Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The wellness industry is as weird and wild as ever, with more of us looking to alternative ways to stay healthy and improve our wellness. But while wellness tells us to drink the green juice, shouldn't we be questioning what's actually in it?
Welcome to Wellness, Questioned, a deep dive into our love-hate relationship with the weird and wonderful world of wellness, self-development and spirituality. How do you look after yourself in the age of anxiety? How can you tell what to believe and what's bullshit?
Join us, Katie, a yoga teacher and coach, and Annabel, a writer about wellness, as we explore the world of wellness and self-improvement and learn how to do wellness, well.
[00:00:00] Annabel: Welcome to Wellness Questioned, a podcast looking at how to navigate the wellness industry well. Hosted by me, Katie Gordon and Annabel Lee. Each episode we cover a different aspect of wellness and self improvement, looking at ethics, scandals and red flags.
Today we are talking about the history of wellness. I've called it Girlboss, Gaslight, Gatekeep.
[00:00:31] Katie: Great. I love that title.
[00:00:32] Annabel: Because that, I think, encapsulates a lot of wellness. But yeah, I think wellness is such like a nebulous term. It can mean all things to all people. So I thought it would be interesting, we thought it would be interesting to do a bit of context around it and I think having a history of things is always quite useful to come into it, but obviously histories are hard because when a practice is not defined, it's quite hard to define it. But, you know...
[00:01:10] Katie: We'll work with that.
[00:01:10] Annabel: We'll work with that. Now for this episode, I'm using an article from the Global Wellness Institute, which is a US based Institute for Wellness. So I just want to caveat that by saying obviously this source is invested in wellness and it sort of exists to promote wellness. So we can treat some of this with a pinch of salt.
[00:01:37] Katie: Right. May not be super impartial.
[00:01:38] Annabel: May not be super impartial exactly. But I thought this was a very interesting kind of take on wellness. So, shall we start?
[00:01:50] Katie: Where did it all begin?
[00:01:51] Annabel: Well, so, we're going back to 3, 000 BC
[00:02:00] Katie: Okay, right, sure.
[00:02:02] Annabel: So, yeah, I guess kind of if we trace like wellness all the way back, Ayurveda is the kind of on this timeline is pinpointed as the beginning of wellness, which obviously isn't true. But Katie, what do you know about that practice? Do you know...?
[00:02:18] Katie: I know a little bit. I've been to practitioner and yeah, a little bit about it.
[00:02:23] Annabel: It says talks here about, it's being an oral tradition and later recorded in the Vedas, four sacred Hindu texts. That's quite interesting because a lot of wellness obviously is like an oral tradition. So you wouldn't have a master document. It would be obviously come down through different lineages and different teachers and yoga and meditation kind of spilling out of that, I guess. But again, I think there is a need, a want, certainly I know I feel like this and when I was, doing my yoga teacher training, I wanted this defined history of yoga and it all neatly wrapped up in one story and that's just not...
[00:03:05] Katie: It's, yeah, it's difficult to do that because it's so long ago as well, yeah.
[00:03:10] Annabel: And then also we got the Traditional Chinese Medicine, which dates back to about the same time, so about 3000 BC. So Traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM, influenced by Taoism and Buddhism and we see that sort of still, you know, coming through in a lot of the practices that we might use today, acupuncture...
[00:03:32] Katie: Right.
[00:03:34] Annabel: ...tai Chi. So then obviously other people were doing other stuff to try and stay well. The use of the word wellness itself dates back to the 1650s, as defined as being in, being well or in good health.
[00:03:58] Katie: Okay, yeah.
[00:03:59] Annabel: Kind of makes sense. So then in the 1790s, homeopathy was developed by a German physician.
[00:04:08] Katie: Oh, is it German? Oh ok!
[00:04:10] Annabel: Yeah, Christian Heinemann, I've mispronounced that, no doubt.
[00:04:14] Katie: So, my mum used to take me to a homeopath when I was a kid for various things. She was deep into the homeopath thing. I think it, it kind of worked for me. When we were sick, she used to give us some homeopathic remedies.
[00:04:27] Annabel: So like tinctures?
