Global Wellness Institute

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.

Exactly two months from today the first “Global Wellness Day” will be celebrated worldwide (June 13). The buzzed-about brainchild of Belgin Aksoy, founder of Richmond Nua, Turkey’s first destination spa, Global Wellness Day is to make us aware of the value of our lives: to make us stop and think, get away from the stress of city living and our bad habits, and find peace with ourselves.

The third edition of the World Happiness Report just came out, research which uses six variables to identify the differing levels of happiness in countries around the world. And economist Thierry Malleret explains that while money and health are keys to happiness, factors like “social support” and “generosity”—and the fact that people are happier when they’re socially fulfilled as members of a group—that make Mexico (less wealthy and institutionally strong) a happier place than the richer U.S. Read which are the happiest countries and why.