PRESENTATIONS & WORKSHOPS


You will find here a variety of presentations, workshops and intensive trainings for both professional and lay audiences. All focus on questioning current approaches and practices in health education and promotion from a holistic perspective. Alternative approaches, including theoretical and scientific foundations and practical applications are explored. Popular topics include; weight, eating and nutrition; behavior change; rewards and incentives; quantum physics and health; risk factor epidemiology; mind, body, spirit health; and Holistic Health Promotion. 

 

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PRESENTATIONS are usually either keynotes or concurrent sessions of approximately 60-90 minutes in length. They are meant to raise awareness, entertain and stimulate discussion. Please click on the appropriate presentation to view a short abstract. I have provided a link for each abstract to a separate page that can be printed. Please feel free to click on the link below any abstract and use the print command in your browser to print it. Please note that the abstracts are not in the order listed here, so if there is one that interests you from the list it may be easiest to get to it by clicking on the link here.

 

WORKSHOPS and INTENSIVE TRAININGS are intended to delve more deeply into the issues and provide interactive learning experiences as well as time for discussion and processing. They can range in time from a few hours to multiple days depending on the circumstances. Exact program content can be tailored for a variety of audiences and purposes. Please click on the appropriate workshop to view a short abstract. I have provided a link for each abstract to a separate page that can be printed. Please feel free to click on the link and use the print command in your browser to print the abstract.


 

ABSTRACTS

HOLISTIC NUTRITION
Nourishing The Body, Mind and Spirit
The literature is replete with often isolated, confusing and ambiguous nutrition-related advice. Lacking is a sound and coherent philosophy about how food can nourish the social, emotional and physiological dimensions of the human experience. The result is a public that is confused and anxious about food.  This presentation will explore nutrition from a holistic perspective with special emphasis on the emotional, psychological and spiritual as well as physical benefits of food. A balance of research and practical application will empower health professionals to provide realistic, compassionate and effective counsel for life-long healthful eating.

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WEIGHT, HEALTH & CULTURE
Exploding the Myths, Exploring the Realities
In a recent editorial entitled Losing Weight--An Ill-Fated New Year's Resolution two senior editors of the prestigious New England Journal Of Medicine state that “the data linking overweight and death, as well as the data showing the beneficial effects of weight loss, are limited, fragmentary and often ambiguous.  Nevertheless, our culture’s unrelenting obsession with thinness causes tremendous suffering and social isolation for individuals of size.  This is particularly damaging for young girls and women who are constantly pressured to divert their energy and resources to the pursuit of ideals of body shape and size that are, for the vast majority, neither achievable nor healthy.  Indeed, women of all sizes as well as growing numbers of men suffer from an intense fear of fat that plays havoc with their self-esteem and promotes disordered eating and exercise behavior.  This presentation will debunk traditionally held myths about the relationship between weight and health, and suggest an alternative paradigm that can empower individuals to lead healthier, more fulfilled lives by honoring and caring for the bodies they presently have. 
 

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TOWARDS A NEW SCIENCE OF HEALTH & WELLNESS

There has been much lip service paid recently to mind, body, spirit approaches to health promotion and wellness. Unfortunately, the term holistic is still often viewed as meaning touchy-feely, “New-Age” and unscientific. Science, however, is dynamic – constantly changing - and there have been tremendous changes in science in the last 100 years. Unless our field adapts to the changing science, the efficacy of our interventions will continue to be compromised and we risk becoming an anachronism. This workshop will present an update of our understanding of health, illness, healing and the nature of change based on the latest scientific discoveries in psychoneuroimmunology, quantum physics and chaos theory. Implications for health and wellness promotion will be explored and resources for further educational enrichment will be recommended.

 

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LOW CARB, LOW FAT...NORMAL EATING - WHAT IS THAT?
To say that nutritional recommendations for wellness are constantly changing would certainly not be an overstatement of the truth. Contradictory epidemiological and scientific findings over the past decade have resulted in a plethora of confusing and conflicting information for practitioners and the general public alike and a seemingly endless deluge of fad diets with little scientific foundation or documented efficacy. This workshop will focus on the concept of Normal Eating and how this approach can cut through the confusion and misinformation that abounds in nutrition to help people develop a more peaceful and healthful relationship with food. The science supporting the use of internal regulation of food intake by humans will be examined and applications for wellness professionals in a wide variety of fields will be explored. 
 

