Healthy Balance

Unique facilitator reproducible activities and handouts

Living a healthy, balanced life is a process that happens moment-to-moment, day-to-day, and is filled with surprises and challenges. It is not something that can be placed on a scale and then equally divided between our relationships, work, recreation, and self. Our daily choices guide us in balancing our life. When we become more present in our daily thoughts and actions, we can create a healthier, more harmonious balance and take personal control of our life.

The ultimate goal of Creating a Healthy Balanced Life is to provide the therapist, group facilitator, or lay leader with ideas and resources for facilitating individual or group sessions on living a healthy balanced life. The authors approached the subject with the understanding that every individual has their definition of health and balance and their picture of a healthy balanced life. Using current literature, personal clinical practice, and life experience, the authors designed this book as a framework for presenting key topics to help enhance the quality of life for others.

The book is divided into five chapters:

• The Mind Body Soul – balancing life begins and ends with the self. When an understanding of what lies within is established, a person can make choices and take action toward a healthier, more balanced way of living.
• Attitude – approaching life with a positive attitude allows us to be open to what each day brings and acknowledge our many blessings. Living a healthy balanced life becomes a natural process when we approach each day with optimism and excitement.
• Stress-less – stress is part of everyone’s life. The goal of a healthy balanced life is not to eliminate stress but to learn how to manage it by developing coping skills, simplifying, and creating an awareness of our responses to the world around us.
• Relationships – surrounding ourselves with people who help us make meaning out of our talents and strengths and who support us in sharing who we are in the world are critically important in living a healthy balanced life.
• Leisure/Recreation/Play – to stay healthy and balanced, there must be an outlet, a release for the mind and body. This release can be experienced through recreation and play, by tears of laughter, exhaustion from physical movement, or silence to focus the mind.

Each chapter includes unique activities and handouts utilizing eight learning styles so you can successfully engage all of your clients and groups on a journey toward a healthy balanced life.

Creating a Healthy Balanced Life includes eight different styles of activities. These have been integrated to facilitate the exploration of a diversity of concepts within each chapter’s topic. They include:

• Worksheets
• Cards
• Checklists
• Meditation
• Journaling
• Creative expression
• Quotations
• Sentence starters

This workbook is also available in PDF eBook format, making it simple to store on your computer or mobile device and access with a PDF viewer. The PDF format allows you to easily print copies of the activities and worksheets during therapy and counseling sessions.