Puzzling Through Our Eternal Quest for Wellness

The term wellness encompasses an extensive range of activities, such as juice cleansing, meditation, napping, drinking charcoal water, citrus diets, ketosis, halotherapy, talk therapy, avoiding blue light, the Alexander Technique, and forest bathing.

The wellness industry is worth about $4.5 trillion and is growing at 6.4 percent a year.

The desire for alternative forms of wellbeing is not new. It may even feel necessary. Many of the wellness trends come from indigenous practices. Wellness tourism is not new either. In the early twentieth century, tubercular patients travelled to the desert of New Mexico to breathe the thin, dry air.

But what makes modern wellness different is its relentless focus on the self as the base for all improvement.