Minneapolis YMCA Wellbeing Center
The YMCA has a history of holistic thinking around health. Their offerings range from social services to physical education to spiritual. It is no surprise to find the Minneapolis YMCA Wellbeing Center open to a partnership to promote wellbeing.
When Penny George was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996, she said it was “as much a spiritual assault as it was a physical one.”
“I had to be responsible for myself. It was more than the chemo and surgery that needed to be part of my healing path,” George said.
Inspired by that experience, Penny and Bill George and the George Family Foundation are giving $2.5 million to create the George Wellbeing Center at the Greater Twin Cities YMCA’s new downtown Minneapolis location, the first of its kind at any Y in the country.
The George Center will offer evidence-based, integrative health practices — addressing the wide range of issues that can affect health, not just physical — that are shown to reduce stress, promote healing and improve health outcomes.
Glen Gunderson, president and CEO of the Y, said the George Center reflects society’s growing realization that the health care system is really a sick care system and that individuals want more tools to maintain physical and emotional health than simply those that treat it once they fall ill.
Americans “spend more per capita [on health] than any place on the globe and 50 to 70 percent of those costs are lifestyle-related. We wait for disease to manifest and we treat it,” Gunderson said. But the Y and the George Family Foundation, he said, are “intent on getting upstream and providing a holistic approach.”
The George Center will provide holistic care options for children, teens and families — teaching youngsters coping skills to deal with anxiety, stress and depression.
Source: Wellbeing Center to be part of new downtown Minneapolis YMCA – StarTribune.com
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