Travel as Healing–New York Times, December 23, 2021
Wellness vacations and programming at destinations now go far beyond massages and diet advice, instead offering new respites from physical and mental stress. Here’s what to expect in wellness travel in 2022.
Wellness Trends 2022–Well+Good, December 2021
Well+Good, a leading wellness media brand, has announced its predictions for the shifts that will define the wellness world in the year ahead–across the beauty, fitness, food, health, self-care, and home verticals. They include the rise in gender-inclusive personal care, vertical farms sprouting up in communities, employers finally taking mental health seriously, hybrid healthcare models delivering a new human-centered care, and taboos being ripped off menopause–and many more.
How to Care Less About Work–The Atlantic, December 5, 2021
This US-focused article is applicable for all of us as it addresses the fundamental issue of what we want to do and not do with the rest of our lives. Societally, many of us are taught to revere and strive for hard work (a preconception rooted in the industrial mindset), but this is a very opaque goal. Isn’t the purpose of work to be meaningful or innovative? For those who throw themselves into work, the treadmill rarely provides the kind of value and meaning that they hope that it will. With the ongoing impact of the pandemic, there is a growing certitude for many that the status quo of working life is untenable. Covid has created an opportunity to reimagine the structure of our lives and perhaps “remove the vestigial, extractive elements.”
How to Know What You Really Want–Psyche, December 15, 2021
An entrepreneur who is also a philosopher and theologian uses the French critic René Girard’s mimetic theory to explain how we can resist the herd and forge our own path in life, from career choices to new purchases. What we need to know? A desire is very different from a necessity: It is a social process and it is mimetic–people learn to want the same things. Girard inspired Peter Thiel and countless others to break free from the cycle in which they were caught. As always with Psyche, there are practical recommendations. Two that we liked: (1) Beware of becoming obsessively focused on what your neighbors have or want; (2) Map out the systems of desire in your life. And remember to live an anti-mimetic life!
A Striking Stat
Bookings for fitness classes and wellness services were up 10% in 2021 over pre-pandemic levels–and 9 of the top 10 bookings were for in-person classes/appointments, including yoga classes and massages.
