Work Life Balance

ACHIEVE PERFECT BALANCE IN YOUR WORK-LIFE-SPIRIT

Ruth Ostrow is Australia's premier BodyMindSoul writer with her Health column in The Weekend Australian and several books to her credit in the areas of sex & relationships, wellbeing and spiritual fitness.

As a former finance journalist in the 80s and early 90s with The Financial Review and BRW magazine she is an expert on the corporate lifestyle, having written a best seller on the secrets and pitfalls of success interviewing the likes of Alan Bond, Coles Myer's Solomon Lew, stockbroker Rene Rivkin, property developer Bruno Grollo, Asian tycoons Lee Ming Tee and Sally Aw, Robert Holmes a Court and many more.

Ruth's credentials as a Work Life Balance consultant are impeccable, based as they are on her personal experiences, her inside understanding of corporate life and her exposure to the most intimate secrets, deepest fears and most extravagant desires of thousands on ordinary Australians.

"The point is that if staff are happier, and healthier, they'll be more productive and there will be less absenteeism or resigning," says Mark Aponas, Flight Center's Global HR Manager, who heads the company's new Work Life Balance program for its 700 outlets. "Over the past 12 months sick days have decreased by 25 per cent, and staff turnover is down dramatically. This saves us in excess of $250,000 per annum."

The Weekend Australian Magazine

She now works as a speaker and educator in the area of Work Life Balance. Ruth observed firsthand the truth of the mantra What Drives You, Can Drive You Over the Edge, watching many of the leading corporate players of the 80s -- several of whom were close friends -- hit the wall or make bad decisions as a result of burn out.

Within a few years of her best seller The NewBoy Network being published, FAI founder Larry Adler had suffered a massive coronary and died, Hooker Corporation's George Herscu was in jail, and Christopher Skase had fled the country. Their demise reflected the fate of many our monied elite.

Of those who didn't suffer financial ruin, health deterioration, or some public pain, many had relationship issues, and problems with family and children. Many were over-tired: never taking a holiday and as a result of their exhaustion sailing too close to the wind. As the turbulent 80s came to a close it became obvious that it was important to acknowledge the wisdom of some new advice - Work Smarter, Not Harder!

Ruth admits that she herself was a workaholic, confessing to having what she describes as a "nervous breakthrough" from the pressures of her busy professional life which at one stage saw her writing and broadcasting her relationships advice to 8 million people. We teach what we need to learn and at the end of the 90s, after watching her health fall apart, she - together with her business partner, former Sydney stockbroker-now-corporate-trainer/finance journalist Morris Kaplan (author of the bestseller Five Years to Financial Freedom) - moved her family to Byron Bay to write on matters of Health for The Australian and to practice what she preaches: Work Life Balance.

Together they lead a program designed to put balance into all areas of life so that every facet is working efficiently. Wellness is not about "Eat your spinach". It's about good loving, great sex, healthy relationships and body, and a wonderful creative productive work life. It's about passion, it's about pleasure and putting the leisure back into pleasure, and making all the pieces of the pie work together to make a satisfying whole.

The body is the temple of the soul and without an effective, well-rested brain and body producing the right hormones and chemicals, we are vulnerable to dis-ease, unhappiness and bad decision making.

Since moving to Byron Bay five years ago, Ruth Ostrow has studied a number of spiritual and wellness modalities: including Buddho Enersense, an ancient Tibetan energy system, with Reiki Master Faye Wenke; Chi Gung, and Buddhist studies, with Taiwan-based Buddhist Monk GrandMaster Shan Fo; Yoga with international teacher Lance Schuler; Anatomy and Physiology with Dr Arne Rubinstein; and attended lectures in Ayurvedic studies with Professor Robert Svoboda; as well as trained in Tantric and Taoist studies both here and abroad. Morris Kaplan has been studying and practising macrobiotic diet and lifestyle which has enhanced his health significantly.

Now, employing the top personal trainers, life-coaches, nutritionists, spiritual teachers and BobyMindSoul healers that Byron Bay has to offer in order to enhance their workshop series, Ruth and Morris offer modules you can add to your corporate retreat in the rainforests of the luxurious Byron at Byron hotel or at any hotel/ accommodation of your choice in the Northern Rivers area or on the Gold & Sunshine Coasts.