[00:04:30] Katie: I loved like exploring her little bag of tinctures and you get sugar crystals with it in as well. So she had all these like vials and then if something's wrong, she'd look up what she should give us and stuff. I mean, I don't think there's a lot of evidence behind it, but I think it kind of worked, but we'd only ever get it for oh, you've got hay fever or a cold. It was never like...
[00:04:57] Annabel: You've broken your leg.
[00:04:57] Katie: Yeah, right. If it was serious, she was a nurse, so there was also, you know, medical care.
[00:05:04] Annabel: Alongside, yes, yes.
[00:05:07] Katie: But yeah, I sort of grew up on it. Yeah, well, is it cool? I don't know, it's a bit dubious.
[00:05:15] Annabel: I guess the thing, when you're little, actually, what you want is, what I see in my children certainly is when they hurt themselves, they want TLC and they want a plaster or...
[00:05:28] Katie: Calpol.
[00:05:29] Annabel: They want some treatment and actually kind of is that it's kind of that isn't it? It's being cared for and having somebody listen to what's wrong with you and then do something that makes you feel better and actually...
[00:05:45] Katie: Yeah, if the placebo effect works, so whether it's medications working or placebo effect, I mean, obviously there's money exchange, but otherwise does it matter too much?
[00:05:56] Annabel: Yeah and if you've got it at home and you can, you know...
[00:06:01] Katie: Yeah, I loved it. It's like having this little, apothecary at home. It's delightful.
[00:06:05] Annabel: Lovely. Okay, moving on then through our timeline, we're getting, we're accelerating through time, okay, when do you think the first osteopaths came along?
[00:06:18] Katie: I reckon that's probably fairly modern, isn't it? Oh, I don't know...
[00:06:21] Annabel: 1870s apparently. Mary Baker Eddy founded the spiritual healing based Christian science, and Andrew Taylor Still developed Osteopathy.
[00:06:34] Katie: Osteopathy.
[00:06:35] Annabel: Osteopathy, thank you. A holistic approach grounded in manipulating muscles and joints. So...
[00:06:42] Katie: That's the spine cracking stuff, isn't it? It's not chiropractor, but it's...
[00:06:46] Annabel: Yeah, so chiropractic was developed in, or founded, I guess in the 1890s and that's focused on the body structure and functioning, and I think chiropractors focus more on the spine, don't they? And whereas osteopaths work across the whole body?
[00:07:05] Katie: I think an osteopath is more holistic and chiropractor is more spine based. my understanding.
[00:07:11] Annabel: Yeah, that's my understanding.
[00:07:12] Katie: Okay, good!
[00:07:13] Annabel: But it, but interesting that these things are kind of coming up at the sort of towards the end of the 1800s. Okay, YMCA.
[00:07:24] Katie: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Annabel: Let's get into it. They launched, so YMCA, Young Men's Christian Association, so again, some Christian vibes, launched the world's first wellness organisation with the principle of developing mind, body and spirit. So this is like the idea that wellness is kind of used within religions to sort of like I guess like chivvy people along because sort of exercise would promote kind of energy and good mental health. But really interesting, I think, because when I think YMCA, obviously I think about...
[00:07:58] Katie: The song and youth hostels. Is that how it started then? It was a wellness...
[00:08:05] Annabel: Yeah, so I think they had a focus on, you know, like encouraging healthy living and healthy, you know, healthy mind, healthy body, which would kind of, I guess, fit into a Christian ideal and I think then you have this really interesting parallel between like wellness and yeah, like sort of nationalism. There's a great episode of Maintenance Phase, one of our favorite podcasts on the president's physical fitness test.
[00:08:35] Katie: Oh yeah, remember that one.
[00:08:38] Annabel: In America they make kids do this kind of fitness test and the idea that actually sort of wellness and exercise is kind of like on some level preparing people for like military service. So it's very interesting when you think about where wellness has kind of got to, which we think is very like removed from like the state or like very individualistic in terms of I want to run because I want to help my mental health or feel good. But actually, some of the roots are kind of tied into...
[00:09:07] Katie: Yeah, well the same with yoga as well.
[00:09:10] Annabel: Okay, in the 1900s, Kellogg, John Harvey
[00:09:15] Katie: Oh yeah.
