when wellness and spirituality collide
When I first began working in the wellness world in the late nineties, it looked very different. It wasn’t connected to spirituality.
Wellness came from health and lifestyle movements - nutrition, physical fitness, stress management and preventative care. It was about improving wellbeing and maintaining balance in daily life.
Spirituality, on the other hand, grew from something deeper. It was about awakening, transformation, connection with the divine and exploring the mysteries of life. Spiritual seekers were considered to be a bit “out there” and our beliefs and practices considered to be quite “woo” which basically means people thought you were weird.
Over the last decade or so, we have seen a shift. Wellness and spirituality have begun to merge, often to the point where they are now indistinguishable.
Some of this has been positive:
Practices like yoga and meditation, once seen as strange or “alternative” have become widely accessible.
More people are introduced to perspectives and ways of living that they might never have encountered otherwise.
There is less stigma around seeking inner work, self care, and holistic healing.
But here is the shadow side - many of these practices have been rebranded, softened or stripped of their roots until what is left is only a pale reflection of their original power.
Take sound baths, for example. At their heart, sound and vibration have always been medicine. In many traditions, they are used in ritual, and ceremony to awaken, to heal at a soul level. Sound was never just about soothing the nervous system - it was about remembering our place in the great web of existence and at times, I have found it to initiate many into mystical experiences.
Today, however, sound baths are often marketed as a wellness add-on: incorporated into physical fitness classes and spa sessions as a way to “de-stress after a busy week”. Of course, relaxation has its place. But when sound becomes only about sleep or self-soothing, we lose the deeper invitation it carries - the invitation to step into altered states, to see beyond the surface, to awaken.
The same has happened with mindfulness.
Rooted in Buddhist practice, mindfulness was never intended as a productivity hack. It was a path of liberation; a way of waking up from delusion, cultivating compassion, and aligning with truth. It was inseparable from ethics, community, and a radical re-orientation of how we live. (Yoga philosophy also has this at the heart of its teachings.)
Yet in the wellness world, mindfulness is now packaged as a stress - management tool, stripped of its spiritual roots. It is promoted as a way to be calmer, more focused, more resilient at work.
Helpful, yes - but also a dilution. The practice that once pointed to awakening has become a way of coping with the very systems it was designed to question.
This is the dilemma - the wellness industry has given more people access to practices that can be very supportive and actually life-changing - and yet, in making them palatable, we risk losing their powerful essence.
If your heart longs for more than surface - level wellness - for spaces where awakening, depth and true connection are honoured - you are not alone.
This is the work I am committed to holding.
You can explore my upcoming gatherings, retreats, and sound journeys here.
I would love to welcome you.
