What do Americans expect when they enter a wellness center? (I asked the pros)

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To clarify the wellness center: in Europe wellness happens in wellness centers, which is mostly a spa with several fitness machines. Those centers focus mainly on the services and procedures to offer and for many people wellness center is a place where you go and the good things (procedures) happen to you and at the end you feel better. What are American wellness centers like? Does American wellness even happen in a wellness center? We asked leading experts in the wellness field:
Alida Moonen - wellness coordinator at Summa Health System First, a question for you: What is a wellness center? Here in the US, virtually every “fitness” center has now become a “wellness” center. Spas are now “wellness” centers. Health systems (hospitals) are now “wellness” systems. Holistic practitioners do so in “wellness” centers.  So, what do Americans expect when they enter one of these places? Solutions to a problem that they probably created themselves by making health and lifestyle decisions that led to the need for solutions. What do they find? Tools and resources and skill sets that they should then apply to their lives so that they can achieve wellness. They don’t...

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8 facts you didn´t know about the word Wellness

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What is the real meaning of the word “wellness”, when did people start using it and what does it have to do with spa? No, this article will not be about “wellness cat food”, it will be about the real wellness and you will learn 8 facts you didn’t know until today.
FACT 1. The word Wellness was first used in 1563. Wellness has been around for several decades, but until these days it seems odd to some native speakers. The truth is that even if the word Wellness might sound unfamiliar, unnatural or even grammatically wrong 1 , it is no new-created term. It has its long history traced back to the years 1563 2 – this first known use of the term Wellness was in a correspondence as an inquiry about state of health of recipient’s daughter that was recovering from illness. FACT 2. A statistician first used Wellness as a special term. The first person mentioning Wellness in modern history was a statistician, former physician Halbert L. Dunn, at...

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Opportunities and threats of global wellness: A lesson from the Czech Republic

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Wellness in the 21st century is truly a great chance for people and businesses from all around the world to thrive, but the global interest brings both opportunities and threads. In many languages there is no synonym or translation of the word “wellness” in the dictionary, and basically nobody provides an explanation or a definition to it. Due to this international lack of meaning, today’s wellness faces the risk of being everything and nothing, or just another buzz word.
All humans share the basic need of living a healthy, quality and satisfying life, but the application is very different in India, United States or Czech Republic. International wellness should accept the whole spectrum of wellness realities from the point that we can learn from one another, but especially when applying somebody else’s approach, we have to be able to distinguish between the general transferable truth and its cultural background. The wellness in the Czech Republic follows the European tradition of spa and medical services, and the trend can be traced globally according to the Global Spa and Wellness Summit, that labels it as the wellness tourism . As a matter of...

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European wellness, is it just spa?

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Is there a difference between American and European wellness? Just as wellness changes from one person to another, it changes one country from another. The quickest way to find what wellness in Europe is about is just to google it. Let´s have a look at the search results and I will tell you more.
The very first search result brings us to the website of the National Geographic Traveller introducing 50 Top Wellness Destinations: Europe . Nice, this might be a good clue to what wellness on the old continent is about. Well… It might be, as much as I might be honored that the very first destination is my homeland with its hilarious spa resort in Karlovy Vary. Let me tell you why I am not. If you had a closer look on the mentioned destinations, you would find out that it is mostly spa hotels and resorts. If I can judge from the first one, Parkhotel Richmond in Karlovy Vary Czech Republic, European wellness than would be a place, where you receive the best care, premium services and...

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Is there future for workplace wellness?

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The RAND report has started an open discussion about efficiency of workplace wellness programs and for a long time I was at no side of this dispute. Attending the webinar Culture Trumps Wellness: Creating a Framework for Sustainable Well-being with Dr. Rosie Ward gave me an opinion. For more, it altered my perception of workplace wellness programs. Despite the RAND report, there is a future for workplace wellness programs. Let me tell you more.
As I awaited the beginning of the webinar, going through the notes, I wasn’t sure of what to expect. In Europe there is not that big emphasis on workplace wellness. We provide our employees with optional health/wellness programs but it is mostly a form of an employee benefit than an investment into lowering health costs or enhancing productivity. And for more, those programs often have no concept, don’t address any concrete goal. They just … are there. What is this “workplace wellness”? According to  Wikipedia : “Workplace wellness is any workplace health promotion activity or organizational policy designed to support healthy behavior in the workplace and to improve health...

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