How Can We Reshape Well-Being Education?
As someone who has been in and around the wellness industry for many years, first as a participant, then as practitioner - it’s always bothered me that valuable information and practices are more accessible to a predominantly affluent, white section of society. Of course, this has been a big conversation over the past couple of years: the pandemic has shown us where we fail people. The wellness industry has had a major reckoning during this time: and I think it’s important for myself as a practitioner to continuously question who and what I’m doing this for. Conversations around food insecurity, Black Lives Matter, supply chain issues, cost of living increases, climate change, housing insecurity have all brought to the fore major issues in the fabric of our society. Odds are you’re already pretty intimate with the issues we face right now, and they may cause a modicum of anxiety to float in and out of your system depending on the day.
From a well-being perspective: what would it look like if well-being was more accessible? If we shared practices in schools from a young age? What if we were to dream up ways to create well-being for all? It’s a difficult one to answer when the people who share these practices are often underpaid and over-worked, and when even arts funding has been slashed.
But what if we dreamt up different ways to approach well-being education?
If well-being practices were taught in schools the world over, I think we’d be looking at a very different adult population. Young people today are struggling and they need support: in the US right now 40% of university students report being too depressed to function most days, more than 60% say they’re overwhelmingly anxious, more than 80% say that they constantly feel burned out, and more than one in ten says that they’ve seriously considered suicide in the last year. I got these stats from Dr Laurie Santos, who teaches the most popular class at Yale in its 300-year history: Psychology and the Good Life. Students are desperate to find ways to cope.
I remember being in health class as a pre-adolescent and taught I shouldn’t use the towel I use for my body on my face because it would give me spots. OKAY, so I guess that’s useful (?!) but what if we taught kids simple grounding techniques or breath practices in addition to that towel tidbit (that for some reason I’ve never forgotten). What if we provided kids with language and tools so that, in moments of crisis, they knew how to self-regulate and ask for help? There are plenty of people already doing this great work, but can we dream of a time when it’s commonplace and not the good work of a few not-for-profits?
What if, as standard practice, our towns and neighbourhoods all pitched in to provide healing services for people in the area? We see this idea in community acupuncture practices, where people have access to treatment at a lower price when they are treated in a group setting. There's the incredible community fridge movement and sliding-scale supermarkets for people dealing with food insecurity. There's mutual aid, which has been a lifeline for so many in this time. But what if there was somewhere that people could go to access the community herbalist, doula, therapist, yoga teacher for low or no cost?
There isn’t a straightforward solution, and mostly it's a funding issue: as it stands people in the caring professions: nurses, doulas, midwives, acupuncturists, yoga teachers, herbalists and nutritionists have all had to pivot in the pandemic. Many have lost income, restructured their business model, got burnt out, reassessed, emerged triumphantly, or not. But I know for sure that the people who hold wisdom around well-being have medicine to share: and for the most part, they’re often itching to share it. I wonder what it looks like to have widespread community-based affordable access to nutrition information, herbs, movement practices, birthing information and meditation. To be sure, there are already so many people doing this work, so it’s certainly not an original idea. But it’s fun to dream about it being ubiquitous, without barriers to entry - where teachers aren’t predominantly white and able-bodied, and people feel a sense of community care. We need it more than ever.
I don't have the answer, but I'll continue to dream and take action with others who are doing the same. I’m working towards creating a small sliding-scale corner of community care in my Patreon membership: if you are interested in joining you can sign up here. There is already so much content up there, and lots more coming in the coming months. I would love to build with you.