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CHILDREN AND WEIGHT:Helping Without Harming
Over the last hundred years, the medical establishment has prescribed a plethora of often dangerous and sometimes lethal treatments to promote weight loss in “the name of health." Tragically, heightened fears elicited by recent government proclamations about the “childhood obesity epidemic” are driving caring, concerned parents to allow their children to be subjected to these same dangers.  In addition, we are asking schools to weigh children and send notes home to parents when these children are deemed to have a “weight problem.”  Children are faced with constant haranguing about the dangers of fat and an overload of media images of often grossly underweight celebrity role models. Growing efforts by the “food police” to promote “healthy eating” have led to organized searches through children’s lunch boxes and prohibition of cupcakes from birthday parties. Taken together these types of measures threaten to do irreparable damage to both the physiological and psychological health of our children. This presentation will critically examine the research and debunk the myths relating to children's weight and their health. A prescription for helping children to live healthier, happier lives by caring well for the bodies they presently have will be presented.


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THE OTHER RISK FACTORS:
What Blood Pressure, Cholesterol & Weight Don’t Tell You About Health <>
Health traditionally is defined by biomedical markers such as cholesterol, blood pressure, weight, etc. But how much of our morbidity, mortality and particularly our quality of life really are explained by these traditional risk factors?  The literature strongly supports that emotional, social and spiritual factors play essential roles in determining both our resistance to disease and our ability to heal ourselves.  Yet clinical, community and worksite approaches to health education and promotion remain narrowly focused on a biomedical, mechanistic model that emphasizes traditional risk factors for disease.  This presentation challenges participants to re-think the traditional focus of health promotion programs as well as their own personal philosophies of health.  The presentation will explore the growing body of research that establishes strong relationships between health and optimism, purpose and meaning in life, connectedness, perceived health and happiness, touch, prayer, spirituality, etc.  Implications of this new information for helping professionals will be discussed.  



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BEYOND BEHAVIOR:
Why Getting People To Change Should Not Be The Primary Goal of Health Education & Promotion 
Traditionally, health education and promotion have focused on helping people identify and eliminate "unhealthy" habits. The role of the health educator and health promoter has been to provide information, motivation and positive reinforcement to "get people" to change. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that even the best theory-based, health promotion interventions result in long-term change for the majority of people involved. Furthermore, these approaches often engender potentially iatrogenic consequences that may contribute to a decreased likelihood of change and a poorer quality of life for some people. This workshop will 1)question the appropriateness of behavior change as the primary goal of health education and promotion efforts, 2) introduce the rationale and advantages of substituting an alternative goal, and 3)explore the consequences for the role of the health professional.
 

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 WHAT DOES QUANTUM PHYSICS HAVE TO DO WITH IT? 
How Holistic Approaches to Health & Healing Are Supported by the Latest Findings in the Hardest of the Sciences.
Western science is still dominated by a mechanistic worldview based on classical Newtonian physics. According to this worldview only phenomenon that are measurable and quantifiable are worthy of scientific investigation.  This is the cornerstone of the biomedical model and the foundation for traditional Health Promotion with its focus on risk factors, outcome measurement and behavioral control.  Within this context, more holistic, ecological approaches are often considered soft, touchy-feely and unscientific.  This presentation will explore how recent, often startling findings in quantum physics and Chaos Theory are exposing the limitations of traditional explanations of reality and supporting a more holistic, ecological approach to health and illness. 
 

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WHEN PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY IS BAD FOR THE PUBLIC'S HEALTH
Pharmaceutical companies, public relations firms, health professionals and patient advocates work together to aggressively spread the word about new health problems and the treatments that have been created to combat them. Government and health establishment proclamations about looming, potentially catastrophic "epidemics" create a public atmoshphere of fear and confusion. All too often the new illnesses are created by medicalizing ordinary aspects of life, portraying mild problems as serious illnesses, and framing risk factors as diseases in themselves. People are assured that they can acheive good health and happiness by taking the right pills, doing the right behaviors or thinking the right thoughts. The incessant focus on personal responsibility for health results in victim blaming for those who get sick. The result is a public stressed, anxious and uncertain about what it means to "be healthy." This presentation will examine the precarious state of Public Health today and make recommendations for improving its impact on the publics’ health.

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WE KNOW WHAT TO DO TO BE HEALTHY....
WHY DON’T WE DO IT?
Barriers To & Strategies For Health Behavior Change
Years of intensive health education and sophisticated behavioral intervention have not succeeded in helping many Americans to permanently change their health behaviors.  Millions continue to smoke, the population continues to get heavier and most people do not participate in even the minimally recommended amounts of physical activity.  The question of why health behaviors are so resistant to permanent change is a critical one for health promotion, as well as for the physical, mental and financial health of the country.  This presentation examines the complex interaction of personal, social, and cultural factors that creates powerful barriers to permanent health behavior change.  As a potential solution to the limited success of current interventions, an alternative health promotion approach that focuses on balance, pleasure, compassion and internal trust will be introduced.

