Media Kit
From Will Nelson: To The Media
What sets The Well-Adjusted Life apart?
With the countless “self-help” books flooding the market, you might be tempted to dismiss The Well-Adjusted Life as just one more addition to the growing pile. Here’s what makes this book different.
Focus on all-inclusive approach
Unlike most books on the subject, The Well-Adjusted Life doesn’t tell you what to do. Instead, it guides you toward learning about yourself and then applying formulas for successful, personal management. The material is presented in an engaging, personal, and robust style that is sometimes humorous and always powerful.
The Well-Adjusted Life contains an all-in-one approach — the mind, the body, and diet. Reading this book is the equivalent of spending time with a life coach, a personal trainer, a massage therapist, and a nutritionist — all rolled up into one, comprehensive program. When treated separately, each of these specialties focuses primarily on itself, and omits the connection and relationships with the others. The Well-Adjusted Life integrates all of these crucial elements of our daily lives.
Fundamentally sound
Building a discipline around successful, lifestyle management requires more than general concepts; it demands functionality in a world of rapidly changing schedules, endless choices, and information overwhelm. Feedback from readers and reviewers says it all: “… fills an absolute need to help people educate themselves… many anecdotal stories contain provocative ideas and universal truths which deeply resonate… how the experiences of his life led him on such an amazing journey that generated such simple, effective, and easily adaptable tools… steers away from lofty affirmations and instead focuses on the real digging in the trenches we all must do to understand our behavior and make effective long-term changes… ”
TWAL chronicles the primary steps involved with learning and applying the three, primary programs essential for vital living today — VitalBody. Six demonstration videos are also included. The preeminent mindset today, out of necessity, is making everything your own — the ability to master your mind, body, diet, and overall lifestyle. TWAL makes that possible through a comprehensive, step by step approach that’s both understandable and easy to apply, yielding immediate and permanent benefits.
Engaging, provocative style
This book isn’t a dry read. Rather than talking down to people, it meets them head-on with a plain speaking, straightforward, sometimes humorous and other times, deadly serious style: “His story was very real to me, never boring, and very provocative in the ideas it stirred in me… his personal story was fascinating and I found myself engrossed in the diverse twists and turns his life took, seeing similar elements in mine, and reading with fascination… an engaging genuineness flows throughout the book which makes it accessible and resonant.”
Experience and expertise
Not a Johnny-Come-Lately, I have been doing this work all of my adult life with hundreds of clients all over the country. Each of my programs has been in existence over twenty years, and I have over twenty years experience as a licensed massage therapist and personal trainer. My programs have been well researched and proven successful in the clinical setting. Not simply an occupation, my work observing and supporting others has been a life’s calling.
Check out “news pegs”
This subject has more topical angles that are exceptionally relevant to your readers/viewers, listeners — than you might ever imagine. Visit the news pegs link to explore the many ways to approach this timely subject.
I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to explore my site. I’m confident of its value as a resource for your readers, viewers, and listeners. Please let me know if I can provide any additional perspective or material.
Will Nelson
will@vitalogy.com
678-458-0018
Press Release
Coming soon.
Book Synopsis
The Well-Adjusted Life: Lifestyle Management in the Age of Technology
Premise
Lifestyle governs health, both mental and physical, but technology now overshadows and governs our day-to-day activities. Surviving and thriving in this environment requires individuals to have a sustainable system in place that assists with self — management of their mental and physical state. This is critically important when combating the daily stressors of information overload and chronic change. By following a system devoloped by the author over a lifetime, we gain an understanding of how our lives evolved to this point and how to move forward with a sense of control and optimism. We gain a blueprint for managing our physical, emotional, and nutritional needs in a concise and straightforward outline. Managing these three, critical elements allows us to focus on achieving long-term goals rather than endlessly taking care of short-term needs. The goal of The Well-Adjusted Life is to meld our personal histories with a new perspective and move forward with a set of tools for optimal, lifestyle management.
Background
Will Nelson’s personal story reads like a great adventure of transformative life experiences — from his childhood and early development as a life intuitive to the clients he has worked with — multimillionaires to Holocaust survivors.
Over the last 25 years, these encounters forged the creation of three programs which the book highlights: VitalBody. These programs have proven successful in the clinical setting by clarifying the impact of technology on the mind and body. They encapsulate the vast paradigm shifts of the last several decades and present a new approach for living life today and into the future. They feature an all-in-one approach for care of the mind and body and one’s diet.
Exploding myths
In its 305 pages, The Well-Adjusted Life demolishes the dichotomies that pigeon hole us in a less than optimal physical and mental state. Too much focus is placed on the extremes and not enough in between, where most of us reside: there are the couch potatoes on one hand and the “gym rats” on the other. There are the picky, “raw only” eaters on one hand and the “anything goes” types on the other. There are those who undergo years of therapy, while others mindlessly locked into their behavior. What The Well- Adjusted Life provides are sensible exercise methods, diet practices, and a mental model that work synergistically with a busy lifestyle and escape the tyranny of an all or nothing mindset.
