Rina Raphael

Oh, I mean, it is an increasingly ambiguous term.

It really was meant to be everything the pharmaceutical and health industry doesn't touch.

And generally things that you could tend to yourself, like fitness, nutrition, relaxation techniques, but increasingly it's starting to mean things like beauty.

or spirituality.

It can kind of mean anything.

And the problem with that is that whenever something starts to mean anything, it can kind of mean nothing.

It has since sort of disintegrated into more of a consumerist term than anything these days, which is why now when you say the term wellness, people automatically think of things like CBD leggings and like face masks and bubble baths.

Glad to be here.

There is almost a secular salvation of like, I will make myself fit.

I will make myself well.

I will make sure that I have all these incredible values about tending to myself.

Actually, the Peloton founder in 2017, he gave a big conference speech where he talked about the fact that organized religion was on the wane and he had the answer.

And so, you know, I make the argument that wellness acts like a deconstructed religion.

It's like a regulated framework instructing us how to live our lives.

You know, it dangles this hope or almost this salvation, this idea that if you work out enough, you eat right, you meditate, you'll feel good and manage whatever feels threatening in our lives, right?

It offers this illusion of control, right?

And the thing is, especially when it comes to sort of gyms, we end up sort of fetishizing our health and I'd say worshiping the self or the body.

And the thing is, it's a false certainty because you will age.

Bodies are unpredictable, famously unpredictable.

Yeah, I think sometimes how we sort of treat health and wellness in an almost kind of religious way has its drawbacks.