Health and Wellness or Wealth and Hellness?

In January, I broke up with the wellness space. I stopped teaching yoga and I unfollowed all the wellness influencers that I once was inspired by. I had only planned it to be a month off to heal an injury and give myself some space to come back to it fresh. But I couldn’t stomach the ick of it. 

I came up with every reason under the sun when people asked me why I wasn’t teaching a practice that I absolutely loved so much. A practice that healed me. A practice that gave me a sense of purpose, that calmed my mind and healed my soul. 

“What happened?” 
“We miss your classes!”
“When will you be back?”

I didn’t know. 

I became so disgusted with the wellness space that I couldn’t even bear to step foot in a studio, let alone look at my instagram. 

The social media aspect of the overarching cultural appropriation of yoga has ripped this ancient practice so far from its roots and made a mockery of its traditions. 

But it goes beyond just yoga. The consumer-driven space has taken the very basics of what it means to be healthy, and put a price tag on every part of it. And if you don’t meet these new standards…you're nobody.

You can’t just have water, you have to add electrolytes and minerals to it. 
You can’t just eat clean protein, you have to add it to your $22 smoothie.
It’s not acceptable to wear whatever you feel comfortable working out in, it has to be a trendy, matching set.
It’s not enough that you worked out today, you also have to cold plunge and sauna or it doesn’t count.
Supplements.
Mouth tape.
Massage.
Dry brushing.
Guasha.
Raw milk.
Organic everything.
Now go to the south of France for the summer and hire a photographer to capture everything all while making an absurd amount of money to fund this lifestyle. 

ARE WE OK? No, we’re not. After all that, how is there any time or money left over for anything else? And we wonder why millennials are in debt.

We are tricked into this narrative by watching “wealthy” people of influence show us products we “need”  to be healthy, when in reality, they have been given these products for free, they’re being paid to talk about them, and the consumer is left to think, “if I buy that, I’ll look like her,” or “he uses it, it must be good!”

This is Wealth and Hellness. 

Our society has raised the bar of “health” to an unattainable standard that feels impossible to reach, so we bankrupt ourselves trying, feel terrible about ourselves for not achieving this standard, meltdown, and ultimately give up. Leaving us broke, stressed, over caffeinating, eating like shit, and way worse off than we started.

We have absolutely lost sight of the true building blocks of what sustains a healthy lifestyle, and we need to come back to reality. The only thing this has done is empty our bank accounts and put us all on anti-anxiety meds.

Health and wellness is not achieved by what you buy.

Health and wellness is the basics: water, clean and nutrient rich foods, sunlight, movement, mental health practices, good sleep, and a sense of community. 

Anything beyond this is influencer culture convincing you that you need something outside of yourself to be enough. And it’s just not true. 

When did cold plunging in a $200 matching set become the barometer for being “healthy?”

Respectfully, fuck right off. 

And this is not me shaming anyone that’s fallen for it, they got me too. I bought the sets. The supplements. The powders. And I felt ashamed when I couldn’t afford the rest of it. I deemed myself inadequate because I couldn’t reach an unattainable level of what I now know to be white washed influencer wellness core. And it’s all by design.

I had to step away for a little to reassess and realign, and to really understand what was happening to myself and so many other people like me.

After a good 7 months of separating myself from all wellness practices, I began to realize that while space and reevaluation can be a good thing, I needed to get back to some sort of wellness routine. So I went back to my first in-studio yoga class last week.

I was so ready. Depriving myself of a movement practice that helps me so much just because I felt guilty and disgusted by things that are out of my control seems silly now. It felt so good getting back into the studio with a renewed sense of clarity on what health and wellness really is and how to approach it.

Many of the fundamentals of a healthy lifestyle are free. And I think it’s important that we come back to basics and take the pressure off ourselves. Health looks different for everyone, but keeping it simple is the quickest and easiest way to achieve it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

What are some of your favorite free wellness practices?

If topics like this pique your interest, you might want to read my recent piece:

Exploring Underconsumption >>