WELLNESS COACHING: POWERFUL SKILLS FOR EVERYDAY PEOPLE

This course will introduce the theory and practice of wellness coaching and emphasize the art and science of behavior change. As a participant, you’ll gain an appreciation for how coaching applies in your own life and how it can be used to benefit others.

CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION: All students who successfully complete this course will earn a Certificate of Completion from IWE.

This course will help you answer the following questions:

• What is health, wellness, and well-being?
• What are the interrelationships among health, wellness, and well-being?
• How do people change and make change stick?
• What is wellness coaching?
• What are the qualifications for being a wellness coach?
• What is the training required to be a wellness coach?
• Why does science tell us to take a holistic approach?
• What evidence-based tools and strategies help people change?
• What does wellness coaching look like in action?
• What wellness coaching strategies can I put into action right now?
• What is the outlook for wellness coaching as a new occupation?

More about wellness coaching:

Wellness coaches are experts in the art and science of change, so they can help people manage change to optimize well-being. Wellness coaches help people look at the factors that contribute to, or detract from, their well-being. This includes diet and exercise, but also relationships, finances, stress, personal environment, behavioral and emotional factors, and more. Wellness coaches help people set goals that are important and meaningful to them, give them tools and techniques to achieve those goals, and work with them to make sure the changes “stick.”

Wellness coaching is very different from teaching, directing, mentoring, counseling, problem-solving, or advising. Wellness coaches take a holistic approach and build on each person’s unique strengths, skills, and resources. They “walk alongside” the people they are coaching, rather than following behind or taking the lead by directing. Coaches believe that people are experts in themselves, so they use powerful techniques to help others explore what works for them to give them the results that they want using approaches that are a good fit for them and that they can sustain.

Wellness coaching skills can be incorporated into everyday living to improve one’s own well-being and to help family and friends, or on the job. Think of wellness coaching skills as something that can help you do better in your own life and then help others do better in theirs!

As a result of participating in this course, you will be better able to:

• Define health, wellness, and well-being.
• List the 10 dimensions of wellness and their interrelationships.
• List at least 3 reasons why wellness has become an important focus for individuals, communities, and businesses.
• Discuss the key principles for making sustainable change at an individual level and cultural transformation at the community level.
• Examine the use of evidence-based tools and strategies to foster sustainable change.
• Use at least 3 evidence-based tools and strategies to foster your own sustainable change.
• Describe the role, qualifications, training required to become a wellness coach.
• Describe wellness coaching in terms of a new occupation and as a set of skills that can be integrated into life at home, school, and work.
• Discuss career opportunities for wellness coaches.
• Describe your personal experience using new strategies to promote change in yourself and others.
• List 3 ways you might incorporate the tools and techniques you learned from this course in your personal or professional life.
• Examine the US Department of Labor’s wellness coach training curriculum that IWE developed.