About the Authors

About the Authors of the Wellness Workbook

Regina Sara Ryan is a wellness consultant and managing editor for a small publishing company. She also serves as a graduate advisor in the fields of religious studies and human development at Prescott College, in Prescott, Arizona. Regina is the coauthor of Simply Well (with John) and the author of numerous books, including After Surgery, Illness, or Trauma: 10 Practical Steps to Renewed Energy and Health; The Woman Awake: Feminine Wisdom for Spiritual Life; and Praying Dangerously. She lives with her husband, Jere Pramuk, and a small community of friends in Paulden, Arizona.

John W. Travis, MD, MPH, completed his medical degree at Tufts University and his preventive medicine residency at Johns Hopkins University. He began his career in wellness in the 1970s while serving with the U.S. Public Health Service's Division of Health Services Research, where he developed one of the first computerized health risk appraisals.

In 1975, he gave up the practice of sick-care to open the world's first wellness center, the Wellness Resource Center, in Mill Valley, California. This work attracted international attention culminating in an appearance on 60 Minutes with Dan Rather in 1979. When the Center was transformed into a nonprofit educational consulting group, Wellness Associates (see the opposite page), John began to present programs around the world for helping professionals interested in the Center's approach—a paradigm of egalitarian partnership focused on enhancing wellness—rather than the authoritarian medical model of fixing "problems."

Out of this work he discovered that authoritarian cultures remain in power through their self-perpetuating, non-nurturing treatment of pregnancy and childhood. Realizing that infant wellness is the precursor to adult wellness, he cofounded the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children in 1999 together with his wife, Meryn Callander, and eleven other professionals. By addressing the critical role of the early years of life in optimizing human development, aTLC takes John's initial wellness work to the foundations of wellbeing.

Besides the Wellness Workbook, his publications include the "Wellness Inventory" (1975, 1981, 1988, 2002); Simply Well: Choices for a Healthier Life (1990, 2000), coauthored with Regina; Wellness for Helping Professionals: Creating Compassionate Cultures (1990); and A Change of Heart: The Global Wellness Inventory (1993), coauthored with Meryn Callander.

Together with HealthWorld Online, he has produced the Wellness Inventory Online. This is available for individual use as well as for licensing by hospitals, health spas, and corporations that care about their employee's state of wellness.

In 2000, John, Meryn, and their daughter, Siena, moved to Australia (Meryn's homeland). John spends several months each summer traveling in the United States to facilitate his various networks.

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