The Wellness Industrial Complex: A Guided Analysis

What Is the Wellness Industrial Complex?

The wellness industrial complex is the collision point where genuine wellness practices meet extractive capitalism—resulting in a massive industry that has learned to profit from our deepest human needs for healing, connection, and spirituality.

With a global value exceeding $6 trillion annually, the wellness industry is nearly four times larger than the pharmaceutical sector. To put this in perspective: if wellness were a country, it would rank among the world's top five largest economies. The size of the industry is staggering.

Here's something even more concerning: while tech companies grab headlines with their massive valuations, the wellness sector operates differently. It's more dispersed, and yet it is significantly more profitable, extracting close to $1 trillion in pure profit each year. Projections suggest this market will double within the next 10-15 years. It’s no wonder corporations are battling for our souls.

(Source for the $6 trillion figure.)

What Do We Mean by “Wellness Industrial Complex”?

The wellness industrial complex is where genuine care meets the marketplace. It’s the intersection of healing practices, profit-driven incentives, and cultural messaging that shapes how we understand what it means to be “well.”

The wellness industry is the sector—everything from supplements and spas to meditation apps and retreats. The complex, though, is the larger system: the marketing, ideology, and social pressures that keep us continually seeking the next solution. It’s not just what we buy—it’s the worldview we’re sold along with it.

This matters because wellness isn’t neutral. When profit-driven corporations and social-media influencers become the loudest voices, even sincere healing practices can get distorted. The same modalities that can reconnect us to our wholeness—like Reiki or somatic trauma therapy—can also be used to reinforce the idea that we’re broken and need fixing.

The difference lies in intention and in outcome: are we being invited to come home to ourselves, or to buy another path to worthiness? Do we feel more whole and empowered, or do we feel addicted to the upgrade?

How Wellness Culture Took Over (and What It Reveals About Us)

The modern wellness boom didn’t come out of nowhere. It grew from a perfect storm of unmet needs and modern pressures—and a culture that leaves us tired, disconnected, and looking for something that feels like care.

During colonization, all of us became increasingly disconnected from the land and from each other. Modern capitalism requires a constant feeling of not-enoughness to drive “the economy.” And Western healthcare systems are impersonal, expensive, and inaccessible. Of course people look elsewhere for relief.

Loneliness has reached epidemic levels. Productivity culture has taught us that rest must be earned. Social media has turned wellness into an aesthetic to perform rather than a way of being. Influencer economies blurred the line between guidance and marketing, and algorithms shape what we think health should look like.

In that environment, the promise of “wellness” makes sense. On the surface, it might offer agency, hope, and the illusion of control in a chaotic world. But over time, the pursuit of wellness has became its own kind of pressure—a cycle of endless optimization, constant self-improvement, and confusion about what’s real medicine and what’s marketing.

Understanding how we got here helps us step back from the noise and remember what this was supposed to be about: coming home to ourselves, not constantly upgrading ourselves.

The True Cost of the Wellness Boom

The sheer size of this industry reveals something troubling about our collective state. We're spending trillions of dollars seeking what is our birthright: a sense of wholeness, peace, and of belonging in our own bodies, lands and communities.

At its best, the wellness world offers genuine healing. Ancient wisdom traditions, proven therapeutic modalities, and practices that can transform lives—all of this exists within the broader wellness landscape. Meditation, yoga, somatic therapy, energy healing, and countless other practices have helped millions of people find relief from suffering and connection to their authentic selves.

But at its worst, we see:

• Spiritual appropriation of sacred traditions without context or respect

• Commoditization of ancient practices stripped of their deeper meaning

• Misinformation spread by well-meaning but untrained "teachers"

• False promises that prey on vulnerability and desperation

• The fundamental lie that you are broken and need to be fixed

And these insidious problems are being exploited by what I call the golden cut.

The Golden Cut: Wellness’s Version of Planned Obsolescence

The driving engine of the wellness industrial complex is something I call the golden cut—a kind of spiritual planned obsolescence.

