Living a healthy, balanced life is a process that happens moment-to-moment, day-to-day, and is filled with surprises and challenges. It is not something that can be placed on a scale and then equally divided between our relationships, work, recreation, and self. Our daily choices guide us in balancing our life. When we become more present in our daily thoughts and actions we can create a healthier, more harmonious balance, and take personal control of our life. The ultimate goal of Creating a Healthy Balanced Life is to provide the therapist, group facilitator, or lay leader ideas and resources for facilitating individual or group sessions on living a healthy balanced life. The authors approached the subject with the understanding that every individual has their own definition of health and balance, as well as their own picture of what a healthy balanced life might look like. Using current literature, personal clinical practice, and life-experience, the authors designed this book as a framework for presenting key topics to help enhance the quality of life for others. The book is divided into five chapters: • The Mind Body Soul – balancing life begins and ends with the self. When an understanding of what lies within is established, a person can make choices and take action toward a healthier more balanced way of living. • Attitude – approaching life with a positive attitude allows us to be open to what each day brings and to acknowledge our many blessings. Living a healthy balanced life becomes a natural process when we approach each day with optimism and excitement. • Stress-less – stress is part of everyone’s life. The goal to a healthy balanced life is not to eliminate stress, but to learn how to manage it by developing coping skills, simplifying, and creating an awareness of our responses to the world around us. • Relationships – surrounding ourselves with people who help us make meaning out of our talents and strengths, and who support us in sharing who we are in the world are critically important in living a healthy balanced life. • Leisure/Recreation/Play – in order to stay healthy and balanced there as to be an outlet, a release for the mind and body. Through recreation and play this release can be witnessed by tears of laughter, exhaustion from physical movement or silence to focus the mind. Each chapter includes unique activities and handouts utilizing eight styles of learning so you can successfully engage all of your clients and groups on a journey toward a healthy balanced life. Creating a Healthy Balanced Life includes eight different styles of activities. These have been integrated to facilitate exploration of a multiplicity of concepts within each chapter’s topic. They include: • Worksheets • Cards • Checklists • Meditation • Journaling • Creative expression • Quotations • Sentence starters About the Authors: Sandra K. Negley, MTRS, CTRS, received both her bachelor and master’s degrees from the University of Utah. Her clinical practice is in mental health services with individuals of all ages, in a variety of settings: inpatient, outpatient, day treatment, and community based programs. She has served as the Director of Adolescent Services, Manager of Expressive Therapies, and founded and directed the Self-Esteem Institute for the University of Utah’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. Sandy is an instructor at the University of Utah and co9ordinates the Therapeutic Recreation emphasis area. She is an international speaker and facilitates seminars and trainings in the areas of life balance, self-esteem, recreational therapy services and stress management, with a special interest in gender specific programming. She is the author of Crossing the Bridge . . . A Journey in Self-Esteem, Relationships and Life Balance, and has authored, edited, adapted, and consulted on a variety of therapeutic card games, board games, and books, as well as having numerous scholarly publications. However, Sandy’s greatest honor lies in the lives of her two sons. Ester A. Leutenberg has worked in the mental health profession for many years as an author, publisher and as an advocate for those suffering from loss. She personally experienced a loss when her son Mitchell, after struggling with a mental illness for eight years, died by suicide in 1986. Soon after, as a way of both healing and helping others, she co-founded Wellness Reproductions & Publishing with her daughter Kathy Khalsa. Ester began developing therapeutic products that help facilitators help their clients. She is the co-author of the SEALS series for teenagers as well as Meaningful Life Skills for older adults, and the eight-book Life Management Skills series for adults. Ester has co-written the following, all published by Whole Person Associates: Mental Health & Life Skills Workbook Series for Facilitators Teen Mental Health &Life Skills Workbook Series for Facilitators Coping Workbook Series for Facilitators Transitional Life Skills for Teens Series Veterans ~ Surviving and Thriving after Trauma The Complete Caregiver Support Guide Motivation ~ Identifying strengths, interests, abilities, hopes and dreams Creating a Healthy Balanced Life Griefwork ~ Healing from Loss GriefWork for Teens ~ Healing from Loss The GriefWork Companion ~ Activities for Healing Breaking Up is Hard to Do ~ Support for Partners Ending a Committee Relationship Ester, a breast cancer survivor since 2003, has counseled other survivors in overcoming body-loss issues. Her involvements with Survivors of Suicide, the Coyote Task Force in Tucson, various support groups in Sun City Oro Valley and volunteering at two hospitals are among many ways she continues to feed her passion of helping mentally ill people, their facilitators and their families. |