How the wellness industry turns anxiety into profit

Remember me from this time, last year? No? I don’t blame you one bit.

This time last year I was a non-person sunk neck-deep in sofa. Mindless jelly, clumsily packaged in skin so embarrassingly home-grown it looked exactly like skin.

Ce’st alas was moi. Organic and ethically sourced, but with little else right on the label.

True, I’d never had a day of illness in my life. But had I ever experienced wellness? Not one solitary day of it! And, till December 31, 2024, who knew?

“Everybody,” said the friend who changed my life by sending me a Wellness Diary as New Year gift. It arrived with a Holistic Wellness Card and a phone number. Naturally, I called ekdam.

“We’ve been expecting your call,” a warm voice answered. “The form for your Whole Body Review is in your inbox.”

******

The Whole Body Review ran to 20 pages. It told me how I had trashed my life, all of it. I had just lived. Simply gone from day to day to day. Had I even thought what it was doing to me? I had even considered myself happy. LOL!

Those 20 pages told me deep unhappiness lurked in my unfulfilled hair. The curve of my fingernails was dull with discontent. There was sorrow in my unsprainable ankles. Misery clung close to my scalp. My spine, what was left of it, jockeyed on pulpy discs, and I was so out of cartilage, I could barely think. By the time I hit “Send” I had the self-esteem of a snail surprised bathing without its shell.

“Are you ready to begin your journey?”

Was I?

“You are full of negativity. First, let’s get you calm and peaceful and really, really, well rested. The Aromatherapy Kit is on its way. Enjoy! You have a whole month to explore and indulge.”

Oooh! I liked the sound of that.

January

The Aromatherapy Kit was impressive. Six dinky jute bags nestled in faux wood shavings. Each contained a flute of dark glass. Forests entire glinted within. Lavender, patchouli, jojoba, tea-tree, ylang-ylang, cedar …Essential oils with fairytale names, what spell would they cast on my negativity?

“Relax, Restore, Rejuvenate,” chanted the small print as I inhaled.

I also choked, coughed, lay awake all night with a thudding heart and broke out in a blebby rash. Those EOs were strong stuff and how truly essential they were! Scary, the amount of negativity they forced out of me.

February

Biohacking! DIY Nobel? That CRISPR stuff, where you snip bits of DNA in the garage and watch mice glow? Nah. Biohacking was more like, uh, whole body CCTV.

A box full of gizmos: rings, wristbands, watches, and a belt. I plastered on the lot and became a walking ICU, blinking and beeping with every breath. Those displays never gave me a break. My blood sugar flickered like a candle in the wind, my pulse raced every time I sneezed. I just couldn’t walk enough steps. Finally, I lied about wearing that browband.

Futile, really. Some kind of live streaming was on, and they could read my thoughts.

I was in a cold sweat trying to get my heartbeat to behave, and going by my pO2, most days I was definitely dead.

Those gizmos had to stay on even in the bathroom.

My sleep was biohacked too. Sunk in aromatised stupor, I was past caring about my dreams.

But they did.

It made them sign me up for an Exclusive Camp.

March

My Holistic Wellness card was long maxed out. They urged me to delve deep into my bank account or else my wellness journey would end prematurely—my chakras were so confused.

OMG, I didn’t even know I had chakras! All this time I’d blamed my dizzy spells on those aromas. You bet I didn’t hesitate.

The first exercise to heal my chakras was gratitude and all I had was attitude!

It wasn’t easy, I tell you. Especially after I checked my bank balance. But they gave me really powerful crystals to work with and took away the pearl studs I always wear. I had to grip a purple stone hard for 20 minutes to calm the ill effects of those pearls on my chakras.

I felt the rage drain out of me. When I was limp enough, I was given a yellow crystal with which I had to massage my palm, for motivation. Incredible, how that charged me up!

Breath work, next.

If only I’d known how to breathe! I had two hospitalisations for COVID-19. Never again! Breath work would save me.

Gratitude came oozing out of my pores and I had to rub myself all over with black tourmaline to mop up.

My chakras were now grounded enough for me to begin balancing them, starting with the lowest and climbing upwards to moksha, Sanskrit for immunity.

April

The cruellest month, mixing feasting with fasting.

I was barely past my hot water breakfast when the alarm buzzed for starvation till 9 pm, when I could mindfully slurp my vegan smoothie and pass out in gratitude.

