Gratitude For Sale: How the Wellness Industry Distracts Us from Spiritual Fullness

As we practice Common Sense, it becomes a basis for knowing, a basis for action. In Common Sense, action and thinking are closely connected. So Common Sense is more than thinking. It is a vibrating aliveness to the world, in the world, for the world. It is a knowing through belonging. And it becomes a basis for doing, for acting. To act in the spirit is to act as people act when they belong together.

Br. David Steindl-Rast

The wellness industrial complex leaves me feeling a little sick. Influencers, self-appointed gurus, celebrities, and corporations bombard us with thousands of paths to longevity and happiness. They’ll suggest things like continuously monitoring your glucose with a new device even though you’re not diabetic, adding more protein to your protein, fasting for 14 hours, trying intravenous therapy, drinking more red wine, drinking no alcohol ever, etc. — and this list was mostly curated from the wellness section of the Associate Press on a quiet day in July. 

While I am overwhelmed by and suspicious of the wellness industrial complex, I am also very curious about it. What is at the heart of all of us who engage with it? Are we running from facing our mortality? Are we seeking to fill a spiritual emptiness as a result of so much religious disenfranchisement in these modern times? When did gyms, bodies, and devices become our gods? Our wellness has become a commodity on the open market. And gratitude is caught up in the marketplace.  

Gratitude as a quick fix — another thing to do to hack our brains and experience the benefits — may help us fill a journal, but it is not likely to fill our spirit for the long-haul. There is a difference between a dabble and a commitment after all. Because gratitude has been swept up in the bio-hacking and wellness complex, many folks remain at the entry point of gratitude and never fully move into the depths of living gratefully as a spiritual practice.

Br. David Steindl-Rast talks about “Common Sense Spirituality” as a vibrating aliveness in the world. We become more alive through consistent practice, yes, but we become most alive with a holistic approach. Br. David offers this compelling argument about wholeness:

“The great spiritual traditions often use ‘aliveness’ interchangeably with ‘mindfulness.’ This term emphasizes not so much mind as it stresses fullness. Aliveness is a fullness not only of the mind but also of body and spirit. This is quite a different notion from popular interpretations of mindfulness that create – or perpetuate –a common split between body and spirit. True spirituality, true aliveness, on the contrary, is deeply rooted in our bodies, something often underplayed or negated entirely in religions but readily identified in people regarded as deeply spiritual.“

For me, this quote exemplifies the genius of Br. David, and it effectively identifies the deficit in the wellness complex and, increasingly, in religion. Body, mind, and spirit collectively awaken us to life. This trifecta leads to our fullness. However, the wellness industrial complex and all of its influencers latch onto one thing, whether it is a supposed bio-hacking trick, a new study, or an empty promise to ensure longevity. All of these promises seemingly point to or entice a sense of immortality, and all seem to surrender to the next fad because, in time, we experience that they don’t offer the spiritual fullness that Br. David named. I believe fullness is what we all are seeking, but it is hard to choose a path when every road on the wellness wagon leads you far away from home. So, we try again, we consume more, we strive to forge a new habit only to find ourselves seeking the next best thing.  

The grateful life also offers many paths. The difference is the direction it takes you. Through gratefulness, we consistently return to ourselves. And let’s be honest, returning home to ourselves can be uncomfortable. This is where our disappointments, trauma, past challenges, and a sense of meaninglessness and despair can dwell. So it makes sense that we would chase the shiny, easier options that are available to us. This desire to avoid the challenging things in life is an advantage the wellness industrial complex tries to capitalize on by promoting all the ways to be better and become magically “fixed.” But, as Br. David suggests, what if being “better” is not the goal and not the golden calf so many of us idolize? What if fullness is your purpose, your homecoming? What makes you full is not something a marketing team at a wellness brand or even a preacher can do for you. When mind, body, and spirit are integrated and tended to with care and attention, fully inhabiting our lives becomes far less uncomfortable and far less like navigating a foreign terrain. But this requires work, practice, and a steadfast commitment.

We cannot acquire wholeness — fullness — by subscribing and consuming. We must do the uncomfortable task of waking up to life through practice, remaining grounded in our principles and courage, and remembering that our life is a gift on a daily basis. From this starting point we can return to ourselves with an authentic fullness that surpasses the false promises that try to convince us that happiness and wholeness exist somewhere else other than within us and the lives we’ve been given. 

Feature image by Ashley Whitlatch

Joe Primo, Grateful Living

Joe Primo is the CEO of Grateful Living. He is a passionate speaker and community-builder whose accomplishments made him a leading voice on resilience and adversity. Gratefulness for life, he believes, is foundational to discovering meaning and the only response that is big enough and appropriate for the plot twists, delights, surprises, and devastation we encounter along the way. A student of our founder since his studies at Yale Divinity School, Joe is committed to advancing our global movement and making the transformational practice of grateful living both accessible to all and integral to communities and places of belonging. His TED talk, “Grief is Good,” reframed the grief paradigm as a responsive resource. He is the author of “What Do We Tell the Children? Talking to Kids About Death and Dying” and numerous articles.

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