You are probably already familiar with how tech companies design their products to fail, forcing you to upgrade constantly. In wellness, the method is the same, but product is you. The golden cut works by convincing you that you’re always one practice, one purchase, or one transformation away from finally being enough.

It’s a subtle but powerful design: as soon as you feel better, a new “next level” appears. You’re told to keep optimizing, to keep chasing the better version of yourself. It's the pervasive message that you should always be "working on yourself," becoming "better," reaching for your "highest potential." It feels like growth, but it’s really a sales strategy; thinly veiled hustle culture marketing.

On the surface, the idea of upgrading ourselves can sound positive—who doesn’t want to evolve? Learning and growing is a good thing. But the problem is that hidden inside those messages is a toxic assumption: that who you are right now is not enough, and it never will be. When we internalize slogans like “You are made for more” or “Become your best self,” we unconsciously agree that our current selves are somehow inadequate.

The golden cut keeps us suspended in permanent self-improvement mode. It rewards striving and pathologizes contentment. It reframes exhaustion as dedication and stillness as failure. It severs our ability to ever experience the feeling of enoughness that is crucial to true wellness..

How the Golden Cut Works

The golden cut operates through a different strategies and incentives that insidiously shape how we relate to ourselves and the world around us:

• Emotional Pathologizing: Ordinary and important human emotions like sadness, anger, and fear are treated as problems to be fixed rather than signals to be understood.

• Shame-Based Self-Care: We’re taught to “love ourselves” by changing ourselves, which curdles self-care into self-coercion and criticism..

• Guru Culture: Self-appointed experts promise universal, “This worked for me so it can work for anyone!” solutions, implying that if their methods don’t work, you must be doing it wrong.

• Toxic Positivity: Complex emotions and systemic realities are dismissed with “good vibes only,” or “love and light” which silences pain that actually needs and deserves acknowledgment.

• Individual Solutions to Collective Problems: Personal healing is sold as the cure for what are ultimately structural issues: staggering economic inequality, deeply entrenched racism and misogyny, violently extractive capitalism, and intentional social isolation, to name a few.

The result is a culture of endless self-surveillance and subtle shame—and a massive industry that profits from our perpetual striving.

When you believe there’s always a better version of you waiting just beyond reach, you’ll never stop buying or laboring your way toward it. That’s the golden cut: a perfect business model built on your longing to be whole.

But real healing doesn’t require becoming someone new. It begins by remembering that there was nothing wrong with you to begin with. You are already whole.

The Real Problems Hidden in Plain Sight

The wellness industrial complex doesn’t just sell unnecessary products—it also distracts us from what’s actually making us sick. This isn't just ineffective—it's harmful. It places the burden of systemic failures on individual shoulders while generating massive profits for those selling the "solutions."

Instead of addressing the systems that cause so much suffering, we’re told the problem is our mindset or our un-optimized morning routine. We’re told that if we could just think more positively, manifest correctly, or buy the right blend of supplements, everything will be fine.

But the truth is that much of our collective distress is not individual at all. It’s systemic. It’s cultural. It’s structural. It’s an intentional part of the profit- and power-hungry world we live in.

Here are just a few of the real forces shaping our collective lives:

• Rapidly increasing economic inequality that creates chronic stress and instability

• Myriad forms of systemic discrimination that cause deep and ongoing trauma

• Environmental destruction that threatens our physical and mental health

• Social isolation in an increasingly disconnected world

• A ruling class that profits from keeping us focused on fighting one another

• Lack of accessible healthcare and mental health support that leaves millions struggling

When wellness marketing reframes these systemic issues as personal failings, the practices become not only ineffective—they becomes harmful. This strategy places the burden of societal collapse onto individual shoulders, whispering that if we’re struggling, it must be because we aren’t trying hard enough.

This is the sleight of hand that keeps the machine of the wellness industrial complex running. By personalizing what are collective wounds, the wellness industrial complex both profits from and perpetuates the very conditions that make healing so hard to begin with. It is an enraging trick.

