THE WELLNESS CRAZE
Australian journalist’s new book explores both the good and the bad in a trillion-dollar industry
On the eve of turning 40, Australian journalist Brigid Delaney decided her body, and life, needed a “hard reset.”
Years of partying, drinking and late nights had left her feeling moody, flabby and unhappy. Wanting an injection of energy — and to drop 45 pounds to return to a healthy body weight — Delaney agreed to a magazine assignment: a controversial 101-day fast.
It wasn’t the first time she would swing between two extremes: the hedonism that she loved and the feeling of wellness that she craved. The fasting would be yet another wacky experience for this selfdescribed gonzo wellness journalist who has, basically, done it all in the quest to be lean, clean and serene, which is the subject of her new book Wellmania: Extreme Misadventures in the Search for Wellness.
Delaney has done detoxes, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, gruelling multi-day hikes and psychotherapy retreats in the wild where participants scream, shriek and moan. Many of these experiences have been far-flung: A silent retreat with Benedictine monks in Australia; an Ayurvedic compound in the jungle of Sri Lanka; a colon cleanse at a spa in the Philippines; a purification ceremony at a temple in Bali and meditation classes with a Buddhist monk in London.
In her book, Delaney shares personal — sometimes hilarious — experiences, along with the historical context of various practices and the science behind possible benefits. It’s a deep dive into a mega-industry that makes oodles of money off of people seeking a better body and a balanced inner life.
The wellness industry — this includes vitamins, antidotes to aging, fitness, weight loss, healthy eating and wellness tourism — is worth $3.4 trillion (U.S.) annually.
“If someone is offering you a product, which they say will change your life, look at how much it costs, whether you can integrate the practice into your regular life and if there’s something you can do instead that’s free or low-cost,” says Delaney, 42, in a phone interview from Sydney. “Because there is a giant industry out there and it wants to take your money.”
The Star spoke with Delaney, a senior writer for the Guardian Australia, about our obsession with wellness, who the industry targets and when the pursuit of wellness ventures into dangerous territory.
The following has been edited and condensed.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve done in your search for wellness?
Fasting was the craziest and hardest. I’ve never been on a diet, so to never have deprived myself and then suddenly stop eating for two weeks was really crazy. (The 101 Wellbeing Program required Delaney to fast for 14 days, drinking only a mixture of herbs, amounting to 250 calories a day. For the duration of the diet she was allowed a small amount of solid food each day — for instance, a cucumber, an egg or a piece of poached chicken the size of three fingers. Delaney quit the fast after 83 days because she just couldn’t stick with it for any longer. She felt great. She lost 26 pounds and normalized her cholesterol and blood pressure to the extent that she no longer required medication for those conditions.) The other thing was a very intense psychotherapy retreat that involved screaming for a week. That was really crazy. If you’ve never had group therapy or been in an environment where you have to expose very personal and vulnerable things in front of strangers it’s a very scary space to be in.
But in the book you say the retreat left you with a sense of serenity.
I went with the flow, but I had to put aside a lot of inhibitions. I was freaking out constantly. But by the end, making myself uncomfortable had achieved something really positive.
You’ve tried to balance your love for hedonism and desire for wellness. Can they coexist?
You’ve got to let them coexist in a way that’s sustainable. For many years I would go out, have a huge night, drink too much and wake up feeling guilty and for the rest of the week I would try to limit my enjoyment. Now, I just try and do a little of everything. I was recently in Bali and that was a reset experience for me. I had worked through the summer and needed to get away to do yoga classes, reconnect with meditation and come back feeling a lot more centred. I did that and I feel great. I’m incorporating a lot of the stuff I learned while on past assignments.
What do you think drives the pursuit for wellness in the West?
A number of things. There’s the age-old theme of wanting to live forever — deep down we don’t want to die so we’ll do whatever we can to stay healthy. And we’re bombarded with conflicting and vast amounts of information about diet and health — the wellness industry is pushing products on us and we get really confused. And, our lifestyles are out of whack: We work too hard, we sit for too long, we’ve lost a connection with nature. We’re not feeling great and the wellness industry steps in and provides solutions.
In the book, you talk about $10 juices, $150 yoga mats and fasting programs that cost $2,000 a week. So is the pursuit of wellness aimed at those with money?
Absolutely. It’s not a poor person’s industry. It requires a vast amount of time and money. I was in Canada last year and checked out a number of wellness retreats and they’re really expensive — in places like Vancouver, wellness spas and offerings are growing. It’s also a very female-focused industry. It taps into the age-old thing of never letting women feel completely comfortable in their skin or with their bodies, by offering products that are going to make them skinny, happy or give them peace of mind.
In Bali, you met a healer named Riki, who turns out to be a total charlatan. He says you need to energize your sex chakra and offers to unblock it by having sex with you, which will cost you $20. You decline. How many fraudsters like him are there in the industry?
It’s hard to put a figure on it, there are so many. There’s a whole industry of snake oil sellers out there. It’s OK to spend $20 on something that might not work — you’ve lost $20. But our acceptance of the wellness industry, and of people who aren’t certified, is more dangerous if we’re faced with serious illness. There’s another dimension to the wellness industry — I don’t go into this in the book — that promises to cure very serious illness for thousands of dollars. Recently, an Australian woman, Belle Gibson, wrote a book called The Whole Pantry and she claimed she cured her cancer by eating organic vegetables. Turns out she didn’t have cancer and the book was a complete fraud. There’s a really serious side to this, when people are desperate and seriously unwell, and they turn to the wellness industry and to people who have no medical background.
And, there are some in the industry who blame patients for serious illness. In the book you talk about a group of women you met at a meditation centre in Bali who were on the alternative healing circuit. Three of them had cancer and one had Parkinson’s. They believed their illness was caused by their emo-
Journalist Brigid Delaney, author of Wellmania: Extreme Misadventures in the Search for Wellness.
tions, repressed sexual drives and unexplored trauma.
These were ordinary suburban housewives and they were in Bali seeing healers. They had internalized this message that you cause your own cancer by having unresolved issues. I was outraged. I thought this is yet another way that women blame themselves for something that is completely out of their control. There are theories within wellness literature that are very dangerous and psychologically very depressing.
Sounds like the wellness industry is making some people unwell.
The rise of Instagram, with mostly young women who have thousands of followers, posing with juices and shakes, and doing downward dog in very exotic locations with #cleaneating, has led to the rise of orthorexia. (This is an obsession with eating foods one considers healthy.) It’s a bit of a disguised eating disorder.
Of all the wellness programs and techniques that you have tried, have you stuck with anything?
I do half an hour a day of yoga at home, purely because the movement means I’m a bit looser and I sleep better. And I meditate everyday because I find it’s a really useful tool.