Bringing Wellness to the World — 2021
Adios 2020! We got locked down and received our wake up to wellness call!
As 2020 winds down, all of us are hoping for better days ahead in 2021. The question is how we can and will bring this about. I suggest it will be by bringing wellness to the world. Our mission is to promote personal, family, community, corporate, organizational, ecological and global wellness. Bauman Wellness generously offers archives of 44 years of research, programs and best practices that I, my wife and my team, developed and applied at the Berkeley Holistic Health Center, Vitality Rejuvenation Retreats, Alameda Health Systems Employee Wellness programs, National Association of Nutrition Professionals, Institute for Integrative Health, and the renown and ever evolving Bauman College Holistic Nutrition and Natural Chef training programs.
What I find most exciting in the chaos of the pandemic is that people from all sectors of society are rallying around the cry, “Wellness for All!” What makes this so compelling is that it brings us together as human beings with a purpose to overcome the massive inequities that have been building up over the past 100+ years. With the unspeakable tragedy of 2020 about to be in our rear view mirror, what people want most is NOT a return to normalcy, which was far from healthy, but a step forward into health, sociability, security and stability. This basic desire transcends race, gender, class and culture. We want to be well to live well together and enjoy solving problems that must be addressed practically and collectively. We yearn to achieve wellness to build a bridge to the future, and leave a positive legacy to our children and their children.
Wellness is a state of vitality, inter-dependence and co-creation. It is not the absence of disease as, for upwards to 50% or more of the world population, mental and physical illness has already been diagnosed, and allopathically treated. There is much more that can and must be done for people suffering from chronic illness, infection and injury, beyond what modern medicine can provide. Wellness brings to individuals traditional healing practices they can do on their own at home and share with friends, family and associates. When community engagement, social learning and group enthusiasm is combined with personal practice, a culture of proactive wellness forms and impacts others noticing its salutary effect.
Community wellness is a cost-effective lifestyle-based innovation that is the secret sauce for healthy populations from ancient China to so called “blue zone” regions around the globe where the healthiest people live such as Greece, Okinawa, Sardinia, Costa Rica, and Loma Linda, CA.
As most of us reading this know, chronic disease — responsible for greater vulnerability to COVID-19 and its subsequent variations and after-effects — is a consequence of a lifetime of poor habits, choices, toxic exposures, traumas, social injustice, and insufficient resources for healing, including love, touch, fresh air, pure water, sunshine, exercise and seasonal, local, chemical free food. The exciting part of bringing wellness to the world is that the desire for people who are currently unwell is to get well as soon as possible. This opens up a remarkable social and global learning opportunity. Through the wonder of virtual technology, people of all ages, spending more time at home, can meet, connect graciously and engage wellness practices as colleagues in the Bauman Wellness community.
I have always loved taking holistic health principles, the unity of life, the connection with nature and one another, and our capacity to self-heal and grow, and apply this in hands-on workshops, classes, retreats, and programs. Learning with others is exciting and provides an inspiration for improved personal practice and experimentation free of excessive pedagogy and a commercial agenda.
Whereas medicine treats disease, wellness builds health through mindful daily practice. The five areas of a Bauman Wellness practice that build a foundation for building vitality individually and together are:
eating for health
joyful movement
mindfulness
healing relationship
soulful service
Let’s bring this home, to work, to cities, and create wellness ecosystems in education, the workplace, integrative healthcare and public health.
The Bauman Wellness Community is a virtual universe where people looking to be well can connect with others with similar aspirations and goals. It is a welcome antidote to the isolation and loneliness that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. On the BaumanWellness.co website, we will be hosting a variety of moderated topics, events, programs, trainings and celebrations, where new and old friends can exchanges recipes, remedies, research, stories, and tips. The space we wish to hold is one of caring, sharing and respect for differing experiences, ideas and beliefs. Wellness is based on building networks of diversity and inclusion. If we all thought, acted or felt the same, it would be a limited community or macrobiome, threatened, rather than enriched, by different points of view.
To change the world, we need to create a world within ourselves that builds unity, harmony and resilience. We can all aspire to become a center of well-being when we recognize how important self-love is as a basis for self-care, on an ongoing basis. We all have room to grow, and can do so, better, when in the midst of supportive colleagues in a wellness community, sharing best practices, ups and downs, hardship and earned small or great wins.
Bauman Wellness is the latest d.b.a. for the Institute for Educational Therapy (IET), a 501(c) 3 non-profit, founded in 1984 by colleagues of mine at the Berkeley Holistic Health Center. In those days, we realized that education was a powerful tools for transformation and recovery, hence the name, Educational Therapy. For over 30 years, I have been the board president for IET, the non-profit corporation that hosted Bauman College: Holistic Nutrition and Culinary Arts. In June, 2020, the Bauman College vocational programs were sold to the National Holistic Institute (NHI), to carry on our Eating for Health™ based professional training excellence.
With Bauman Wellness now our primary focus with an aim to facilitate a societal shift attitude and allocation of resources toward well-being, I invite you to make a generous donation of time, money and participation to enable us to bring wellness to the world. We are looking for people with skills in media, marketing, business development, finance, technology, networking, and outreach to help us grow and serve communities of interest, in the Bay area and wherever you may be.
We are excited to be rolling out our new programs on BaumanWellness.co in the first quarter of 2021. These include Affordable Nutrition, Resilience and Recovery: Self Care Practices, Building Immune Resilience, Nutrition Essentials for Everyone, and our new Kidz Culinary Academy. Join us by becoming a professional or general member.
Hello, 2021! We are resilient and ready to bring wellness to the world.