Easing fears
Most people think it’s too difficult, complicated, and time consuming to properly take care of their mind, body, and diet. The Well-Adjusted Life cuts through the denial, false information, and marketing hype that steers people away from the truth. By acknowledging the difficulties we all face, while showing concrete, proven ways to successfully engage our minds and bodies, the book presents sound advice for managing the realities of modern living.
Audiences
The book speaks to readers of any age who seek to achieve a more balanced lifestyle:
- Young people who seek to cope with the endless change facing them
- Middle-aged people who are looking to stay on top of their game
- Elderly who desire to participate in life itself as long as possible
- Office workers who suffer the impact of underutilizing their body and overutilizing their minds
- Self-employed people who recognize the importance of being on their “A” game every day in order to survive and compete in the business world
- Physically active people who want to minimize injuries, improve performance, and sustain their abilities
- People who desire to rehabilitate their life by taking it apart, thoroughly examining it, and putting it back together again
News Pegs
The following are some “news pegs” for this subject:
- Exercise for the rest of us: much of the conversation around exercise focuses on couch potatoes, those who do little or nothing, or gym rats, those whose whole life revolves around exercise. The Well-Adjusted Life explains to the majority of us who exist somewhere between the two how to seamlessly integrate exercise into one’s daily life regardless of schedule or lifestyle.
- Diet for the rest of us: much of the conversation around diet focuses on the extremes of the obese and those who eat anything on one hand, and the “raw food only” crowd on the other. This book creates a diet program for the rest of us by looking at food consistent with the manner in which we live and providing the basis for understanding the essential kitchen management necessary to make healthy, fast meals a reality.
- Mental self-care for the rest of us: much of the conversation around the mind revolves around those either in endless therapy on one hand or randomly exhibiting mindless behavior on the other. What about sanity for the rest of us? This book provides an easy to understand system of seeing the “universal life condition” that, much like gravity, both exists and governs our lives whether we are aware of it or not.
- Lifestyles in transition: the ever-changing landscape of American society means multiple lifestyles now exist in one home or profession. Each of them requires fundamental attributes in order to be successfully sustained over the long term. This book employs strategies adaptable to all lifestyles.
- Trying to look younger: in the mass scramble of attempts to look younger, many people have lost sight of something far more important — feeling younger. By promoting youthful posture, flexibility, and range of motion, along with resolving the major issues of one’s life and in conjunction with sustainable dietary practices, with a well-adjusted life a person can both look and feel younger.
About the Author
_Will Nelson — The Man Who Listens to Bodies…
and Minds_
Will Nelson is a rebel with a cause — lifestyle management for smart people. His goal is to have fun while creating positive changes in the way we think, move about, and nourish ourselves from day to day. He is an author, educator, personal trainer, massage therapist, and life coach. Vitalogy is the formula he created for having a well-adjusted life, not a perfect life, a well-adjusted one. His approach is influenced by the pervasive role of technology.
Technology has changed the entire fabric of the human experience. It is now our servant and master. As this impact continues accelerating, it is critical that we maximize the inherent assets and limit the liabilities. We must acknowledge this shift and adjust our lifestyle based on the fact that technology now overutilizes our minds and underutilizes our bodies.
Nelson created the concept of Vitalogy as the result of an insatiable curiosity and a commitment to observing and learning from others. Growing up under difficult circumstances, he was immersed in the perfect classroom for studying, up close and personal, what is and what is not well-adjusted.
Along the way, he discovered his gift for “listening to the body,” an intuitive ability that allows him to see people’s greatness, yet understand their fundamental life experiences and the issues they are currently facing. His training includes working as a medical office manager, X-ray technician, exercise therapist, public relations director, facility administrator, and consultant.
Along with practicing his proprietary form of movement-based massage therapy, Nelson also received an associate’s degree as a health and fitness instructor along with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Currently, he is both a certified health and fitness instructor and a certified massage therapist.
Education and self-knowledge was the motivation behind Nelson’s first book, The Real Truth About Health, a practical health care guide designed to empower people. Published in 1986, it was used by nursing schools, libraries, and health care providers.
In the 1990’s he created the “Gymnasia,” a research facility in Orange County, CA, that offered private consultations, exercise programs, self- improvement workshops, and special events. Here, his three flagship Vitalogy courses, VitalBody, VitalFood, and VitalMind, became formalized.
