"I joined the wellness set just like Kate Moss. Am I woo-woo too?"

Excerpts

A quick, curious scroll through the ticket portal Eventbrite reveals a world of woo of which I was previously unaware. Any night of the week, within a mile or two of my flat, I could participate in all manner of meditation, mantra and breathwork classes, shamanistic healing, vibration healing, vision board making, moon circles, women’s circles and cacao circles, body positive pottery-making and so many bloody sound and gong baths, I’m surprised the people of East Sussex can ever hear themselves think. This “more comprehensive sense of wellness that takes in not just the body, but mind and spirit as well” is “fulfilling a need that we’re not getting elsewhere”, says Colleen Derkatch, author of Why Wellness Sells.

“Life has become so empty of pleasure these days and it feels good to feel good. And it feels good to feel like you’re doing something good for yourself,” Derkatch says. Many of the wellness devotees she interviewed were “a lot more circumspect about wellness than I had expected”, she says. “They were open to the idea of a placebo eQect, but they wanted to feel better, so they were willing to try things.” Surprisingly, she found, “nobody expressed blind faith — like the person in church who has doubts, but they still go and they do want to believe.”