Origins
Coaching has occurred since the beginning of mankind. It involves a conversation where one person listens and then advises another person on any subject matter. Over time this term has been used for coaches in education, athletics and music. Through his book The Inner Game of Tennis, Tim Gallwey changed the perspective of coaching when he shifted the focus of coaching. Rather than teaching a skill or technique, his process encouraged individuals to explore their inner strength and wisdom, improving their confidence and making changes and improvements from within. Health coaching is embedded in psychology, social work, nursing, eastern philosophy, holistic health and wellness management fields.
The roots of health coaching began with psychologists treating persons addicted to alcohol. In the early 1990s, The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism conducted a study that compared several methods of treatment for alcohol addiction. They included: cognitive behavioral therapy, a twelve-step program approach similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, and motivational interviewing.
The findings demonstrated that while all were equally effective, motivational interviewing was more cost effective and timelier in reaching the desired results.
Due to the success of this project and others, researchers have been keenly interested in using this approach and studying how its use may affect health behavior change in persons with chronic conditions. Studies are likely to continue in this arena as this is a relatively new approach for many healthcare providers.
There are many people seeking help for various situations and in 2009 the largest category of coaching was that of health, fitness and wellness, with a combined 83.7 millions listings. The importance of a health coach in widely needed as well as guidelines to properly counsel somebody in the area of health and fitness.
Read more about this topic: Health Coaching
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)