Is wellness a luxury?
Why I am thinking about working “well.”
Let’s start with the geography wellness. Over on the left Coast, GOOP commodifies wellness in elegant shades of millennial pink (need a $299 meditation pillow set?) and soothing vagina scented candles, offering influencer inspiration to (mostly) affluent white women, along with some well-researched articles and good recipes.
On the right coast, Fran Lebowitz, author, critic and professional New Yorker questions when wellness became whatever it is, which may be the idea “Yes, I’m not sick, but I’m not not sick enough.” She succinctly provokes: “It is a greediness for extra health in a world — and I don’t even just mean because of the virus — while the vast majority of people almost have no chance of getting even near good health,” in a recent W magazine interview
Globally, wellness is a 4.5 trillion dollar industry, and according to the Global Wellness Institute this includes Wellness real estate and tourism, along with nutrition and fitness and preventative care.
Luxury, fantasy, commodity. None of these define “wellness’ for me. Wellness is more than the absence of illness. Among other things, it is a practice. How do we take wellness back?
We can look to folks like Ebony Smith, founder of Yoga N DA Hood , which is dedicated to making wellness accessible to EVERYONE, is bringing the healing power of yoga to under-served communities, starting with free classes for thousands of Dallas elementary school students. (Check out ‘Drawn to the Mat’ a short by filmmakers Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster to learn about her inclusive vision for wellness.) Now that’s a vision of wellness!
Another place to start is The Unspoken Complexities of ‘Self-care’ an illustrated article by Deanna Zandt which challenges tired ideas of wellness. Zandt distinguishes between self-care and self-soothing, the latter provides comfort and distraction while the former offers tools to strengthen us and perhaps engage with the source of our discomfort.
(Honestly, sometimes all I have energy for is a self-soothing of a walk in nature, or binging on Bridgerton, maybe that is OK. Can I also make use of the yoga mat in my living room? That would be better.)
Particularly now as we contemplate a second year of pandemonium, remembering that while we are separated than ever before, we are still part of an ecosystem is essential. Zandt extends the concept of self-care to community, which encompasses volunteering and collaborative systems such as coops and collectives.
That ethos is central to many indigenous communities and tribal culture, where sharing resources celebrated and community interdependence is essential to survival.
[For reference, refer to Lewis Hyde’s classic text “The Gift” which lays the groundwork for the dynamic tension central to creative practice in Western cultures with historical analysis. British Colonists coined the pejorative term “Indian Giver” because they failed to understand the indigenous practice of divine reciprocity, among other sins. Rather than share a peace pipe with someone else at a later date, the Brits took it out of circulation. When the energy of giving stops moving, the value collects in one place, enriching some and excluding others. We call this Capitalism and 500 years later it looks like income inequality. In the US, the one percent control twice as much wealth as 90% of the population, per a 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research report that indicates 1% owns 38.6% of the nation’s wealth. Ouch. But on the other hand, to oversimplify, Communism failed to scale as envisioned. But I digress.]
Since we live, work and create in a capitalist society, how do we learn to thrive in the near term and build for the future? Rockwood Leadership includes ‘personal ecology’ which they define as “to maintain balance, pacing, and efficiency to sustain our energy over a lifetime” as one of the core elements of effective leadership, which in context is anything but self-indulgent.
So we take care of ourselves, so that we can also take care of our communities, and then support what works and reimagine what doesn’t in our social, political and economic structures, from how we get to work, to how we take care of and educate our children. Ultimately we need systems change–Zandt talks about “Structural Care”–which asks how we envision and then manifest humane systems that are equitable, just and sustainable.
In a way it builds on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization. The five levels build on each other and are inter-connected. The fully self-actualized person still has to eat and breath clean air.
If we are to succeed at engaging with your community or addressing the needs of society, we can not neglect self-care, eventually we will burnout.
In my work with media artists and activists to help them articulate and actualize their vision so that we can collectively shift narratives towards a more just and equitable future, I am constantly struck by how many live on an edge, of exhaustion, financial uncertainty, loneliness, and frustration. These are people who have found their purpose, but social structures do not afford the opportunity to balance work and wellness. Clearly, social inequity disproportionately affects people of color and women. And when we change the structures all of us will ultimately benefit.
In the meantime, how do you and I get through today, tomorrow, and the next nine months until we reach herd immunity (Fauci says mid-fall 2021) and this nightmare of death and social distance recedes in the distance?
We recognize that wellness is neither fantasy nor luxury for me, or you, or any of us. Maybe it is a daily practice.
So if you are feeling stressed, exhausted, or overwhelmed? I challenge you to identify one thing that you can do today to really take care of yourself. That may be reaching out to an old friend to reconnect, I bet they would love to hear from you. And, please share with me your thoughts on what wellness means to you! I would definitely love to hear from you.
Be Well. Do Good. Keep Connecting.
P.S. Sharing some things that moved me. Yes, the inauguration is more than a week ago, but I’m still enjoying the moment.
Amanda Gorman was the surprise breakout story on inauguration day, a 22 year old black woman invited by life-long educator Dr. Jill Biden, rocketed to fame for a poem that captured the moment. You can get a special edition of The Hill We Climb, or order her forthcoming book Change Sings, and since her already iconic outfit is a visual meme, get the print by Nae at Society6.
This AP photo by Evan Vucci, of Biden with grandson Beau is my personal favorite pic of the day. Now that we are all photographers, it’s worth noting just how technically extraordinary this picture is, and the gaze of a baby is everything.
AND, I LOVED Anne Helen Peterson’s Errand Friend piece on her Culture Study blog on substack captured an aspect of female friendship and one of those invaluable treasures of pre-pandemic life.
