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It’s no surprise technology goes hand-in-hand with most everything in Japan and that includes wellness. Wellness apps, such as yoga and meditation apps, are highly recommended adjuncts to a guest’s wellness program in Japan. And, in anticipation of hosting the 2020 Olympics, has put a sharper focus on wellness tourism, including the country’s extensive hot springs and forests, where stress-relieving forest therapy is growing in popularity.

Literally and metaphorically, a light went on for me last week. I had the privilege of attending an event hosted by Lighting Science, a company devoted to marshaling light to work with our bodies, not against them. Fred Masik, the company founder, Dr. Michael Bruce, a sleep expert, and Dr. Smith Johnston, a flight surgeon working with NASA, presented on the panel.

Recent Global Wellness Institute (GWI) research found the global spa industry grew from a $60 billion market to a $94 billion market between 2007-2013. And big growth, of course, means way more employees needed. This same research also found if the worldwide spa industry employed 1.9 million people in 2013, a projected 2.7 million people will be needed in 2018—or 42 percent growth across those five years.

See which global regions will create the most new spa jobs through 2018—and just how many trained spa therapists and experienced spa managers/directors will be (desperately) needed.

Economist Thierry Malleret has often analyzed the connection between a world marked by rapid-fire, confusing change, leading to a “mounting sense of uneasiness,” and the surge in the wellness industry. Because when there’s much economic and social adversity, many people strive even harder to live a more fulfilling, meaningful life.

This week he looks at that trend hitting “reverse” in the U.S.: explaining how the number of Americans (a staggering 28 percent of the population) report they were “totally sedentary” in the last year—the highest number recorded in 24 years.

So, if the wellness trend overall is being ignited by global fragility, it’s apparently not a trend embraced by all.

Why is it that we desire things but don’t always enjoy them when we get them? In this longish (but pleasant to read) article, an explanation based on neuroscience is offered. Desire and pleasure are separate chemical systems in the brain. Dopamine is linked with desire, while opioids and endo­cannabinoids correlate with pleasure. The dopamine system is “vast and powerful”; the pleasure system is “anatomically tiny, has a far more fragile structure and is harder to trigger.”

The Global Wellness Institute (GWI) is joining hundreds of companies worldwide in “Saying Yes!” to Global Wellness Day (GWD), a one-day event celebrating health and wellbeing and taking place this June 13. The idea is to increase global consciousness of living a better life, even if for one day.

We would like to encourage you to spread the word by supporting proactive wellness among your customers and employees. To help, we have put together a press release you can use as a template to send out to local media telling them just what you’re “saying yes” to this GWD.