About

My wife Elizabeth (nee Timbancaya-Mingua) and I co-founded Wellness Plus Institute in 2015 to teach, advocate for and promote Radical Wellness. We consider our advocacy as an extension of our professional educational roles as registered nurses and as a fulfillment of our civic duty as citizens of the world.

In essence, Radical Wellness is a proposition that health is not something that we can work out for; rather it is a gift that we just have to receive.

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus’ book, Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs, came off the press. It proposed the sun-centered versus the earth-centered view of cosmology that was prevalent in his time. Copernicus’ pioneering studies paved the way for the basic human understanding of the solar system. Today, even children studying elementary astronomy know that the earth revolves around the sun, and not otherwise.

When Copernicus promulgated the heliocentric view, he added nothing to the reality of the sun and the planets revolving around it; he just showed a proper way of looking at the solar system. In a similar way, Radical Wellness does not change the reality of what constitutes health; it just offers a right way of understanding what it really is.

Our health status does not really depend on our own effort and initiative but on what God has done for and given to us. From Creation, God provided all that we need to experience total health and wellness – pure air, fresh water, healing sunshine, nourishing food, and healthy relationships. Even the beneficial physiological effects that come when we exercise, eat plant-based foods and do other health-enhancing practices are built in our bodies which are “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God (Ps. 139:14). Therefore, health and wellness are essentially a reality - a gift - that we need to accept and receive from God who is the Source, Sustainer and Healer of our life, health and happiness. We just need to embrace God’s good gifts to us with gratitude. It is a truth to be lived out because of His amazing grace and by the power of the love of Jesus Christ who “came that … [we] may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10, ESV).

Radical Wellness is wrapped up in what the apostle Paul called God’s “indescribable gift” to us - Jesus the Christ, our Savior and Lord (2 Cor. 9:15, NIV). Because of His great love for us, God has made us alive together with Him, not because of our works but by His grace, lest anyone should boast (Eph. 2:1–9). Consequently, we ought to live as a new person, walking in wisdom and living our lives as an expression of thanksgiving and gratitude for the exceedingly abundant life He has gifted us in Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:17–6:20). We can live thus because the love of Christ constrains us (2 Cor. 5:14). He strengthens us to do all things for His glory and for our blessing (Phil. 4:13).

At Wellness Plus Institute, Beth and I teach the GARDENS integrative, theocentric, gospel-oriented, and evidence-based model of health promotion and education. GARDENS is an acronym; each letter represents the seven elements of this teaching model which are as follows:

God – the Source, Sustainer, and Healer . . .
Atmosphere – the Cradle and Environment . . .
Relationships – the Meaning and Fulfillment . . .
Decisions – the Direction and Destiny . . .
Exercise – the Purpose and Function . . .
Nutrition – the Nourishment and Sustenance . . .
Salvation – the Restoration and Perpetuation . . .
. . . of life, health, and happiness.
 
Beth and I have chosen teaching Radical Wellness as our advocacy and ministry because health is a universal value. Whatever your ethnicity is; however old you are; and wherever you live, you desire to be healthy and well. It is an “an entering wedge, making a way for other truths to reach the heart." *
 
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• https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/16.622. Accessed on February 17, 2021.