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HAS WELLNESS CHANGED THE WORLD?
INTRODUCTION
Global Wellness Institute's (GWI) ceaseless exaggerations about the impact of wellness, based entirely upon egregious misrepresentations of what wellness is and what it encompasses, continue unabated. With nearly each report by its research arm, the claims grow more preposterous. Citing one of these self-promotional reports, a GWI blog at year's end offered insights that GWI leaders use to proclaim wellness has positively changed the world. (See: Six Ways The Wellness Movement Has Positively Changed The World, Global Wellness Institute, December 28, 2022.)
As a full-time promoter and advocate of the wellness concept since 1973, I'd love to think that wellness has changed the world in positive way, and that this life enrichment lifestyle and mindset described in my books and lectures, and by many others during the advent of the wellness movement, had at least a small role in this changing of the world in positive ways. Quite frankly, I'd like to think life forms beyond our world, in several exoplanets throughout the Milky Way galaxy, are also benefiting from the principles and recommendations in my 1977 Rodale book, High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease. But, these nocturnal emission-worthy dreams, as well as similar conscious wishes, are not evidence for such claims--and I know better than to take any of it seriously.
Claims, modest and especially extraordinary, are valueless absent objective replication and science-based validation. Such is the case with the GWI's most recent boasts asserting that their version of wellness has changed any world, especially ours with eight billion inhabitants. Most earthlings are not doing so well, wellness-wise. Figuratively speaking, wellness is not much closer for the masses than is the moon.
There is not much of anything humans can do in a positive way to change the world in a decade or so (GWI's lifespan). Unfortunately, humans have shown they have ample capacity to change the world in distinctly negative ways, such as by climate change, thermonuclear explosions, biological warfare, global pandemics, and other terminal calamities.
THE LATEST GWI BOASTS
In typical over-exuberant bombast, GWI asserts an explosion of wellness into a multi-trillion-dollar economy. Mention is made in the latest promotion of a wellness-industrial complex; its blog seems to express regret that there are critics who complain about and attack celebrity influencers for peddling snake oil and false promises without any scientific evidence.
Shouldn't we celebrate critics who do that?
Readers with a sense of humor should get a big guffaw over that statement, since this is exactly what GWI has been doing for years. Surprisingly, GWI acknowledges that these criticisms can be well-warranted. Indeed they are.
The blog denies that their humongous global wellness economy claims are rooted in selling things or making money. Huh? That's the only way the organization's exaggerators could get to a claim of $4.4 trillion.
GWI supports the changing the world declaration with a short list of six ways the wellness movement has positively changed the world over the last decade. Wow--imagine that--changing the world six ways in one decade--all for the better. Seems almost as believable as a global wellness economy of $4.4 billion. (See RWR # 847 for a critique of this claim.)
I'll comment on a couple of the six ways.
The first way declares that wellness was coupled with holistic health, thus rendering the movement multidimensional and interconnected. No discussion of what this means, or evidence of how, whatever it means, makes a positive change in the world. None. No discussion, data or other justification as to how these claims are different from what existed before wellness was introduced, except to suggest, as if this were not obvious, that exercise has mental and social benefits.
I think everyone on earth who ever heard the word knew that.
If that seems pretty weak, wait till you read how wellness is defined.
The second way GWI claims wellness has changed the world seems related to the fact that it has merged the concept with traditional modalities for prevention and self-care. GWI has indeed done this, but it's a serious error and has had a strong negative effect. It has obliterated the original meaning of wellness that made clear it was something individuals do over time with disciplined habitual practices and effective decision-making. The GWI interpretation of wellness as everything that can even remotely be linked to health, medical care or prevention has done for the wellness concept what Putin has done for Ukraine. That is, annexed the territory or nature of what wellness was (and should remain), into what it seeks to include within its much expanded business empire.
UNDERSTANDING THE GENUINE NATURE OF WELLNESS
A reminder is in order: wellness is not about medicine in any way. It was founded by Dr. Halbert Dunn as separate from the medical model. With GWI, wellness is everything from herbal supplements, plant-based medicines, spirituality--(whatever that means), psychedelics and so on. To give these modalities cred, GWI adds, looking to nature for healing, as people did in ancient times.
That something is worthwhile or that it works and deserves respect because it was done in ancient times is a logical fallacy of antiquity, or authority. Radioactive tonics, bloodletting, purging, and cathartics were honored and unquestioned remedies for centuries, but any doctor who employed such treatments today would be sued. Throwing in a reference to ancient times should not impress anybody.
GWI states that modalities or treatments and services considered fringe or woo woo in Westernized societies are now embraced and mainstreamed by the wellness movement. Not really. While some practitioners use such unproven methods in order to do business with those willing to take their chances with the holistic types, most people seek scientific medicine. The best form of medicine is the kind that works, the kind that has been rigorously tested and found to be effective. While some will pay for complementary medicine, folk medicine, natural medicine, faith healing, or plain unconventional or unorthodox medicine, none of it is embraced by those who understand the nature of genuine or REAL wellness. Woo woo has as much credibility and respect in the rational lifestyle-focused wellness movement as televangelists and 'QAnon conspiracy promoters, which is none, save for the easily fooled, isolated and undereducated.