Will Nelson’s speaking style is entertaining, unassuming, spontaneous, and focused. He brings out the warm personality of others through his frank, candid, lively, and entertaining demeanor. In delivering his material to live audiences, Nelson becomes an actor and storyteller, breathing vibrancy and energy into his message. His easygoing personality makes people feel comfortable and allows them to freely converse with him.
His latest project is authoring The Well-Adjusted Life, a book about understanding one’s individual restorative process in today’s technologically driven society. The book starts with his early childhood and moves through the process that led him to spend his life focused on individual lifestyles and developing his unique approach to working with the mind and body.
Nelson currently maintains a private practice in metro Atlanta and administers his on-line VitalBody course. He subscribes to self-responsibility, practical knowledge, and common sense. His motto is, “Die young as old as you can.”
Sample Interview
An Engaging Visit with Will Nelson
When I first met Will Nelson, it took a minute to realize he is not an easy person to figure out. While professionally attired in a shirt and tie, five minutes into the interview he was demonstrating airplane spins and jumping around his living room.
Nelson’s body is not “buff” in the traditional gym sense of having big arms and washboard abs; he’s fairly slender and reasonably proportioned. But what’s amazing is how nimble his body is — how loose and fluid his movements are. It was like watching a teenager in a much older person’s body. He explained that his program, Vitalogy, is about quality of life; that while big arms and washboard abs look good, they don’t serve any functional purpose in everyday life. Watching him reminded me of a kid, as he loaded his arms with a two-trip quantity of boxes, easily balancing on one foot and flipping open the screen door with his other foot.
He asked if I was hungry, then whipped up what he called a “Health ‘O’ Meal.” Watching him operate in his kitchen was amazing; he had the entire routine mastered with military precision. The food was not only delicious, it was also a nutritionally complete meal in one pot. “Food is a big part of my program. Managing your biochemistry is essential to managing your energy and overall mental state.”
He further explained that if people wanted to lose weight, the best way to start is by cleaning up their kitchen. “When speaking of diet, you have to include the shopping, cooking, preparation, cleaning up, storing the leftovers, and maintaining a reasonable fridge and pantry. It sounds overwhelming, but it can be fun and easy when systematized and streamlined.” Just as I was thinking, “How cool would it be for him to come to my house and clean up my kitchen,” he explained that’s part of what he does. And it just makes sense: house calls from a life coach/efficiency expert/nutritional advisor and personal trainer all wrapped up in one unique and talented person.
After the meal (dishes cleaned and kitchen straightened in no time with the focus of a Navy Seal), he opened a binder with a couple hundred pages of yet another program he developed called VitalMind. His parents were both sick throughout his childhood: his father had rheumatoid arthritis, his mother, depression. As a result, he felt driven to help people find ways to not be so afflicted.
My experience with occasional therapy throughout the years was that while it helped in the moment, I frankly didn’t learn much that I could carry forward the next time similar circumstances arose. He said he’d heard that hundreds of times from people, and that’s why he developed his VitalMind course. After years of hearing people’s stories, he literally began to put all those experiences into one story. While we’re all different and circumstances vary from one person to another, ultimately we all process things similarly. An apt analogy would be the way gravity affects all of us in the same way.
He emphasizes two things throughout all of his programs. One is to have fun, which he certainly does, shaking and wiggling his body as he talks. It’s amazing he’s that fluid, and yet he claims to never have taken a dance class, yoga lessons, or any kind of movement classes. He said that when he was in his 20’s, he was still aware of the physical activities he was able to do as a teenager and wanted to discover ways to keep doing them as long as possible. There’s a real genius here, because airplane spinning, for example, is a fantastic way to maintain balance and coordination. So a few times a week, he performs airplane spins instead of spending a half hour doing balance and coordination exercises.
The food is the same way. He spanks the protein pancakes and caresses the vegetables. He has a sidekick named Mr. Frosty that a friend retrieved from a dumpster — a plastic snowman vintage 1960 — that Nelson talks to almost like a ventriloquist. It’s all about having fun with Nelson, because he says without fun, only the most disciplined will do anything in a sustained way. He even has fun with language, peppering his speech with words like “feasance” (badness), “obstreperous” (wild and unruly), and “chiggie” (way cool, only better).
In watching him work with a client, he’s totally nonjudgmental. He takes people right where they are. He cares less about how they got there and more about how they can improve their condition. While his unorthodox style is not for everyone, he is extremely engaging, imaginative, and dedicated to doing whatever it takes to help the client make lasting improvements. But beneath his sometimes eccentric behavior lies an intelligence and thorough knowledge of his subject matter. Of his tomfoolery he says, “My job is to trick people into having fun and getting something done; to do the most they can in just a couple minutes, because that’s all we have these days.”
After my exhilarating visit with Will, I had a rekindled enthusiasm for wanting to take good care of myself.
Testimonials
Testimonials for The Well-Adjusted Life