While we’re busy trying to “raise our vibration” or “attract abundance,” the systems creating burnout, injustice, and despair remain unchanged.

True wellness—real, lasting wellness—doesn’t come from bypassing these realities. It begins when we see them clearly and choose to care for ourselves within them. It grows as we refuse the shame and call back our own innate, inner wisdom; when we reconnect to the land and to each other. This is how we heal, individually and collectively.

Red Flags: Signs of the Wellness Industrial Complex

The modern wellness world is vast. Some offerings genuinely support healing; others exploit the language of self-care to sell products, programs, or authority. The difference isn’t always obvious—especially when it all seems wrapped in the same soothing tone and spiritual vocabulary.

Learning to recognize the signs of extractive wellness versus authentic care is essential. Recognizing red and green flags can help you identify what serves you and what doesn’t, so that you can engage with healing practices from a place of agency and self-love, not anxiety and self-shame. Beware of these red flags:

• Promises to “fix” you or make you “better”

• Claims to have the answer that works for everyone

• Dismissal of strong or difficult emotions as “low vibration” or negative

• Blaming individuals for systemic problems; suggesting that poverty, illness, or burnout are personal failings

• Using shame, fear, or false scarcity to motivate participation (however subtly)

• Appropriating sacred or cultural practices without honoring their origins or context

These approaches position you as a problem to be solved rather than a person to be supported. They keep you striving, spending, and doubting your own wisdom. If it doesn’t feel good to you, trust that!

Green Flags: Signs of Genuine, Ethical Wellness

Not every part of the wellness world is extractive or performative. There are still many practitioners, teachers, and communities offering care that is real, ethical, and rooted in integrity. These are the spaces where healing can unfold safely—where context, consent, and compassion matter more than perfection or performance.

Recognizing these qualities helps you invest your time, energy, and money in ways that actually support your wellbeing. True wellness doesn’t demand constant improvement; it creates space for rest, curiosity, and self-trust; these are the hallmarks of spaces and practitioners who prioritize integrity, context, and care.

These green flags can help you identify when a practice or provider is genuinely aligned with those values.

• Offering tools for self-discovery and self-acceptance rather than promising transformation

• Helping you find your own path, not telling you to follow theirs (you are the guru, not them)

• Acknowledging individual differences and encouraging personal discernment

• Honoring all emotions as valid and informative, including and especially those that might be seen as “negative”

• Honoring all voices and experiences, and holding space for people from traditionally marginalized communities

• Recognizing both the personal and the collective factors that shape wellbeing

• Operating from compassion and curiosity, not pressure or fear (this is as true of their marketing as it is of their products or services)

• Crediting and contextualizing practices, and honoring the traditions and teachers they come from

• Trauma-informed offerings

• Someone who publicly acknowledges “holding the seat of the student” (who focuses on their own ongoing learning)

These are the people, teachings, and spaces that can remind you that you are already whole. They can help you reconnect with yourself, rather than convincing you to try to become someone else or to become an “upgraded” or “better” version of yourself.

Recognizing the wellness industrial complex doesn't mean abandoning all personal growth or healing practices. Many of us have experienced genuine trauma, carry wounds that need tending, or simply want to learn new skills and perspectives.

The difference can lie in the starting point. The wellness industrial complex approach says: "You are broken and need to be fixed." The authentic wellness approach says: "You are whole, innately wise, and worthy of gentle care and support."

True healing and growth happen when we start from a foundation of self-acceptance, not self-rejection–and from working with teachers who start from the same place.

A Different Way Forward

What does authentic wellness look like in a world saturated with marketing, hustle, and spiritual salesmanship? What is the world of wellness when we strip away the industrial complex?

The way forward begins with remembering that you were never meant to be a project. Healing isn’t self-improvement—it’s self-trust. It’s not about becoming better, but about becoming more present with who you already are; who we all can be together.

True wellness is not the absence of pain or the achievement of that all-elusive balance; it’s the capacity to move through life with awareness and care. It’s learning to meet yourself, again and again, with honesty and care instead of judgment.

