Health & Well-being Programs

Maintaining a healthy weight is a challenge for everyone and involves attention to lifestyle factors including diet and exercise. Having a physical disability that limits movement can significantly impede exercise as a weight management strategy. Our weight management workshop is specifically designed to assist people with physical disabilities.

This workshop will help you:

• explore the impact of physical disability on weight maintenance
• learn about the key lifestyles factors involved in maintaining a healthy weight
• develop strategies that assist you to reduce or maintain your weight
• understand how to make sustainable changes in your life

This is a two session workshop usually held with a month between sessions. This allows participants to trial making sustainable changes to their lifestyle to assist with weight loss and maintenance. We offer an additional session, six months after the workshop to review progress.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle

Most people know what is healthy for them and what is not. What many people struggle with is changing their current unhealthy habits.

This is because habits are deeply ingrained behaviours and are difficult to change.

This workshop will help you:

• learn about how habits develop
• understand why habits are so resistant to change
• explore healthy and unhealthy habits
• develop your ability to make sustainable changes to your daily habits

This one day workshop explores how to harness the power of habit to assist you in learning how to replace unhealthy habits with healthy ones.

Sleeping is the healthiest thing you can do without doing anything!

Restorative sleep is one of the most essential ingredients for health and wellbeing. However, the challenges associated with living with a physical disability can have a negative effect on sleep length and quality and make establishing optimum sleep habits problematic.

This workshop will help you:

• understand sleep and sleep problems
• learn about the impact of sleep on your well-being
• explore the barriers to restorative sleep
• develop a sleep routine that promotes quality sleep

This three session workshop is held over a number of weeks and is designed to help develop a sleep routine that can assist you to regularly achieve a deep restorative sleep.

Recent research has shown that Mindful Self- Compassion (MSC) greatly enhances emotional wellbeing, reduces anxiety and depression, enhances coping, promotes health behaviours and increases motivation. Most importantly it helps to alleviate physical and emotional pain. This MSC pilot-study will be one of the first to be delivered by a Swinburne student as part of a Psychology Masters research project to individuals who have physical disability. It is an empirically-supported program shown to cultivate self-compassion using structured sessions comprised of theory, mindful and self-kindness meditations, daily life practices, group exercises and discussion. Self-compassion is an emotional skill that can be learned by anyone. 

This workshop will help you:

• Learn how to bring mindfulness awareness with self-compassion to what’s bothering you
• Discover how to bring kindness to yourself especially when you’re in emotional or physical pain 
• Explore the barriers to cultivating self-compassion 
• Free yourself from the trap of destructive thoughts & emotions though self-compassion boosting your self-esteem, reducing anxiety / depression and pain.

“I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.” Jennifer Yane

This workshop will help you:

• explore the impact of stress on personal well-being
• discover your inner strengths
• learn stress management strategies in a safe, supportive environment
• develop your assertiveness and communication skills

This is a two day workshop specifically for women with disabilities with a week between sessions.

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.” Peter Druker

This workshop will help you:

• be clearer and more confident about making decisions
• feel more satisfied with the way your life is headed
• improve your negotiating skills
• build your personal autonomy and independence

This is a 4 hour workshop over 2 days specifically for individuals with physical disability.

“Friendship fuels the flames of romance.” John M. Gottman

A relationship that works is one of the most powerful transformational forces in the universe. There are many factors that can affect a relationship in a positive or negative way. Physical disability is one of those factors. While all of us are born with the capacity to love, building and maintaining relationships are learned.

Whether couples have been together for two, ten or twenty years, these workshops provide couples with the opportunity to:

• reaffirm your relationship
• explore and learn new relationship skills
• deepen your understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of each other

This is a 3 hour workshop over 4 days specifically for couples where one or both partners have a physical disability.