Welcome! Let us introduce ourselves!

We are Full Sail Health and Wellness Coaching! Your coaches are Dr. Cami and Dr. Arjen Holdinga. We are National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coaches through the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching and Doctor's of Physical Therapy. As physical therapists, we have spent 25+ years working with people to achieve goals to improve their ability to participate in areas of their lives that were important to them, however, the traditional medical model encourages the expectation that we are experts and our patients are the receivers of care to get expert medical advice and treatment. While this does have it's place within a certain context, we noticed that as people were approaching the time for discharge from physical therapy, there was a gap in their ability to continue to exercise to maintain the gains they made while under our care. Additionally, we continued to see the impact on other areas of someone's life in their ability to recover from injury or illness or live with chronic illness. Issues such as stress due to finances, family dynamics, social dynamics, sleep disturbances, emotional issues or work/life balance, just to name a few, continued to play a big role in someone's ability to cope with injury or illness and impact their recovery. This grey area is where the traditional medical model falls short.

The reason someone may be having health issues such as high blood pressure, diabetes, being overweight, feeling fatigued or anxious may lie outside of the medical diagnosis and may be impacted by modifiable factors in his or her life. But, simply telling someone to go lose weight, get more sleep, drink more water, or eat a healthy diet is often not enough for someone to be motivated to follow that expert advice. Every person has multiple hats that he or she wears throughout the day, every person has a history that has brought them to the point they are at in any given moment, and every person reacts differently to stressors in their life, every person is unique. It is for this reason, that every person is really the expert in his or her life, they need to be able to identify why it is important to make that change toward behaviors that will improve their health and wellness. The old adage holds true, "I don't know what it is like to walk in your shoes, nor do you know what it is like to walk in my shoes." I will talk more about this in future blog posts. I am passionate about this and want to dedicate multiple posts to the topic!

I will introduce to you the Illness-Wellness Continuum by John Travis, MD. This model suggests a continuum from premature death to a high level of wellness, with a neutral point in between where there is no level of illness or wellness. It suggests that our typical medical model which deals with management of illness or injury is to the left of that neutral point and treatment is given by a medical professional to bring someone back to that neutral point. Whereas, the wellness continuum is a deeply progressive state of awareness, education and growth as one moves beyond the medical model to get to the the neutral point where there is no existence of the disease or injury, but stretches beyond that point toward optimal health and wellness and prevention of disease. This model does not suggest that we will be without illness, but that our outlook plays a large role in living with illness or injury and even in the face of adversity, we can still continue to move toward optimal wellness. Here is a link to this model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Travis_(physician)#:~:text=The%20Illness%2DWellness%20Continuum%20proposes,by%20signs%2C%20symptoms%20and%20disability.

I challenge you to consider any aspect of your wellness that is important to you and think about where you are on that continuum with your health. Once you have done that, explore how that aspect of your wellness may be impacted by your current health state. I would love to hear about it!

Thank you for spending your valuable time reading this blog! I hope you found it interesting and thought-provoking! We look forward to hearing from you either on Facebook, via email or give us a call!

FULL SAIL AHEAD!