Wellness becomes Point

WHAT: 33rd Annual National Wellness Conference
WHEN: July 12-17
WHERE: Stevens Point
INFO: nationalwellness.org

By Jim Lundstrom

The joke is that there are so many fiber conscious health nuts in Stevens Point during the week of the National Wellness Conference that the city Waste Water Treatment Dept. has to issue a fiber alert.

“It’s been described as a Mecca of wellness for that week, “ said Dr. Bill Hettler, director of University Health Services at UW-Stevens Point and co-founder/board of director president of the National Wellness Institute, which sponsors the conference.

“The people in town sure notice a difference during that week,” Hettler said. “The people who attend are very active, so you’ll see people moving all over the community, biking and walking and Rollerblading. There’s an observable difference in the traffic pattern of human movement.”

The National Wellness Institute opened its doors in 1977, and the first few years did summer workshops on health and wellness, primarily for teachers.

“After a few years of doing these teacher workshops, which were mostly for people within 60 miles of Stevens Point, we decided to broaden the scope of the conference,” Hettler said. “The first year we went national, we called it the 3rd annual, and it was called Wellness Promotions Strategies Conference. I think we had about 250 people that year and it’s just grown steadily ever since.”

While there are a number of certification programs for health and human resource professionals during the conference, Hettler points out that anyone can attend to sit in on sessions that range from various exercise and wellness programs for body and mind to discussions of diet and food choices. (The complete schedule is listed at nationalwellness.org).

“We get people from all kinds of different situations,” he said. “I remember one guy got a standing ovation one year. He was an attorney from Wausau. He stood up the first day and said, ‘I decided after all these years of abusing myself, I’m going to take a week just for me.’ We want it to be open to anybody. A lot of people talk about this as their annual recharging of their energy and being remotivated here to go out and do what they do.”

Wellness might seem like a relatively new health concept, but Hettler maintains it is as old as humankind.

“The term wellness wasn't always used, but as long as humans have been writing down their thoughts there have been people saying basically what we are saying: It’s better to promote what’s right rather than to try to deal with problems. So living well is not that new a concept. If you look back into ancient Chinese or even Greek writers, you’ll see people writing about the same ideas. What’s making it a lot more important now is the extreme cost of medical services, particularly in the United States. We’re not happier and we’re not healthier than a lot of countries that spend a lot less.

“In the early years people came here just to find out what wellness is about,” he said. “Now we have a lot of people coming here to improve their skills and to learn new techniques and new approaches to wellness. We don’t have to do as much explaining about what it is and why it’s such a good idea.”

Hettler said the Institute works hard to bring big names and respected professionals to speak at the conference.

“Every year we have good people come,” he said. “That’s one thing, when you're the oldest and best and largest in the country, it’s not hard to attract people. In any room, one person is assigned to be a leader, but there’s probably another dozen people in the room who could give equally powerful presentations if they were asked.”

This year’s theme is A Visionary Turning: Well Earth, Well People. One of the keynote speakers is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was named one of Time magazines "Heroes of the Planet" and serves as senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“There’s really two things going on with this theme,” Hettler said. “We need to do a better job of managing our own environment, the internal environment of our own bodies. And the external environment, there is no other place that has been found that has the right environment to support our lives, and so there’s an inextricable connection between the internal and external environment for any species on this planet to stay alive. As one of the vocal species who likes to write things down, I think there’s a growing recognition that we have to do a better job or our ancestors will be disappointed with us. It’s only been the last 200 or 300 years that we’ve been screwing everything up. For millions of years humanoid creatures have walked this planet without messing things up.”

Hettler said the conference is a chance to walk and talk wellness.

“We’re encouraging people to learn and live a wellness lifestyle,” he said. “The activities are wellness oriented. The food service is wellness oriented. There’s really fun, safe, social stuff every night. We encourage a lot of face-to-face small group activates where people are learning from each other as much as from the speakers we bring in. People can come by the day or the week. There are usually volunteer opportunities to volunteer if they can’t afford to come. Just contact the Institute office in downtown Stevens Point.”