Balance & Stretch for Life

At The Balance & Stretch Center we understand many great organizations support people with health challenges with the understanding that these people have a lot of life to live. Many organizations do a wonderful job in treating the “whole person”. These organizations benefit from rich content available from many, many sources that provide perspectives around the 5 areas of life management that we highlight (school & work, personal growth, community service, family & friends, faith) The Balance & Stretch framework supports those efforts by providing a simple graphic enabling your clients to see the link between health and life management.

In some cases, children who have learned good health management discipline like balance and persistence at an early age have an opportunity to apply these same skills to life challenges in front of them. The framework can help them “see” the link between the two. In other cases, adults who have already gained experience balancing life’s opportunities may find themselves newly challenged with a chronic health issue or the risk of one. Similarly, the Balance & Stretch framework can help adults “see” the link between the two. In both cases, feedback from those who have used the framework as part of their program have reported on behalf of their clients that the health and life components are mutually reinforcing and helpful.

The remainder of the For Life portion of this website offers a section for each of the Life elements. In each, we offer a series of questions formatted under our Balance & Stretch framework. The questions are offered as a “starter set” and focus on the key word of “choice”. These questions are also available in hard copy as part a “Balance & Stretch Success Guide”. If you are interested in our success guide, please Contact Us. Over time, we will also attempt to share a sample of websites as thought provokers in each topic area.

A person with any other chronic illness faces tremendous challenges every day. Simply by facing them, this person learns very valuable lessons that can be applied to the rest of their life, and have some outstanding results. When a person balances their health challenges and their school and/or work, their community service, their family and friends, their faith and their own personal growth, they truly offer an example of success to the rest of the world as real “Stars”.