The rest of the blog contains countless inaccuracies; I'll list a few:
- GWI: Wellness is about preventing disease. No, it is not. Prevention is separate from wellness, as is medicine. It's not necessarily more or less important--it's just different. It focuses only on what kind of mental and physical habits and other initiatives individuals create for themselves to improve their functioning beyond not being ill or alleviating suffering.
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GWI: The modern wellness movement started out as a self-centered approach for individuals to pursue healthier and happier lives, but it is steadily evolving from a personal aspiration toward a recognition of our connection to the collective. False. Dunn and others following his lead wrote extensively about the commons, the environment, our social connections, cultures and much else that fits with critical thinking, meaning and purpose, exercise and nutrition and freedom from life-enhancing restrictions.
- GWI: Wellness confines our existence to a personal wellness bubble. Ludicrous. Whoever wrote that should be prosecuted.
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GWI: A growing segment of consumers is shifting from a me to a we perspective about wellness. This is a false dichotomy. Who would choose one or the other, when it's clearly self-evident that both are essential to sound mental and physical wellbeing?
GWI needs an editorial advisory board to vet and constrain the unrestrained self-serving, hippy-dippy holistic and misinformed excesses of its public relations division.
GWI's egregious exaggerators are not serving the best interests of their clientele and certainly are not accurately representing the nature or impact of wellness. While wellness is probably not going to change the world, it could change the minds of many people, if it is properly interpreted and supported. It certainly has the potential to contribute to the slow evolution of healthier societies. But, inadvertent misrepresentations of the nature of the concept due to close association with spas and other retreats, and the purchase of costly services, products and treatments, will obstruct and contaminate this needed advance.
A POSSIBLE WAY FORWARD FOR GWI
GWI has grown exponentially in less than a decade. Now would be a good time for GWI leaders to consider shifting the company focus from pampering the rich to educating the public. Perhaps a combination focus on their current luxury market, while beginning to describe and promote a genuine wellness concept. That is, a philosophy and lifestyle focused on personal choices, habits and disciplined living. This new direction would benefit a wider range of people, regardless of economic status. It would entail only guidance upon that which individuals could do for themselves without a need for treatments, spa visits, products or services.
To make this partial transition, GWI would be wise to change the following patterns that have marked their work to date:
- Promoting a wellness concept that is not close to being wellness. Most of the GWI agenda is an omnibus mishmash of prevention, alternative medical modalities, and devotion to the wonders of spa settings and services.
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Describing nearly every trend, program, service, facility, treatment and particularly its own research, summits, presentations and so on in manner that reveals a serious case of glorious wonderfulness, or what I call adjectival positivity. Words like interesting, good or simply worthwhile would be suitable and more appropriate than the usual GWI over-the-top adjectives of boundless praise.
- Being focused on a range of issues much less consequential than the power and potential impact the organization could exert on actual health promotion. GWI has the capacity and leadership that would allow it to make enduring differences beyond the short-term endeavors that now play to a small, privileged audience. Little attention is currently given in GWI research papers, conference presentations, blogs and other works that deal with the consequences of politics, sex or religion. Avoiding these three categories works well for dinner parties, family reunions, weddings, religious services, and several other functions of polite society. However, this avoidance constrains GWI from addressing matters of greater consequence in the so-called real world. GWI would be wise to turn some of its attention to social problems, to helping find ways to better secure liberal democratic societies, to supporting environmental safeguards, to promoting international harmony, to advancing benefits of wellness for the disadvantaged, and so much more that might lead to qualitative differences in human lives across the globe.
- A Board of Advisors and advisory committees that are representative of a single industry. The current composition of these policy forums for GWI is made up largely of celebrities, spa owners, prominent physicians, major investors and tourist industry officials. GWI would benefit from a broader cross-section of representatives concerned with social change, underserved populations, good government, environments and a wide range of other priorities.
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The mission of GWI is narrowly focused. That mission to empower wellness worldwide by educating the public and private sectors. This sounds promising, but it need not be limited to the interests of luxury markets and desires of an already over-indulged monied class. GWI needs a wider audience, and broader offerings.
- Conduct educational forums on topics of genuine wellness. Here are a few educational forums it could advance: 1) critical thinking: 2) an understanding and respect for science; 3) practical philosophies with attention to meanings of and purposes for living; 4) practical principles that increase public acceptance of the benefits of active daily exercise and reason-based nutritional choices; and 5) ways to increase personal freedoms, at least in societies where individual liberty is respected and safeguarded.
Hopefully needless to say but, to be safe, a reminder that these categories only hint at the range of possibilities. Such a transition must commence with a refocus on genuine wellness as a self-directed concept for high quality lifestyles.
If GWI were to do even a few of these things, it might very well accomplish the improbable, that is, empower and advance wellness over time, perhaps to a point that, in some meaningful fashion, wellness would have a modest effect on positive changes in our suffering world.
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Note: While expressed concerns and objections to GWI might indicate otherwise, I consider myself a friend of the organization. I want it to continue to prosper and promote wellbeing. I'm fond of Susie Ellis, the GWI Chair and CEO, and many others associated with GWI that I've worked with over the years. GWI brought me to its annual summit in 2014 as a speaker and honored me with a lifetime achievement award. I'm not ungrateful; just the opposite, I'm loyal and supportive. I believe the best way to be supportive is to offer unvarnished perspectives on the nature of the wellness concept. I have done so for several years before, as well as during and since the above-noted summit in Marrakech, Morocco. This essay is intended to be more of the same.
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