Chapter 1: What is the definition of wellness?
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OK, I want to define some terms first. Wellness. It's a big word. It's a big word. And it describes a huge number of different practices. And it's a term that seems like it's getting broader and broader in definition all the time. So my first question is, What even is wellness?
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.
Chapter 2: How has wellness become a consumerist term?
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.
I'm sorry, who's thinking of CBD leggings? I've never heard of those before.
Yeah.
Gotta get some, Brittany. They're all the rage. I'm not on the right email list service. I tell y'all what. Today, we're getting into wellness. It's a global industry worth $6 trillion that's starting to encompass all kinds of things, including spirituality. From the spirituality of wellness practices like yoga and Reiki to treating wellness itself like a religion.
I want to know, what do people get out of a wellness-based spirituality? And is it a spirituality of the self? I sat down with Alyssa Bereznack, wellness editor for the LA Times. Thank you so much. And Rina Raphael, author of the book, The Gospel of Wellness, Jim's Guru's Goop and the False Promise of Self-Care.
Glad to be here.
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Chapter 3: What role does spirituality play in wellness practices?
I'm not saying everyone should join an organized religion. But there are some drawbacks to a bit of these what I call sometimes self-serving spiritualities. in the sense that they're more inward facing than outward facing. And so they don't necessarily have more communal properties. They don't teach as much about responsibility or community outreach or taking care of each other.
They're really much more inward focused and really about the self. And that's also because Americans are choosing more and more spiritual practices based on their feelings.
Wait, what does that mean? That's interesting. I hadn't heard that phrasing before. Americans are choosing more spiritual practices based on their feelings?
Yes, because a lot of these sort of spiritual alternatives are more about how you feel, about self-soothing, about comforting. Take manifestation. That's a perfect example. This idea that you put good vibes out into the universe and work really hard and you can gather all the abundance that is sort of promised to you, that's really, really comforting to people.
Chapter 4: What do people seek from wellness-based spirituality?
But again, what I'm hearing is that these, as you said, self-serving kinds of spiritualities are often more internally and personally focused and less externally and community focused. What do you think about that, Alyssa?
Our previous Surgeon General in his departing message said, like gave a prescription to America and said, we need more community. Sort of focusing on those individualistic aspects of wellness, like is my body functioning well? Am I fit? Have I meditated today? Like all of these questions individually do not solve this larger problem of community. Like there is a capitalist motive involved.
in sound baths or yoga or selling a spiritual card deck or a crystal. Like ultimately, that's what you're investing in. You're investing in the companies or the organizations that sell these things as opposed to donating at church on a Sunday. And that money goes back into a community to sort of support the community.
Yeah, there are traditions of giving to the needy or supporting community programs connected to worship in religions like Christianity and Islam.
Yeah. What I think is so strange is that instead of banding together and demanding systemic solutions for maybe why we don't feel so good or why we feel unhealthy or even seeking communal support, we often retreat to the self, you know, the self-soothing, self-optimization or self-pampering of wellness. You know, we... clutch our healing crystals, we ride our Pelotons, we take our bubble baths.
You know, me, myself, and my credit card are the answer. And then we wonder why America is so lonely.
Are businesses doing a good job of filling the void that, say, a church may have filled in the past?
I mean, businesses aren't set up to let people come when they fall in hard times. Organized religion has sort of figured out a way to really help people who have sort of lost their jobs or fallen on hard times. Or even if you think about, let's say, communal rights. If you don't have an organized, let's say, community and you have something like a death in the family.
your gym isn't going to organize the funeral and necessarily be there for you. In some instances, there are rare cases of that, but it's really sort of not the norm. So that's the thing. I think sometimes we need to figure out how to actually replicate what we have given up because we haven't really found that substitute yet.
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