What is Wellness?
This week I'm exploring the topic of wellness, the operative buzz word in every click-bait article and new CBD brand.
I'll admit that growing up in the West Coast preconditions me to an interest in wellness and alternative lifestyles. California is a cultural spring for unconventional ideas. From the farm to table movements pioneered by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, to the Radicalization of Joan Didion, the West Coast is a champion for anti-establishment, and progressive ideas thrive.
But what is wellness? Is it yoga? Is it a Keto cleanse? Beyond the transactional, feel-good component, wellness is holistic. It is an all-encompassing pursuit of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being. Gwenyth Paltrow summarizes in her first episode of The Goop Lab, "It's the optimization of self. We're only here one time, one life. How can we milk the shit out of this?"
One of the most edifying parts of being a writer is experimenting with wellness under the guise of work. They range from the good to the bad. I tried equine therapy in Arizona, a package Miraval Resort promotes to bolster vulnerability and reconcile traumas. Instead, I felt confused and humiliated; I ended the session bursting into tears in front of a large group of strangers. Later that day I met a shaman named Lolita, who expunged my ancestral karma. I mostly enjoyed the sessions that didn’t require a great deal of emotional digging, namely an Ayurvedic massage bathed in Ghee butter inside an infrared blanket.
Whether you're a skeptic or a fan, what this movement offers are new pathways to experience and think about life.
Here are ten things I’m grazing over this week:
Gwenyth Paltrow's Goop Lab launched this week on Netflix, ushering in a dedicated series for alternative-treatments from micro-dosing on magic mushrooms to how cold plunges can change your brain chemistry. Nay-sayers will say it’s pseudoscience, but I’m on board.
Inside the Mind, Explained: Psychedelics episode, the narrator, explores why mushrooms are the future of mental health. It explains how in the 1960s, Nixon stigmatized and defunded psychedelics research even though studies had shown positive long-term benefits for patients with severe anxiety and depression. Which in turn begs the question — is micro-dosing the new antidepressant?
I love this profile of Amanda Bacon in Entrepreneur, which details how a media takedown helped Bacon accelerate Moon Juice's brand visibility rather than destroy her sense of self and company.
I have just ordered, 'An Unsavory Truth' by the James Beard Award-winner and leading nutritionist Marion Nestle. Marion Nestle exposes how the food industry corrupts scientific research for profit, and its self-funded research led to some of the most influential ads in marketing. Remember the Got Milk? ads that ran with great success throughout the 90s?
@Esteelaundry is the @DietPrada of the beauty business, calling out brands for "greenwashing" their practices or just simply demanding action for change within the beauty industry.
My search history on Youtube pivots between pole-dancing and The School of Life, a webisode series narrated by Alain de Botton dedicated to developing emotional literacy. School of Life explores every facet of building emotional intelligence and reconciling with self-esteem and coping with others.
Ayurveda is the belief that health and wellness depend on a delicate balance between mind, body, and spirit. It also recognizes that a person's body is governed by one of three doshas. Your dosha determines the type of nutrition your body needs, and according to Yoga Journal, these are the five types of food we must be consuming more of in the winter months.
The number one item I've been recommended since moving to New York is the Instant-Pot. In true New York fashion, the instant pot is a hit for its lightning-fast ability to cook meat and create stews in under 10 minutes.
One of the most beautiful apothecary shops in the world is Buly, located in Le Marais, Paris. Their Atlas of Natural Beauty provides a directory of botanical ingredients that can be used as natural beauty products.
Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food is one of my favorite cookbooks of all time. Her minimalist approach is rooted in sourcing the freshest local produce with high-quality ingredients. I find that some cookbooks can be out-of-touch by requiring specific seasoning or techniques not readily available to the average home cook, but her ability to strip recipes down to the bare essentials is a pure art form.
What do you guys do for self-care? For me, I feel emotionally well when I find time to pause and reflect.
See you next Sunday.