[00:09:16] Annabel: Of the cereal fame, wanted to kind of promote the idea of healthy diet, exercise, fresh air and hydrotherapy, okay, weird vibe, but fine. to stay well. and he created, or he was the director of the Battle Creek Michigan Sanatorium, which was basically a kind of wellness complex where people could go and sort of take the air and exercise and eat well to get healthy and that's very interesting, I think, because it obviously just goes to show where we've kind of gone from in terms of he, Kellogg is most famous for like unhealthy breakfast.
[00:09:59] Katie: Well also wasn't he a massive racist as well?
[00:10:04] Annabel: I think problematic character, yes.
[00:10:07] Katie: In many ways. Oh apparently he was really worried about masturbation as well.
[00:10:12] Annabel: Oh, okay.
[00:10:17] Katie: So yeah, not, our finest person that we've looked at ever.
[00:10:23] Annabel: No. So there's a big focus then on kind of using kind of natural sources to encourage the body's ability to heal itself through dietary and lifestyle changes, herbs, massage, joint manipulation and that they're being connected in with like spiritual movements and holistic systems of kind of medicine and this idea that I still think is really prevalent today of balance, I guess or trying to create the optimum environment for your body to heal itself or detoxify itself or you know kind of sort itself out without doing anything...
[00:10:59] Katie: Healing plants, that kind of healing diets, those kinds of things.
[00:11:03] Annabel: Yeah and that goes all the way back to the 1900s. So then coming into the the 20th century.
All kicks off properly,
All kicks off. So wellness then kind of really began to gain momentum from like the eighties, I guess. When I think of like eighties wellness, I think about Jane Jane Fonda lycra, step aerobics, cabbage soup diet.
[00:11:33] Katie: Oh, yeah.
[00:11:34] Annabel: Very American, actually, my impression of, if I think to sort of.
Mr
[00:11:39] Katie: Motivator over here.
[00:11:41] Annabel: Yeah, totally, but kind of exercise, diet, tying in I guess, with kind of like yuppie culture and individualism and you know, get fit so you look good and very focused on like self wellness.
[00:11:58] Katie: And heavily on diet culture as well.
[00:12:00] Annabel: Massively, massive diet culture.
[00:12:04] Katie: Everyone's mum was on the cabbage soup diet.
[00:12:07] Annabel: Special K diet, I remember, a lot. Grapefruit diet.
[00:12:14] Katie: Oh god, the grapefruit diet, yeah.
[00:12:18] Annabel: And a kind of then explosion in like spa industries, so they kind of take yourself off for a kind of restorative break but maybe also...
[00:12:29] Katie: Right, essentially go away and eat vegetables for three days. Yeah.
[00:12:33] Annabel: Exactly. So kind of co creating this kind of environment whereby, yeah, you would be supported in...
[00:12:40] Katie: Crash dieting.
[00:12:42] Annabel: Yeah, basically and then moving into the 21st century, so like turn of the millennium, this article says then that's the tipping point and there's an interesting quote from this article that I'm referencing saying that there was a 60 minute segment on the topic of wellness in 1979 where they said wellness isn't a word you... wellness, there's a word you don't hear every day, but in a story in the New York Times, they noted wellness is, in fact, a word that Americans might hear every day. So I think that's really interesting that wellness culture has now become like so ubiquitous with sort of modern life that we, you know, everything is wellness. Everything could be wellness, how you eat, how you sleep, how you move your body, how you like work.
[00:13:31] Katie: Yeah.
[00:13:32] Annabel: How you deal with your thoughts. It's everything.
[00:13:35] Katie: Is wellness and optimisation?
[00:13:38] Annabel: Totally yeah and what I think is very interesting, looking at this, a lot of the comment around the history of wellness comes from a US stance, I guess, because I think generally, it's accepted that America is kind of the, I don't know, the biggest kind of wellness economy. Yeah. I think, according to some stats I saw, the UK is the fifth biggest...
[00:14:04] Katie: Oh, really? Okay.
[00:14:06] Annabel: But it all depends on how you classify wellness and what you put in that bracket, right? But what I thought was very interesting, kind of doing some reading on this, is how wellness ties in with healthcare and obviously the different healthcare systems in America versus obviously in the UK, we have the NHS, but I think it's interesting looking at how a lot of wellness history is about helping yourself try to kind of avoid having to use healthcare and I think as we, you know, maybe as healthcare changes and it's interesting looking at the trajectory of wellness and how I think what I observe looking at trends from a kind of micro level, it's quite often a tremble start in the States and then it will come over here and I think that it's a similar trajectory for the sector overall because as the healthcare, as healthcare gets harder to access here our National Health system becomes harder to access here, with more private health care. The wellness industry itself, soaks up some of that space because people want to try and...