May

Mostly fibre, mixed with farts.

I had a pantry installed in the loo to speed things up, as I journalled my way to gut health.

June

Oh blessed, blessed relief!

I could now stop eating stuff that looked like dung, and gorge on anything—provided it was bright green. To help my wobbly heart chakra.

Commercial wellness platforms position optimisation as an ongoing process rather than a finite goal.
| Photo Credit:
By special arrangement

So, I splurged on food colour and kept some handy in my purse to sprinkle on chaat.

With three chakras whirling correctly, surely it was time now for some external wellness?

July

Bad beginning.

My cortisol had shot through the roof.

This was serious.

No, they didn’t need blood tests to tell, one look at me was enough.

Ozempic Time! Shots twice a week.

“What’s on your dopamine menu?” they asked.

I didn’t have one.

So they sent me a swag bag: lipstick, chocolates, perfume, and squeeze toys in odd shapes. Mysterious, really. I gave them to the dog, and he ate them.

August

Cycling in the hills?

“No way,” I gasped. “Friends I know just got back. She’s got multiple fractures and he’s still in coma. No Cycling Camp for me, thanks!”

But this one, they said, was different.

Wasn’t it time I started cycling mindfully? After all, I’d never see 30 again.

When was the last time I had talked, really, really talked, about my cycle? Had I ever journalled it?

Finally, the coin dropped and I begged for inclusion.

The Camp got off to a shy start, but sisterhood soon overcame us and we enjoyed inventing wildly to best each other’s horror stories. Ice broken, we modelled period lingerie and chanted slogans as we sipped empowering herbal teas from dainty menstrual cups. Afternoons were dedicated to yoni steaming, connecting the sacred space to the divine.

Practices, products, and beliefs have come to constitute contemporary wellness culture—these include routine self-tracking, therapeutic consumption, and guided behavioural programmes.
| Photo Credit:
Getty Images/iStock

I hadn’t realised how brave I’d been, cycling hormones all on my ownsome. How exciting and beautiful it felt to actually, actually, menstruate.

“Every cramp is unique” is now tattooed on my soul.

Two docs joined us. A gynaecologist who droned on and on about hygiene and a plastic surgeon who showed us some very interesting photos.

Aspirational procedures. The others thought it daring, but me, I’m raring to go! Discount coupons too. And, if it’ll make me look like that, book me now for a vajacial!

September

A handy plastic box packed tight with the Periodic Table got my elements going. I rubbed my soles with magnesium, stuck rubidium strips between my toes, chewed calcium by day, selenium by night and swallowed iron filings on the beach at midnight to feel the magnetic tug of tides. The sachet of lithium I tucked away for later use.

October

Skin time at last!

Brightness Therapy. Five 10-minute sessions at Jeevamrut IV Bar.

Amazing how just 10 minutes got me brighter, smoother, simply bursting with it.

What’s in the drip?

Didn’t ask, they didn’t tell. But I know it is 100 per cent natural, completely methylparaben free, totally organic, ethically sourced, and I can personally swear that no animals were harmed in all the time I spent there.

November

For my final chakra I had to get “brain ready,” and the answer was—nootropics—assorted pills and powders to build the scaffolding of my brain. Cognition, whatever that was, would follow naturally.

Ashwagandha and ginseng kept me cool all the while my brain was being built up by things above my paygrade.

Work on my scalp began mid-November. Silly me, I thought the scalp was just Velcro to keep hair from sliding off my skull. It was a shock to discover it is really the face continued upwards.

I began intensive two-hour scacials every other day. My head was permanently afire, but that was just my topmost chakra easing into orbit.

Next, I got body cleansing with steaming, kneading, ice plunges, pummelling, more kneading, high colonics, vomit therapies, banana wraps. It ended with a whole-body massage that left me unconscious for a week.

December

I’m into the final phase of my Wellness Journey—you guessed it—fillers and whole-body mirror polish.

With Ozy shots twice a week, I do need filling up here and there.

Especially there. That Discount Coupon’s a blessing.

Fat fillers are the best; collagen is so yesterday.

It is exciting, all this chemistry plumping me up from within—

Hya, ceramides, squalene, niacin…

Chanting that mantra and clutching my black tourmaline, I’m so agog with wellness, I should be out of the ICU in less than a week.

See you soon!

Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed are surgeons who write together as Kalpish Ratna. Their book Bahadur was published in 2023.