The modules can be as little as a one-hour keynote speech, or expanded to two-to-three day workshop modules under Ruth and Morris's expert eye including activities like meditation, brisk walking on the beach & yoga by the pool - all of which is designed in a way that you can easily integrate into your life back home.

Ruth and Morris are also available for personal life coaching, and private sessions with individuals and groups. Accommodation in world-class hotels or top-range holiday homes can be arranged.

Special packages can be arranged for stressed executives or entrepreneurs who have more serious problems or specific needs

Ruth Ostrow is available for Keynote Speaking at any of your public or corporate event around the country or overseas. She has worked for over ten years as a corporate trainer/educator including running her programmes for ten days at the prestigious Young President's Organisation (YPO) annual international University at the Coolum Hyatt hotel in the 90s.

"Ruth Ostrow is a riveting presenter. The intelligence, charisma, humour and experiential wisdom she displayed during her keynote speech at the 2004 International Complementary Psychiatry Conference kept us all enthralled. It was a memorable and intelligent experience."

Leon Petchkovsky, Professor Psychiatry,
University of Queensland

RUTH OSTROW: KEYNOTE SERIES & WORKSHOPS:

These can be tailored to either the corporate or general markets, can be run as keynote speeches or taught in workshop settings.

Burn Out -- What drives you, can drive you over the edge. Lessons learned from the 80s and examples of success and failure on both monetary and personal levels from her years of interviews with the leading entrepreneurs in Australia and around the world, and subsequent years as a Sex&Relationships writer/broadcaster here and in New York, then Health writer with The Australian newspaper. How to create a balanced and nurturing world that keeps you at peak performance in love, play and work.
WorkLife Balance - Ruth's personal story of her years as a journalist fighting to keep the pie in balance, often losing her battle with workaholism, and ultimately leading to her escape from the rat-race to the hinterlands of Byron Bay in order to practice what she preached. A look at each area of life that is important and how to create passion that fuels you but doesn't burn you.
The chemistry of P-leisure -- A medical look at the hormones and chemicals that get released during activities that give us pleasure such as - dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, PEA, oxytocin - and how important these are to longevity, healthy-ageing and effective thinking. Fitness is not just about "Eat Your Spinach''. Eat chocolate instead! Have a glass of red, have a tumble in the hay or jump from a plane and see the benefits to cardiac health, skin tone, and productivity as the body floods with happiness, a sense of meaning, and the feelgood chemicals that keep you fit on the inside.
Morris Kaplan: Investing in your Body & Soul -- How to create an investment plan that allows for time out, holidays, money to play, and keep your marriage or relationship alive. It's pointless "not investing" in your relationships by being a workaholic and then seeing your assets get divided during the divorce. Or having a heart attack and losing months in hospital, if not worse.
Morris Kaplan: Your Money Personality - a deeper look at what money really means to you. How to change bad money habits and unhelpful investment decisions by looking at the blocks you still carry from childhood, and your conditioning around wealth, value and "self"-worth. Create a new money personality and create abundance.

HEALTH & FITNESS MODULES:

Alongside the lectures and keynotes are offered the following modules:

Challenge activities with highly-qualified personal trainer
- Dawn beach walks
- Walks around Byron Bay
- Daily gym workout
- Yoga by the pool
- Tai Chi on the lawn
- Water Workouts
- Bike-rides through the rainforest
- Kayaking with Dolphins
- Climb Mt Chincogan or Mt Warning
- Hang Gliding
- Surfing

P-leisure activities
- Chocolate making
- Wine tasting
- Tantric breathing

Healing & Spa
- Beauty treatments
- Reiki
- Rock therapy
- Vichy Hydrotherapy Massage
- Colonic Irrigation
- Sacred Kahuna Massage
- Acupuncture
- Consultation with a Naturopath
- Life Coaching
New Age
- Astrology
- Chakra Balancing
- Kundalini ecstatic Dancing