[00:15:20] Katie: Yeah.
[00:15:21] Annabel: ....keep themselves well and healthy and be like, not needing...
[00:15:25] Katie: Yeah and may even become more integrated within the NHS if hopefully we get to keep it, that things won't become part of the NHS, which can be both positive and maybe not so positive as well, depending on what treatments are included and what access is like and who gets to access these services and how well these services are regulated. I see that sort of happening, beginning to happen now.
[00:15:53] Annabel: I've had some interesting conversations with doctors, medical doctors when I've been writing stories, and a lot of them really echo that and really want that and kind of look at like holistic practices and wellness practices and think, oh, this would be amazing because you know, actually if we could, I don't know, socially prescribe this thing before somebody gets kind of down the line.
[00:16:14] Katie: There be so much value, yeah.
[00:16:16] Annabel: It could, really help, but it is that like integration and that's obviously you know, really tricky to do and you bring it in? And if something doesn't have lots of evidence, but yeah, hopefully it's, you know, that makes a lot of sense if it can be done well. So then, coming into sort of modern wellness, if we can call it that and I think there has to be like a conversation about social media, Instagram, TikTok.
[00:16:46] Katie: Sure.
[00:16:48] Annabel: Wellness trends, how, you know, what I think, like the wellness girlies, the wellness journeys that people are on now, kind of, I think, you know, a lot of stuff that maybe we didn't want to or we weren't able to like societally talk about maybe 10- 20 years ago now there is like a big kind of openness and like the idea of authenticity being like such a important quality for people to have online. So then you've got, you know, a lot of people sharing quite honestly about things that they might not have shared about before, people really keen to share their journeys, people wanting to maybe go into setting up their own micro wellness business themselves.
[00:17:34] Katie: Well that's the thing, as soon as you start, as soon as authenticity becomes popular, then it becomes monetised, isn't it? And then it becomes less authentic because people are like, I have to be authentic in order to sell something and then it's like manufactured authenticity and I think that happens so much in the wellness sphere.
[00:17:51] Annabel: Yes. So then it's is this person really honestly sharing their struggles or is it a marketing technique? And that now I think we're in this like hyper aware because we all, a lot of people know that coming to it. So you're in this sort of hyper, super overanalysing space where it is really hard to, I think, yeah, really kind of see what, is true and what is not true. Obviously COVID had a massive impact on the wellness industry. I think what was interesting looking at it is sort of from an industry perspective was that when COVID happened, a lot of wellness businesses were like quite heavily impacted. I mean, like you've got first hand experience of this running a yoga studio and I know for sort of people who did beauty treatments or like manual therapies, a lot of those kind of had to go for a while because it was so kind of face to face and there was like not a huge amount of support and legislation behind like supporting those businesses. So obviously then a lot of things moved online. I think that's really ramped up that kind of the online focus that a lot of wellness now. seems to be taking, I think it would have got there, but I think that's really been pushed online and now I feel like we're just in this era of this kind of post, post modern wellness era now, I think. It is, there's such an understanding of kind of a lot of the toxicity of wellness, that there is not all this, love and light and...
[00:19:35] Katie: Yeah.
[00:19:36] Annabel: ...you know, this is a massive industry and it has, you know, it can have detrimental effects on people, on the planet, on other people. So I think yeah, now I think we are in this, I don't know, I still think there's a massive need and a desire that people want wellness and they want all this stuff and they want to access it. But with this knowledge, so I guess it is this like cognitive dissonance that a lot of people now have with wellness, which is, you know, exactly why we do this podcast, because it's like, it could be great, but we also recognise...
[00:20:11] Katie: Yeah, I think you can argue for and against regulation depending on lots of variables, but I think part of the reason why it's so wild is that it's the lack of regulation and that also makes it so ripe for cult dynamics and exploitation and things that we've talked about and I think that makes it really tricky to work out who is genuinely authentic? Who is selling you stuff? You know, all businesses are selling something. So we all have to sell, but how do you do it in a way that is honest and straightforward? And then how do you spot where it's just all, it's all fake or they're trying to manipulate you and you know, you can go down an even darker path than that.
