Don Ardell's Ten Minute Assessment of the Legacy of Wellness and Vision for its Future Monday June 15, 2015 Introduction This evening, June 15 at the 40th anniversary celebration of the National Wellness Conference (NWC) in Minneapolis, I will offer my assessment of the legacy of wellness and vision for its future. I ll be joined in this 40th Anniversary Celebration of Wellness opening session by six other legacy honorees, all long associated with the NWC. Each of us is will give his or her take on the wellness legacy to date and vision for what can and should be henceforth. The seven of us have ten minutes each! Not much time for beating around the bush, hemming or hawing, telling jokes or warming up the crowd. Meg Jordan, the moderator, introduces Don: Don is the publisher of the Ardell Wellness Report, author of High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease and a dozen other books, the most recent of which is Wellness Orgasms: The Fun Way to Live Well and Die Healthy, co-authored by Grant Donovan. Don has been at nearly all national wellness conferences, starting in 1979. He is one of a half dozen Halbert L. Dunn award winners, the highest honor given by the NWI. Don is a freethinker and militant secularist who, like Ron Reagan Junior, is not afraid of going to hell. Before that invitation is extended, he plans to continue to do what he can to promote a little
heaven on Earth via REAL wellness lifestyles. Don is the current U.S. national and world triathlon champion and ranked All-American in three multi-sports: triathlon, duathlon and aquathon. Please welcome Don Ardell. Wait! I was just advised that someone is going to make an announcement. I m afraid it s THE GRIM REAPER! Mr. REAPER - you can come out now. Opening Remarks (Don appears as The Grim Reaper) Good evening future dead people. So, you want to talk about a legacy? Let me tell you something! Look at the photo in the trophy case that the lads in the movie Dead Poets Society are studying. They were full of hormones and Invincible; the world was their oyster. They believed they were destined for great things, Their eyes were full of hope.
Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives one iota of what they were capable? They are now fertilizing daffodils, as will you, soon enough. Listen - they re whispering their legacy to you. Lean forward. Listen...you hear it? Carpe...Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary. (Mask off - Don begins to speak) The Legacy of Wellness Tonight, we are the Dead Poet s Society of Wellness, gifted with an opportunity to ascertain if the wellness concept has grown in 40 years to something extraordinary or, if not, why not? Even more important, we are invited to sketch our visions of a wellness movement still to come. What a golden moment this represents. Carpe diem. Let us seize the day. Here s what I think about the legacy of wellness so far. I can confidently express the current legacy of wellness in three words. It really sucks. We honor Halbert L. Dunn as the founder of wellness.
High Level Wellness introduced this word to the general public and sketched the unique features of the wellness concept. No need to go beyond page two to get the main ideas. Dunn described a dynamic, evolving wellness mindset and lifestyle using phrases like: Alive with a glow of well being Zest in life Energy to burn To tingle with vitality Dunn waxed eloquent on the need to transform the heath system to one that maximizes well being, not one that only repairs illness and treats disease. He urged becoming not preventing, that is, striving to get more well. I ll say it again from Dunn s wellness perspective, there is no question the wellness legacy sucks. Why? For many reasons for now, I ll mention just two: Worksite wellness and other institutional programs have medicalized the concept. The life force for wellbeing was drained from the word by an overwhelming focus on risk reduction, biometric screenings, disease prevention and fixations on cost containment. In 40 years, the word wellness has blossomed, but not in a good way. It has morphed out of control; what masquerades as wellness in corporate, hospital, and even NWC programs bear little resemblance to the vision that Dr. Dunn, Jack Travis, Bill Hettler and others initially sought to advance 40 years ago. Now it s time to seize the day, at this moment, on this occasion, to resolve to labor to turn things around. To paraphrase JFK s Inaugural Address, let me ask three rhetorical questions: Can we forge a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that will assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Can we return to the concept of positive wellness? Will you join in that historic effort? I take that as a yes, as a you bet your derrière we can. Dunn placed personal responsibility at the center of positive wellness. I quote: The care and nurture of the mind is not a job for your doctor or your clergyman. The responsibility of keeping this priceless problem-solving mechanism in good working order rests squarely on one person you.
We acknowledge Dr. Dunn as the founder of wellness. However, my own inspiration for transforming the word and the concept of wellness back to Dunn s positive well being model is Robert Green Ingersoll. Ingersoll was an orator extraordinaire during the last 30 years of the 19th century. He was seen and heard by more Americans than any human being prior to the creation of motion pictures and radio. His encyclopedic range of speeches on reason, exuberance and liberty represent a blueprint for REAL wellness. REAL wellness is a vision that can lead to something extraordinary by rescuing the wellness concept from the clutches of medicalization. Like Dr. Dunn, born three years before his death, Robert Ingersoll urged the nurture of the mind. He often described characteristics of improved man, his phrase for the truly well human being. Here is an excerpt from Ingersoll s magnificent speech entitled Improved Man: The improved man will endeavor to develop the mind in the direction of the beautiful - of the highest art, so that the palace in which the mind dwells will be enriched and rendered beautiful, to the end that these stones, called facts, may be changed into statues.
The improved man will find his greatest joy in the happiness of others and he will reap his greatest reward in being loved by those whose lives he has enriched. The improved man will be self-poised, independent, candid and free. He will be a scientist. He will observe, investigate, experiment and demonstrate. He will use his sense and his senses. He will keep his mind as open as the day to the hints and suggestions of nature. He will always be a student, a learner and a listener - a believer in intellectual hospitality. In the world of his brain, there will be continuous summer, perpetual seed time and harvest. Facts will be the foundation of his faith. In one hand, he will carry the torch of truth, and with the other raise the fallen. (Source: The World, NYC, 02/23/1880) Nine Approaches, One Commonality Shown are nine popular systems, services and/or methodologies. What is the commonality here? The commonality is that none is wellness. None deals exclusively with positive, life-enhancing activities, the kind of strategies that distinguish REAL wellness from the omnibus medicalized approaches that dominate our drug-sated society. While most of these modalities are well and good, none celebrates and advances mental and physical enrichment for its own immediate and long-term rewards.
A REAL Wellness Legacy Let s make a real legacy for wellness, one that will in the future amount to something extraordinary. Let s shift to REAL wellness. Here are terms that represent motivations, characteristics, distinctions and outcomes of REAL wellness programming. Think about the wellness programs with which you are familiar. How many, IF any, are geared to such outcomes? The four REAL wellness dimensions are self-explanatory, I ll elaborate on exuberance on Wednesday when Jack Travis and I do our not-dead-yet, old white guys session. These noted researchers on positive psychology/happiness are among my heroes of exuberance.
All have done research showing that elements of REAL wellness could be a sound basis for positive worksite wellness. They have been shown to boost productivity and thus could be much more effective than risk reduction and biometric screening for containing company health insurance costs. For details on their REAL wellness works, I recommend you attend two sessions this week by Dr. Craig Becker for rich details about their work. Athleticism and liberty are the other two REAL wellness dimensions. All four lead to DBRU equivalents and wellness orgasms and a better life for all.
REAL wellness programs are the likeliest paths toward making our works effective, our society more loving and kind and our lives extraordinary. Consider the Creed of Robert Ingersoll: While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself; and my creed is this. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. The creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life, strong enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed. I am perfectly satisfied that the highest possible philosophy is to enjoy today, not regretting yesterday and not fearing tomorrow. So, let us suck this orange of life dry, so that when death does come, we can politely say to him, You are welcome to the peelings. What little there was we have enjoyed. We re still alive. Let s make of the legacy of wellness, and of our own, something extraordinary.