Ready, set … let’s improve our well-being, in the annual UC Davis Mind Body Wellness Challenge. Everyone’s invited to participate: students, faculty, staff and retirees.

Registration is underway, and the official kickoff event on the Davis campus is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. next Tuesday, April 8, in the Activities and Recreation Center Ballroom.

This communitywide program, sponsored by WorkLife and Wellness, encourages each participant to adopt a healthy, new habit and maintain it for seven weeks, after which the new habit can be a lifelong change.

In making your choice, consider a habit from within one of the dimensions of the Wellness Wheel: physical, social, emotional, intellectual, environmental, occupational and spiritual. You’re also invited to complete this self-assessment (online).

The wellness challenge organizers have arranged a whole range of activities to help you keep your new habit, and will send weekly emails with links and resources to keep you motivated and on track.

Activities include a talk on the benefits of exercise, a brown bag on hiking and other outdoor adventures, and another brown bag on Latin dance.

Other activities include weekly group walks, including UC Walks. The latter is a systemwide event, May 21, that will serve as the culmination of the UC Davis Mind and Body Wellness Challenge.

See the list of events and-or activities.

Mind Body Wellness Challenge punch cards are being made available, so you can collect punches for the activities in which you participate — gather a certain number of punches, and receive an incentive prize (for example, an all-in-one measuring spoon, or a cooling scarf, or a pair of Wellness Wheel bamboo socks).

For each activity, participants also receive 2,500 points for the UC Living Well program (which in 2014 is offering a $75 VISA Rewards gift card to each employee and retiree who earns 7,500 points during the year).

Interested in registering for the Mind Body Wellness Challenge? You can wait for the April 8 kickoff event, or, you can do it now, online, to avoid the lines!

The kickoff program includes health assessments and screenings, chair massages, a free resistance band (while supplies last) and door prizes.

Challenge organizers said release time with supervisory approval is appropriate for the kickoff event.

You’re welcome to participate even if you don’t attend the kickoff. You can sign up online and print a tracking chart, activities calendar and punch card.

Online

UC Davis Mind Body Wellness Challenge

UC Davis Wellness Portal, for staff, faculty and students

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