What in the Wellness?!
What’s your morning routine? Are you in the 5am club? The brunch club? The run club? Icing your pimples and pumping iron, you take photos of a raw t-bone- “as nature intended”- whilst early man scratches his head and puts out his coveted fire. Slick back buns and flat tums and almond yummy mummies sporting £300 leggings to circuit the concrete. How many steps to your skincare? A weekend without exfoliating is a waking nightmare. Silk on silk, you climb into bed with sticky skin like a newborn returning to the womb. Wellness culture today has become a full-time job- one that’s costly, exhausting, and often performative. But what if wellness doesn’t mean sea moss and girl bossing your way through a five-to-nine before your nine-to-five? What if wellness means simply…being well?
As with many things, social media’s megaphone amplifies the cackle of wellness culture. Open any app and you’re instructed to eat this, buy that, slather something on and biohack it all. According to stats from the Global Wellness Institute, the wellness economy worldwide reached a peak in 2023 as it amassed an eye-watering $6.3 trillion- 6.03% of global GDP(1). These figures indicate that the trends we consume with commitment are as lucrative as they are hollow, and yet, for a while, I was gobbling it up ravenously. The breathing techniques left me dizzy, the vegan diet left me weak, and my intuition had been hushed under the perky shouting of influencers. Beneath the guise of health, I was chasing perfection. I wasn’t nurturing—I was controlling.
This is by no means a new phenomenon. Wellness influencers of Instagram inherit a long lineage of white-teethed sirens sucking us into the swirl of personal enhancement. Humans, it seems, have a hardwired desire for betterment. Each generation has its own mutation of ‘health’ fads that punish more than they heal, but social media can make it feel inescapable. You’re tired? Get up earlier. Stressed? Add more steps to your ‘wind-down’. Unhappy with how you look? There’s a juice for that. More, more, more. Despite it all, however, there is an unchanging constant: life. Terrifyingly, the likelihood of growing old remains untouched by botox. No pill will perfect your resilience, and no goo makes grief go away. Like an angry monkey life throws its poo at you regardless, and the real hack, the one that serves us in the long run, is accepting things as they are.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad. Kiwis are full of antioxidants, cold water therapy is tried and tested, and we could never doubt the runner’s high. I do yoga every day- at its core, this ancient practice is the OG of wellness, and has stuck around for a reason. And yes, you probably should wash your face. But I also stopped doing things because the internet told me to. Start asking: does this actually make me feel better, or is it a method of control? Once you loosen the reins of your habits, finding calm in chaos becomes a little easier. Do what works for you.
Wellness isn’t about proving you’re thriving; it’s about easing the instability of life, and tending to the body’s genuine needs. It’s letting go of routines that don’t serve you, and resting when you need to. It’s trusting yourself, not the next influencer with a link in bio.
Because real wellness? It’s not a checklist. Wellness means being well.
Cover: ‘The Bath’ by Pierre Bonnard, 1925.
(1) https://globalwellnessinstitute.org/press-room/statistics-and-facts/