Episode Details

I have a quiet aversion to conversations about wellbeing. The term conjures images of privilege and appropriation, like the time I was instructed to wave a stick of incense at a merchandised “altar" before disrobing for a spa treatment. Over the years, I’ve heard many conversations in yoga studio lobbies devolve into insensitive recommendations for the latest bestseller on grief or a self-paced online course designed to transform. The word draws my attention to the thin line between holistic health and aspirations of self-optimization, control, and certainty.

Quality is fine by me — I delight in an organic smoothie and consider myself a connoisseur of pillows. I buy the beeswax candles from the endcap display at the grocery store regularly. I’ve brokered in wellness my entire professional life, and I do believe in wellbeing. I want wellbeing for you and me and every living thing. 

What gets me is how ideas of wellness have become conflated with a cultural mythology around wealth. We are inundated by a profit industry built on the  premise that we are not ok and that buying something — anything — will change that. Our sense of wellbeing has become conflated with purchasing power. 

It’s a cheap ordeal, and we know it: the epitome of what the Buddha pointed to as “false refuge.” Wellbeing can’t be bottled and bought. We’ve tried that. We’re mistrustful of being sold on miracle drugs, fad diets, and unverified health claims. We’re tired of measuring ourselves by industry standards (a colossal industry, by the way — the global wellness industry was valued at over $4.5 trillion in pre-Pandemic 2019, according to the Global Wellness Institute). 

Discourse on wellbeing can sound tone deaf when juxtaposed with the existential challenges of our time. In the context of a growing disparity in health outcomes across income groups, for example, our cultural obsession with weight loss flaunts itself next to families unable to afford proper fruits and vegetables. We are a society of dissonance when it comes to wellbeing – constantly trying to perfect ourselves while failing to meet the basic requirements for wellbeing as outlined by Maslow’s objective hierarchy of physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. 

But what exactly is wellbeing, we might ask. A standard definition refers to our holistic health as constituted by the vital interplay of our physical, emotional, social, environmental, and spiritual layers. Less a state than an integrative process, wellbeing is our access to a wholesome, creative, dynamic, and resilient sense of equilibrium. 

The word for wellbeing in Sanskrit is “sukha,” which shares an etymological root with our modern English words sucrose and sugar. So there’s a flavor of sweetness to wellbeing. Its original context in the Vedas, according to Monier-Williams (1964), referred to how well a chariot axle was positioned to maintain the rotational balance between wheels and support the chariot’s weight, thus allowing it to move smoothly forward: "su ['good'] + kha ['aperture'] to mean originally 'having a good axle-hole.'”   Things haven’t changed much in that regard – today as always, a vehicle that has good suspension is what we want when traversing the rough roads we must travel.

We are talking here about receptivity and steadiness, and also about order and flow. Among the early scriptures, “sukha” is associated with “shreya,” meaning “that which produces lasting benefit” — in other words, it’s enduring. Shreya is contrasted with “preya,” a word epitomizing immediate gratification. Modern researchers similarly differentiate hedonism, characterized by the instinct toward pleasure and away from pain, and eudaimonism, a more lasting sense of fulfillment through growth and purpose.

Wellbeing is measured by

Listen Now