I WANTED to start this piece by writing the amount I spent last year on wellness treatments. I was unable to do so for two reasons: the first being that midway through accounting, I was embarrassed by the amount I’d spent for pain-management related work. Second, I could not ascertain whether a grossly expensive injection of Botox (almost Rs100,000 — don’t judge, I was desperate at the time for pain relief) constituted wellness or fell under the purview of conventional medicine. If wellness is the opposite of illness, and everything related to the pain in the neck hadn’t worked so far, because I was avoiding steroid-based painkillers, then Botox should count as wellness.

By that definition, so should exercise — yoga and strength training (Rs48,000) plus walking (free unless you count the Fitbit I bought a few years ago). What else counts? One-day breath-work session (Rs7,000)? Let’s not forget the prescription supplements I had to procure from the UK (Rs70,000), then have delivered to my friend in the UAE and wait until someone could bring them to Karachi. This doesn’t include the costs involved in embarking on an elimination diet — removing gluten, wheat, dairy, red meat and sugar. It was an expensive venture but it was perhaps the most effective for treating inflammation. That reminds me, I should also include the fees for the functional medicine doctor too (Rs15,000).

As you can imagine from the aforementioned, I have spent a lot of money on wellness in my quest to avoid illness.

Although my pain fluctuates — folks with chronic pain are familiar with good days, bad days — I have made great strides in other areas of health, like gut and brain clarity. There are many studies that show the inextricable link between the two — healthy gut means healthy mind.

Wellness has been reduced to a product or service one can buy.

However, all this has resulted in depleted bank accounts. And a regret for choosing such a poor-paying profession.

Wellness doesn’t come cheap.

According to the Global Wellness Summit Report 2024, roughly one in every $20 is spent on wellness in the US, and the global wellness economy is expected to rise to $8.5 trillion by 2027.

The report says global wellness spending falls into personal care and beauty, physical activity, healthy eating, nutrition and weight loss, public health and prevention, and wellness tourism. New categories like mental wellness, wellness real estate, and workplace wellness are gaining momentum, valued at $181 billion, $398bn, and $51bn, respectively.

But who is wellness for and why is it not egalitarian, irrespective of class and gender, ethnicities and tribes. I’m so happy that people can take time off for mental health reasons, but let us remember who can afford to do so.

Some scholars have said wellness can be traced to ancient times, even religious belief, that says your body is your temple. That translates to ‘my body is mine to protect’. I shall eat, work out, drink as I please and now, I have more access to, for example, organic produce in Pakistan. Self-care, thus, becomes exclusionary because it ignores how my well-being comes at the cost of someone else’s labour.

In the last decade, I have come across more experiential-based offerings in the wellness industry in Pakistan like sound baths, breath work, guided meditations, cacao ceremonies, yoga retreats in the mountains and so forth. There’s a wonderful two-day wellness festival too which aims to be inclusionary. There was certainly a boom in such offerings during the pandemic which made isolation and by extension a reset, mandatory. With more time to be online, consumers and retailers grew in abundance. A better version of you was possible if you have the money for it.

Therein lies the rub: the wellness industry provides a sense of community but it is paradoxically individualistic. Its messaging is to fix yourself, to make you feel morally superior to others who, frankly, do not have the means to focus on their health. It also ignores the role of genetics and environmental factors.

Wellness thus has been reduced to a product or service you can buy. The pandemic gave people an opportunity to go outside but as soon as the lockdowns eased, and capitalism returned with full force, the outdoors was replaced with more ‘spaces’ to practise wellness.

People want to achieve ‘high-level wellness’ as Dr Halbert L. Dunn wrote in 1959 in a scientific journal as “a condition of change in which the individual moves forward, climbing towards a higher potential of functioning”.

What, however, is that functioning for? I worry that we are trying to become more functional for more work. I wasn’t able to find that answer but I hope I’ve given you room to pause and reflect on these questions. Be well.

The writer is an instructor of journalism.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2025