When we approach our wellbeing from this place, the work shifts. We stop trying to escape ourselves and start learning how to stay with what’s real.

Authentic wellness invites stillness, not striving. It honors nuance instead of demanding positivity. It reminds us that wholeness was never lost—it’s just been intentionally buried beneath the noise and chaos of our modern, extractive times.

Here’s what that can look like in practice:

Start with Self-Acceptance

The only way to truly love yourself is to love yourself exactly as you are, right now, today. Not the version of you that exists after you've completed the program, lost the weight, or achieved enlightenment. Refuse the idea that you need to be “better.” You are not waiting to be worthy. You are already enough, right now, exactly as you are.

Recognize Your Wholeness

You are not unscathed. You have made mistakes. The experiences that have shaped you—including difficult ones—are part of your survival story, not evidence of your brokenness. You may be healing, grieving, or growing—but none of that negates your completeness. You are already whole, and you are worthy as-is.

Create Your Own Path

No guru or algorithm can walk your path for you. While there are countless sources of wisdom to draw from, your journey will be uniquely yours. Trust your own experience and discernment above external authorities. Your own body is ready to be your compass.

Focus on Connection, Not Improvement

The question isn’t “How can I become better?”—it’s “How can I be more connected?” Connection–to self, to others, and to nature–is what actually regulates our nervous systems, softens our defenses, and reminds us that we belong. Improvement can keep us chasing; connection brings us home. When you focus on connection, healing stops being something to achieve and becomes something you participate in—through presence, attention, and care.

Practice True Self-Care

The version of self-care most often sold to us is just another form of maintenance—maintenance of our appearance, our productivity, or our souls. Real self-care isn’t something you can buy, schedule, or optimize. True care starts from self-respect, not self-improvement. It’s a practice of tending, not fixing. When you treat your wellbeing as a relationship instead of a project, care becomes less about controlling your life and more about participating in it.

The work of healing isn’t forward motion; it’s presence. Each moment you spend chasing a future version of yourself pulls you farther from the one who needs care today. The path isn’t about progress or arrival at some other place—it’s about participation, about meeting this exact moment with honesty and compassion.

You are complete—just not finished. Between now and the day you die, you will never find a finish line. If you can't accept yourself as you are in this moment, there will be no accepting yourself in any future moment either.

Moving Beyond the Industrial Complex

The wellness industrial complex thrives on perpetual seeking, keeping us one purchase or practice away from finally being enough. It keeps us cycling between inadequacy and aspiration.

But what if this constant seeking itself is the barrier? What if the point isn’t to transcend, but to belong—to our bodies, our communities, our imperfect lives?

This doesn't mean becoming complacent or avoiding growth. It means building from a foundation of wholeness rather than brokenness. It means choosing practices and teachers who see your inherent worth rather than your potential for improvement.

Choosing authentic wellness doesn’t mean rejecting growth or pleasure. It means grounding both in self-acceptance rather than self-erasure.It means remembering that you are not a problem to solve, that you are a person you can love.

The Bottom Line

The wellness industrial complex is an extractive empire built by convincing us we’re broken and selling us endless fixes. But the deepest healing begins in the opposite direction: by realizing we were never broken to begin with.

Your journey toward wholeness doesn’t require another course, another cleanse, or another transformation. It requires a radical act of refusal—the refusal to treat yourself like a product that needs constant upgrades.

In this way, the life you’re seeking is the one you’re already living.

The person you’re trying to become is the one you already are.

Remember, always: you are complete, just not finished.

May this work be of benefit.

Love,

Liza

p.s. Real wellness doesn’t come from endless striving or spiritual salesmanship—it comes from learning to belong to yourself again. If you want some help, my work is to help people reconnect with that truth through Sacred Space Sessions—personalized one-on-one experiences that combine Reiki, somatic therapy, and nervous system restoration. And, if you’d like to keep exploring authentic healing, join my free weekly Love Letters newsletter.