness Consultant provides the most direct, effective, and efficient way for bringing wellness more fully into one's life. Seeing a consultant saves you, the client, a considerable amount time, energy, and effort. The consultant brings presence and listens to what is important to you. The consultant gets to know and understand you as the unique and special individual you are. You work together to determine exactly what your goals, and objectives are. From here the consultant calls into action years of experience and specialized knowledge related to the many facets of well-being. Considerable knowledge, depth of insight, and experience are applied directly and specifically to your unique needs and circumstances in order to bring forth the lived experience of well-being in the most direct way possible. (back to top)
Is Wellness Consulting the Same Thing as Life Coaching?
On the surface there is no hard and clear division between Wellness Consulting and Life Coaching. In fact the two often overlap. However, in practice, Wellness Consulting and Life Coaching serve quite different purposes and there are different foundational frameworks to each one.
Wellness Consulting serves a broader and more encompassing purpose, namely, to enhance health and well-being. This applies even when specific objectives are involved (i.e. stress reduction to improve health by lowering blood pressure). Wellness deals more with the mind, body, and emotions in a holistic and integrated way supportive of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. Wellness Consulting places greater emphasis on the client's lived, present-day experience of health and well-being. Developing balance between doing and being, with respect to present life circumstances, plays a central role in Wellness Consulting.
Life Coaching serves a different purpose. It is more specific, forward moving, and results driven. Life Coaching offers a balanced and holistic framework for the setting and attainment of a specific goal, vision, or purpose in a person's life. Because of this, Life Coaching is inherently more future oriented with greater attention being placed on the development of conscious action and positive doing. (back to top)
How Can Wellness Consulting help with Medical and Health Issues or Problems?
Wellness Consulting directly relates to health and medical issues and problems in very important and significant ways. Fundamentally, it gives the patient an active role in their healing process. Wellness Consulting can serve to guide, enhance, and facilitate the healing process by making room for and including the emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions associated with healing the body, one's physical self. Wellness Consulting offers the patient/client a hands-on, proactive role in determining their response to the health issue or problem they are faced with. This serves to empower and strengthen the client by allowing him or her to affect change on the deepest levels of their experience, regarding the health issue or problem, and everything connected and attached to it. This especially pertains to cancer, illness, and disease and the many ways it impacts a person's life and their relationships.
The balance between being and doing directly relates to serious health issues and problems. For example, constant doing (fighting cancer), while commendable, can, over the course of time, wear oneself down mentally and emotionally if time and space for being/non-doing are nonexistent. Remaining in a continual state of doing can eventually decrease and devitalize the energy of the mind, body, and emotions.
Likewise, resignation, surrender, or entering into a protracted state of passivity is not healthy when confidence, strength, and assertiveness would be the healthier response to take. This is easily seen by the need to stand up and be assertive when dealing with the difficult aspects of the medical establishment. Assertiveness (doing function) can help ensure you receive proper attention and obtain straight answers. It can serve to provide the patient respect and recognition for things that are important to the patient and that serve to support their overall healing process.
Examples here include not allowing oneself to be treated like a number, and asking surgeons to respect the patient's surgery plan. It may also involve deciding to see doctors that respect a patient's decision to complement their treatment using non-traditional healing methods in order to free the healing space of physician ridicule and condescending remarks and opinions indicative of simple personal bias rather than being based on fact, observation, research and honest personal inquiry. (back to top)
Who Can Benefit the Most from Wellness Consulting?
Wellness Consulting is perhaps most useful for people dealing with a challenging problem or condition that impacts health, interferes with the quality of life, and decreases a person's sense of well-being. People in major life transition, especially if the change is involuntary, can benefit tremendously by Wellness Consulting. When dealing with a medical or psychological problem, Wellness Consulting is used to effectively complement, not replace, traditional treatment. It is not a substitute for medical care, psychiatry, or psychotherapy. Wellness Consulting is used to help a person find and discover their most effective way for addressing and directly working with present life conditions in order to increase well-being in a holistic, healthy, and integrated manner. (back to top)
How Many Sessions Are Needed?
There is no set formula for determining exactly how many Wellness Consulting sessions are needed for you to experience the results you desire. Many factors are taken into account when designing a Wellness Program for an individual, including, personal history, where the person is at today, the degree and type of support available by family and friends, present-day conditions, the client's objectives and intended outcome, and the nature of the specific problem or challenges involved. Structure for the program is provided while maintaining a flexible and adaptable approach to accommodate your specific needs. A client-specific program outline that details the number and frequency of sessions is presented to you as part of the free initial consultation.
Wellness Consulting provided by Mark generally includes:
- Free initial consultation and free wellness evaluation
- Two or more developmental, instructional, educational sessions on wellness
- Follow-up and support sessions (frequency varies)
- Single intervention sessions (to address specific events or a change in condition) (back to top)
Where Are Sessions Held and How Much Does a Session Cost?
Wellness Consulting sessions are available in several different formats:
- In-person appointments at Mark's office in Nevada City, CA.
- House calls and hospital visits available at no extra charge to clients living in Grass Valley, Nevada City, Penn Valley, and the surrounding area.
- By telephone or Skype.
Rates are $90 per session with the 25% program discount, and $120 for a single session. The automatic discount applies to any program when you agree to two or more sessions. The sessions consist of a variety of content material which is determined by your needs and interests. House calls and hospital visits are provided at no extra cost. Morning, afternoon, and early evening appointments are available Monday–Friday. Weekend appointments are available at no extra charge. (back to top)
How Can I Get Started?
If you are interested in finding out more about the Wellness Consulting service and how it can benefit you, please call Mark at (530) 274-2020, or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Mark offers a free one-hour initial consultation which includes a free wellness evaluation. The consultation is designed to inform and review with you how the service works, the ways it can help you, and outlines different program options based on your individual needs and objectives.
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
* Note: Specific results are not guaranteed as results may vary from person to person.