The success of wellness coaching has been documented in a study done at the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program.Wellness coaching has enjoyed growing popularity as a strategy to help people improve their health and well-being in a number of ways. Matthew Clark, Ph.D., lead author of the study explained what wellness coaches do- ” wellness coaches assist patients, in identifying goals and potential barriers to success, and then create strategies to help them improve on a week-by-week basis,” “Wellness coaching focuses on the specific problems someone wants to address, such as weight loss, stress management or goals focusing on work-life balance. We offer wellness coaching to help people have a better life, and improve their overall quality of life, whether it’s socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically or mentally,”
A crucial test of the effectiveness of wellness coaching is whether people will maintain improvements they may have made in their lifestyles after they’ve completed a program with a wellness coach. This was addressed in the Mayo Clinic study. “In our recent study, we looked at participants three months after completing wellness coaching. We found that people not only maintained the changes, they exhibited signs of further improvement,” said Dr. Clark. “Therefore, we did teach people the appropriate skills to improve their quality of life and maintain the changes.” If someone is having a difficult time losing weight or getting a good night’s sleep, wellness coaching helps the individual feel like a normal person with a normal problem,” he says.
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