[00:21:00] Annabel: Yeah, because the whole history is so hard to grasp, like it's so convoluted. So it's hard to not like it's hard to know Oh, who is regulating this thing? Who is regulating this thing? Is this like an appropriate way for a, I don't know, like pilates teacher to, be running a... like there's no, it's not, and there's so many other now I think wellness either classes or treatments or services that straddle so many things. So you might have you know, this is a bad example, but like a yoga lattes class, you know, which is doing both. So it's so, but what actually is like a normal wave or what is a standard thing? Because I think if there's not a... Which is kind of the beauty and it's a double edged sword, isn't it? Because it could be, it can be great because it can mean people can come to things they can pick and choose the practices and the modalities that they work with and what they offer people, but it means there's no like benchmark or understanding for okay, what is actually okay in this context? It like, is it okay if someone's given me physical adjustments without my permission? Is it okay if I'm being told to push my comfort zone, even though something feels weird to me? Because you don't know.
[00:22:26] Katie: I think there's if you go to a yoga, breathwork, ice bath event, which is hot right now, right? Everyone wants a bit of Wim Hof. There's this idea that breathwork is Panayama rebranded, right, and then you've got another people who can sell trainings without any knowledge about the roots of many of these practices and breathwork is now the cool term where Panayama is seen as something maybe a bit more spiritual and it's kind of legitimised it in a way because it sounds modern, it sounds studied, there's been books written about breath, and it, kind of sounds like, okay this is the newest iteration, but actually it's, a lot of it is the same thing, just with a different name and who is teaching these practices and is the same person teaching the yoga, as the breathwork, as the ice bath because they're all very different practices and take different levels of skill and experience and education.
[00:23:33] Annabel: Yeah and because I think the term breathwork allows probably like white practitioners to not have to think about appropration.
[00:23:44] Katie: They don't have to worry about it, yeah.
[00:23:46] Annabel: They just think this is not, I'm not culturally appropriating this, you know, even though, like you said, probably they are on some level and they need to just reckon with that because it's kind of whitewashed it or You know, kind of westernised a practice. I saw a breathwork class being taught at a festival and it was very interesting to watch the, yeah, the dynamics of what was happening and I think that people kind of want to go into these things and be kind of open to new experiences and perhaps there's kind of, yeah, it's just, I think there's some kind of dangerous dynamics and...
[00:24:30] Katie: Totally. I was at a gym recently where breathwork was practiced after the session and then, and I was, I don't know if this person's qualified or not, but I don't feel like it was taught in a way that was like, trauma informed or particularly, careful and breathwork can be really powerful for some people. I'm just like, is this, is kind of not okay, but there's nothing to say that it's not okay and a lot of people would think that I'm super uptight for saying that I don't think it's ok. It's really tricky to navigate around what is and isn't okay and who can deliver and practice what things. I think particularly because yoga and pranayama are seen as a little bit airy fairy, a little bit like, if you're outside the world, you don't understand the complexities of it. So it's just well, it's just a bunch of movements and a bit of breathing, anyone can teach that, but that is not the case.
[00:25:30] Annabel: Yeah, cause I think I keep getting lots of videos on Instagram of people doing, I don't know exactly what the therapy is, but it's almost like Reiki, looks like Reiki where they sort of waving their fingers over people's bodies and say that they're kind of like tuning into their frequencies and people having like quite strong physical reactions.
[00:25:55] Katie: I guess that makes good Instagram content, doesn't it?
[00:25:57] Annabel: It does because it looks almost like an exorcism and so you have, you know, often it's a man over like a woman lying like prone on a bed and this woman and it's just, and lots of people raving about it and I mean, I've never done that, so I don't know what that experience is like. But I think because sometimes people might go into that experience really wanting to have a catharsis or one and I think the same for breath work and but maybe you know there's a risk that you've just actually taught someone how to hyperventilate and the reason they're having a reaction is because literally they're having a physical reaction to the fact that they've just hyperventilated and whilst you've said some empowering phrases around them so I think it's like people are in a vulnerable state and wanting to have some kind of experience.
