‘Great oaks from little acorns grow’
The ‘acorn’ for the Lifestyle Health Foundation fell to the ground in the autumn/winter of 2020, when the world continued to be in the grip of a global pandemic – COVID-19. The Foundation has been stimulated by the vision of an individual who, out of a personal health crisis in 2015, was driven to understand and learn from that traumatic experience to help identify ways to support others, perhaps less fortunate. Then during the many months of the pandemic, the opportunity arose to read the great ideals and psychology of, perhaps the lesser known psychologist, Alfred Adler, who spoke of a child’s ‘style of life’, a term described in the “Lifestyle of a tree“.
The focus of that vision sharpened through reading the work of Agatha Bowley, including this wonderful passage from “The Psychology of the Unwanted Child”, a book accessible from the Lifestyle Health Foundation Library, which you can visit by clicking on the following text:
As we mention in our welcome, The Lifestyle Health Foundation is a social enterprise bringing a community of people & organisations together who share the vision and mission to learn about lifestyle health and its importance, especially in the early years of a child’s life in preventing many mental and physical health problems.
We invite you to join our community of people, where we believe “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” and that together we will start by:
- Encourage people to share existing & new resources as well as research evidence, that support people of grand parenting age, parents and teachers in supporting the social and emotional development of children through the early years of life.
- Create a “platform”, SmartTracker, that recognises the quality of life significance of emotions and values.
- Encourage Healthcare & Medical scientific communities as well as Governments to recognise the significance of emotional health and lived experiences in supporting mental & physical health.