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OBESITY AND HEALTH: A SCIENTIFIC UPDATE
Separating Rhetoric from Reality
It would be difficult to overstate the urgency that U.S. government and health officials have placed on the dangers posed by obesity. The Surgeon General labeled obesity “the terror within,” a terror more dangerous than “weapons of mass destruction.” In a recent article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, another group of researchers menacingly warned that “the tsunami of childhood obesity has not yet hit shore” and that it was only a matter of time before heart attack and kidney failure became “a relatively common condition of young adulthood.” The purpose of this presentation is to critically examine the scientific evidence behind these claims. The premise will be that they are either poorly supported or directly contradicted by the most up-to-date scientific evidence. An alternative, evidence based, approach for helping people with weight-related concerns will be introduced.


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SURVIVING “RISK FACTOR FRENZY”
The Perils Of Applying Epidemiological Research In Health Education & Promotion
Epidemiology is concerned with the identification of lifestyle factors associated with disease and premature mortality. Using these risk factors health professionals counsel people on recommendations for lifestyle change. Unfortunately, this type of research was never intended to be applied to individuals. Furthermore scientists, the media and the general public are often unclear about the difference between cause and association, resulting in confusion and anxiety concerning health recommendations and a loss of credibility for health professionals. This presentation will explore the proper and improper use of epidemiological risk factor research in health education and promotion. Implications for health promotion and for the role of the health professional will be discussed.
 

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TO REWARD...or NOT TO REWARD? 
Challenging The Wisdom of Using Behavior Modification To Promote Health
From our homes, to our schools, to our workplaces, most attempts to help people change behaviors are based, at least in part, on the principles of Skinnerian behavior modification.  Yet there is limited evidence that this approach, which focuses on reinforcement or reward for changing behaviors, is effective for promoting long-term success.  Furthermore, there is evidence that rewarding people in this manner may have unwanted, adverse consequences.  Nevertheless, health promotion programs from smoking cessation classes to exercise and weight loss competitions to worksite initiatives for lowering blood pressure and cholesterol have incorporated the use of rewards and incentives to help promote behavior change. This presentation will review problems associated with behavior modification approaches, with particular emphasis on their use for promoting health behavior change.  Implications for health promotion and recommendations for alternative approaches will be discussed.
 

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A MATTER OF TRUST:
Helping Our Children To Be Healthy Eaters
Concern about increasing rates of obesity among children in the United States has prompted calls for taxing high-fat foods; banning pop, hamburgers and French fries from school lunch menus; and sending notes home with children who are too fat. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that these interventions will help improve our children’s eating habits and there is growing evidence that they may be making things worse. This presentation will argue against control as an effective intervention for helping children to be healthier eaters and will present an alternative approach based on trust and internal regulation. Myths related to children’s eating will be explored and practical guidelines for helping children to become healthy eaters will be presented.
 

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STRESS AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH
Reflections on A Shrinking, Scary World
Human beings come hardwired with physiological responses that allow us to adapt successfully to a wide variety of stressful situations. However, the unrelenting nature of today’s cultural and environmental stressors often causes these innate responses to be over activated resulting in widespread trauma, disease and premature death. This presentation will explore the physiological and evolutionary significance of the human response to stress.  The historical roots of our unprecedented present-day stressors will be examined and a blueprint for successful coping will be introduced.
 

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THE SPIRIT & SCIENCE OF HOLISTIC HEALTH
2-Day Intensive Training Certificate Program
Traditionally, health professionals attempt to motivate people to change certain behaviors in order to ward off disease.  Primary attention is given to the physical determinants of disease, and the most common form of motivation is fear.  Unhealthy habits are identified, and individuals engage in behavior modification programs that reward them for substituting more appropriate behaviors.  Unfortunately, the research does not support that these types of strategies lead to positive, long-term behavior change for most people. In addition, these approaches are increasingly in conflict with the new holistic assumptions about health, illness, healing and the process of change.  This intensive workshop challenges health professionals to re-think the traditional focus of health education/promotion programs as well as their own personal philosophies of health. Limitations of traditional strategies will be examined and an alternative, holistic approach for helping people create health and support healing will be presented in detail. Practical applications of this new information for health professionals in a variety of settings will be explored. A Certificate Of Completion will be awarded by Doctor Robison at the end of the seminar. 

   If you click on the word INTENSIVE  you can see and print more detailed information describing the material as presented in a multiple-day training format.
 


