Take a look at the presentations/links below to capture the essence of what TTL Health & Wellbeing is all about…

Peak Medicine: Why we need to create the Local Health Service (LHS)

Transition initiatives for sustainable health and wellbeing

Creative Arts for health & wellbeing

Technology and the future of health

It’s time to think big

Journal of holistic healthcare: Resistance and Resilience

Journal of holistic healthcare: Medicine as if People Matter

Journal of holistic healthcare: Sustainable healthcare

The natural environment and local health priorities

The TTL year of Health and Wellbeing

Next meeting of the TTL Local Health Group (LHS) will be in September – date tbc. We are also planning a workshop at Wowo Transition Camp in October. More information: Sue Fleming or Catherine Rees

Good Health: Beyond Resilience

Dirk Campbell July 2015 I have just been reading one of those rare books whose central concept seems so important and so universally applicable that one wonders why no-one thought of it before. It is a very simple observation and, like gravity and evolution, very obvious in retrospect; one realises that it has actually been around for ever but not previously identified.

The observation in question is that all living systems possess a capacity, for which there is no word in the English language, for self-strengthening in response to stress or impact. This capacity goes beyond resilience, which is merely the ability of a system to retain its integrity. The book is by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Black Swan (nothing to do with the ballet movie but a book about the profound effects of the unexpected) and because there is no term for its central concept he has been forced to coin one: ‘antifragility‘. (The title of the book is ‘Antifragile’.) It’s not a good word, because it references its opposite; it’s like calling strong ‘anti-weak’, or weak ‘anti-strong’. But until someone comes up with a better word it will have to do. Read more…

The Transition Town Lewes Health group had a brilliant inaugural meeting on May 30th and several creative possibilities are sprouting shoots. The foundational idea is the Local Health Service (LHS) as an umbrella for a collaboration that could augment our beautiful but flagging NHS.

The meeting agreed that we should continue to meet as a TTL Local Health Initiative group. Anyone interested in joining in the discussion and receiving more news and information should contact catherinemrees@ymail.com or suemfleming@gmail.com and request to join the google group email forum.

Prof David Peters started the meeting by saying that the health of each person depends on relationships and on community, yet the main treatment in the NHS is still the biomedical model, which has grown Big Pharma to $1 trillion p.a. industry.  Ten  years ago Derek Wannless reported under ‘Fully engaged scenario’ saying that the only way to make the NHS sustainable is to get individuals and communities to take responsibility for their own health. This has not yet happened, and GPs (who should have the best jobs in the world) are burning out and leaving in droves. If madness, according to Einstein, is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result, then if we are to flourish together we will have to find radically different ways of doing health. David is chair of integrated health at University of Westminster, and co founder of the British Holistic Medical Association (BHMA) which publishes the Journal of Holistic Healthcare (JHH). A pdf power point will be available shortly.

We moved into small groups with discussions around various topics:
– Nature connection, food and agriculture
– Healing the healers
– Community & individual empowerment & engagement
– Technology and health
– Creative arts

Discussed specifically were NatureGain and care farms, end of life care in the community, mindfulness, dance & voice, medical student training, permaculture, and much else besides! The small groups reported back their findings and have written up some notes which will follow shortly.

Please do get in touch if you are concerned about ‘peak medicine’; thinking that the current health care model is unsustainable in its present form and that there is a place for local, positive changes that we can make if we come together in an inspired and creative way.