[00:26:53] Katie: Well, I think that's exactly what wellness capitalizes on is most people are trying to get better or feel better and so they're vulnerable to being told that something's going to make them feel better and being vulnerable means that you're sort of ripe for exploitation in greater or lesser degrees.
[00:27:10] Annabel: Yeah, totally. So I guess, the history of wellness, has it taught us anything, I guess? That people, it's like a universal human instinct to want to be well and it has been historically and it will continue to be in the future, that we want to optimise ourselves, we want to look after ourselves and it's just, I think, changing ways of doing it, building on like the historical things that people have done before, finding ways to make them work in modern settings. But probably there was still some, a lot of these issues back in the day.
[00:27:54] Katie: I mean yeah, its probably gone on forever and just heightened by Instagram and, you know, ten ways to...
[00:28:03] Annabel: Hyperventilate.
[00:28:04] Katie: Ten ways to hyperventilate. Box breath, which is everywhere, it's like, well, yeah, there are, I don't know, box breath is fine, but I feel like using these practices as like a one size fits all, copy me on Instagram, is not really an appropriate way to teach them.
[00:28:25] Annabel: Totally because that is so, it's easy to do an Instagram post...
[00:28:30] Katie: Anyone can teach box breath on Instagram, like that's not hard, anyone can do it, literally anyone. But to do it well is much more complicated and nuanced and depends on who you're teaching.
[00:28:44] Annabel: Yeah. So I guess as more stuff comes along, the thing is to go understand the treatment, understand all the practice, understand how that could help you and go deep, like rather than going broad. So knowing a teeny, you know, I could do like one Tai Chi move and one, I can do the Pilates hundred and the box breath, like actually, probably if you really want to get the benefits from a practice, you need to, you know, you need to do more than a eight minute...
[00:29:17] Katie: I think for practitioners as well is like a really vital thing is like understanding that the effect that a practice has on you or even like some of your clients, it's absolutely not the effect that it has on everyone. So there should be some degree of caution with whatever you teach that it's not like this breath does that. It doesn't work like that.
[00:29:39] Annabel: Totally.
[00:29:41] Katie: That's easy for Instagram, but it's absolutely not how things work. So what's your takeaway from the history of wellness?
[00:29:49] Annabel: I guess for me, it's that we can look, it's useful, I think, to look to the past and look at what has come before and look at what the fact that wellness isn't this kind of all this kind of like bougie Valencia filtered kind of, you know, Green juice and Lululemon yoga pants. Like, it's like an intrinsic part of the human condition in a way, and everyone's doing it in some shape or form and that the industry is going to continue to change and evolve and move with the times and it's just part of, I guess, like being in this world at this point in time that it's xjust, it's part of our culture. I think it is an everyday term, certainly in my life. So yeah, I think understanding a bit more about the past can help us like figure it out now a bit.
[00:30:49] Katie: I think it's interesting to think of it as being something that has been going on for thousands of years. We think of it as a modern phenomenon, but it's been around for a very long time in different forms, and I think right now and I wonder if this is the same in the past as well, that it is so much a part of our lives that you can't separate it out almost, like from the vitamins we take, the exercise we do, the way we work, the way we interact with people even, socialise, speak to other people, that's all been monetised and kind of inserted into this category of wellness of parenting a certain way, taking a certain amount of exercise, eating a certain kind of food, reading a certain kind of book, all contribute to your wellness or your not wellness and so it's still the case, like when I was a kid, Oh, you don't watch too much TV cause you'll get square eyes, whatever that means and now it's Oh, it's still more valuable to watch and to read a book than it is to watch TV and what is that really about? And is that really true? Is also applicable to like the field of wellness of you have to do a certain kind of exercise or practice to be well. But are there, are these things actually contributing to your life in a positive way or is it just like more pressure, more money, more to do?
[00:32:20] Annabel: Yeah, totally. Like we need to neutralise it, you just, we need like a well...
[00:32:26] Katie: Wellness light. Yeah.
[00:32:28] Annabel: Well, yeah, wellness light. Well, just yeah. Yeah, well enough will do.
[00:32:34] Katie: Yeah, I mean I am drinking a bottle of water with green powder in it so, know, hashtag wellness!
[00:32:47] Annabel: Enjoy!