 

HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE (1/2 day - 2 days)
An Effective, Science-Based Approach for Helping People with Weight-Related Concerns
In an editorial entitled Losing Weight--An Ill-Fated New Year’s Resolution two senior editors of the prestigious New England Journal Of Medicine state that “the data linking overweight and death, as well as the data showing the beneficial effects of weight loss, are limited, fragmentary and often ambiguous.  Nevertheless, our culture’s unrelenting obsession with thinness causes tremendous suffering and social isolation for individuals of size.  This is particularly damaging for young girls and women who are constantly pressured to divert their energy and resources to the pursuit of ideals of body shape and size that are, for the vast majority, neither achievable nor healthy.  Indeed, women of all sizes as well as growing numbers of men suffer from an intense fear of fat that plays havoc with their self-esteem and promotes disordered eating and exercise behavior.  This workshop will debunk traditionally held myths about the relationship between weight and health, and explore in detail an alternative paradigm that can empower individuals to lead healthier, more fulfilled lives by honoring and caring for the bodies they presently have. Practical applications for health education and promotion will be discussed.
 


 

SPIRITUALITY, HEALTH and HEALING (1 day)
Applications for Professional Practice
Recent years have seen a growing interest in spirituality's role in the lives of clients and healthcare professionals alike. Just 5 years ago only 3 out of the nation's 125 medical schools offered courses on spirituality, while a full 2/3 offer such courses today. Using rigorous scientific research as a foundation, this seminar will examine the complex, multidimensional relationships between spirituality, religion, health and healing, with special attention given to the ways in which recent research can be used in therapeutic work with patients and clients. Updated information on how psychoneuroimmunolgy, quantum physics, chaos theory and recent findings in archeology and anthropology support a more holistic approach to understanding the nature of illness, health and healing will be explored.
 
 


 


COMMENTS FROM PARTICIPANTS

Hallelujah - This session is the "reason" I'm here (didn't know until this morning). Bless you! (American College Health Association 2005)

Outstanding! Honest. Truthful. Inspiring. Thank you. (National Wellness 2004)

Outstanding! Undeniably one of the best talks I have ever attended. Life - changing!! (Renfrew Center Foundation Conference 2002)

Tremendous presentation, best yet which is hard to believe w/level of conference presenters - Excellent, Life-Changing (National Wellness 2001)

Never before have I been so invigorated by a CME course. I am renewed, physically, mentally, and spiritually, thank you. (American Journal of Health Promotion, 2000)

Jon I am pleased to have taken your intensive workshop, because it touched a special place in my heart …You sparked off an emotion. At first it was a tearfullness. And I was not ashamed. It was exhilirating to know that all those years of medicine did not really extinguish my sensitivity. Thank you for a wonderful 2 days. My personal assistant would also like to thank you because she has never seen my soft side. Not in 8 years of working with me. (Dr Alec Savicky, Medical Director Health 4 Life, Australia.)

Jonathan’s delivery is powerful yet easy, joyfully serious, and unhurriedly quick (National Wellness participant – 1999)

Truly a leader in the industry – Brilliant! (National Wellness 1999)

Great!!  Touched me deep inside. Empowering – life changing. (National Wellness –99)

Absolutely excellent! He was worth the whole conference! This must appear on the web! (Air Force Surgeon General Conference 1998)

Without peer. The best speaker of the week by far. Hope that everyone at the conference takes his message to heart. (Air Force Surgeon General Conference 1998)

Very, very interesting! Great lecture. Should provide this information on a large scale to all health care professionals. (Air Force Surgeon General Conference 1998)

Here is the long list of thoughts from the conference participants. If ever you have a discouraging day and are wondering why you do what you do, just pull this out and read it. You will know instantly that your work is having a huge impact on individuals and the work they do!!! (Linda Morton, Boise Dietetic Association Conference Chair, 1999)

Great Job! Thanks for saying the emperor has no clothes! Best presentation of the conference.  (American Journal of Health Promotion 1999)

You did good!!! Top scores for the bunch on your first try. (Dr. Michael O’Donnell, President, American Journal of Health Promotion  - 1998 Conference)

This has been the best presentation I ever attended. What an awakening. I am determined to redesign my program. Thank you. (Association for Worksite Health Promotion International Conference, 1998)

I want to express our appreciation for the time and effort you put into your sessions. Your concurrent presentations got rave reviews both verbally and on the written evaluations. (Carol Wruble, Michigan State University 25th Annual Food and Nutrition Conference, 1997)

Outstanding! He’s one of the most effective speakers I’ve ever heard! It would be great to have him be a regular part of the conference. (Society for Public Health Education Conference, Ohio, 1999.)

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