writing-for-the

[writing-for-the]

Wellness VS The Wellness Industry

Wellness as a marketing concept has had me fully entranced at many points in my life, traversing the mall or scrolling online for self help gurus. Over time I have noticed the root concept of wellness - to be well - is often lost in the message of buying from sources of purported healing.

I recognized that throughout my learning in college, I tended to keep course content at a distance - but sometimes things struck chords within me. I found that to be the case on many occasions within the wellness course I took. Initially I, being a student focused on STEM, took the course with little intention of gathering anything aside from a grade to supplement my GPA.

A theme of the course material was a concept of balance. An instance of this was when people sought to improve their psychological “balance” by spending money on something that would make them happy, which would in turn disrupt their financial balance. The chord struck within me was deafening.

I began to face my relationship with the wellness industry head on. Could lavender oil truly heal the compounding stress of functioning in today's society? Was I no different than other women, who instead of purchasing sound bowls, shopped on Shein on an “off” day for a stress relief obviously fixed on aestheticism and self image?

As we examine the social impacts of each industry we begin to recognize two glaring overlaps, first being a disingenuous facade paraded to build an image for their customers, and the second being a contribution to the unwell state of our civilization, and earth at large, as a result of today’s late stage capitalism and consumerism.

We, in our spending, are so often motivated by appearances, especially at the higher income brackets. Moving to Arlington, Virginia from a factory city in the suburbs of Toronto, I became faced with the importance of maintaining a figure both physically and socially.

You are condemned, not necessarily to a blatant ridicule, but to a loss of opportunity if you are deemed unsatisfactory in terms of stature and observable reputation, among other things. The streets are overrun by fitness centers, and everyone is beautifully maintained in their athleisure. Your reputation is very much reminiscent of the 50’s in so far as you are to avoid emotion let alone the outward expression of it.

Thus the proliferation of western yogic practices occurs as people in droves perceive themselves and their humanity as a project to refine, not a physical and spiritual experience. The depth to which we hold our Eastern inspired beliefs is surface level, to seek the en vogue definition of someone who has it all together - happiness as a constant state and not a tide of emotion like any other, and on a personal level, peace as a reprieve from the stress of not only corporate life but the conditions of existing in the 21st century such as coronavirus, climate change, and cultural tension.

The implications of this movement that spring forth are concerning. The image to uphold is one that is found in the tourists and socialites of Tulum to Sedona, where we are reaching a new level of distressed jeans to rear the face of frayed linens. The cost to you for outwardly expressing your spiritual awareness is enormous when juxtaposed against the earnings of those who risk their lives mining your healing crystals or the sweatshop workers who produce your olive yoga pants. It becomes apparent that the wellness industry is not synonymous with wellness.

We, in our participation in this movement, are doing no favors to ourselves or the world around us as we entrench even deeper into the driver of our civilization - a self focused ideology - evident through the buzzword of “self care”. It is prevailing because it is rewarded, to be empathetic is not synonymous with being successful. If we were to uphold the cornerstones of these religions and spiritualities which we draw upon, namely compassion, community, and balance, would we behave as we do in relation to all those whose labor is exploited to maintain our manicured image and complex rituals? Are we blind to the contribution of our cultural practices to the very issues we seek escapism from?

So who really benefits from this new age, of the new age? While we can argue there is a lack of depth comparable to the sincere, hyper focused nature of monks or nuns, the depth or reasoning is in the desire to address our sense of insecurity within the self, and provide others with the image that we are secure - a must-have in the lands of reputation and first-impression. We unfortunately carry the postmodern philosophical belief of the self as fluid, but only meeting this concept at the halfway point of the self being moldable enough that the self is the primary force behind change, and not perhaps the corporations and figures who possess a great deal of psychological marketing tactics at their disposal.