Poor us. Hit from all sides by unrelenting abundance and ease, we need a break from all the stress. Fortunately, we have an out in wellness centers and spas, even home spas. Whew! Don’t know how people used to hammer out their days of drudgery and woe.
A Bit of Background
According to Statista, Americans spent 300 billion bucks on wellness/spa tourism. That’s up from the low of 149 billion dollars spent during the pandemic of 2020. In 2023, the spa “industry” provided services for 182 million people, down ten million from the high in 2019 before COVID decimated the economy.
But we Americans aren’t the only people who seem to need days of respite. The worldwide wellness business raked in 6.3 trillion in 2023. Trillion, yeah, with a “t”; you read it correctly; it’s not a typo. Does such an outlay of wealth by customers (clients?) say anything about us? Anything about our priorities or character?
A Bit More Background
Although I question the validity of his conclusions because they ultimately came from self-reporting surveys, I see some value in Hans Eysenck’s classification of personality “dimensions.” Those dimensions are extroversion/introversion and neuroticism. I believe they might in a cursory way explain the modern need for wellness centers in a society not bogged down by a global war. (Eysenck surveyed soldiers in the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital during WWII, drawing conclusions from his extensive surveys of hundreds of soldiers) War resets priorities of people formerly living in relative safety and comfort. That Eysenck derived much of his thinking for Dimensions of Personality from a wartime world probably makes his work a little less applicable to today’s cushy life for the wellness crowd. Nevertheless, see whether or not you might want to draw your own conclusions from the following characteristics associated with extroversion, introversion, and neuroticism (summary statements by Tom Butler-Bowdon*):
Extraversion
The extravert’s brain is the opposite of what we would expect; it is less excitable than the introvert’s. Because there is less going on inside, extraverts naturally seek outside stimulation and contact with others to really feel alive.
Introversion
The introvert’s brain is more excitable, making them more vulnerable to moods and having intense inner lives. Introverts have a rich inner life, so they don’t need much social interaction. They have a deeper and more anguished response to life.
Neuroticism
Apparently both extraverts and introverts can be neurotically minded. In Eysenck’s view, for example, neurotically minded introverts over-respond to stimuli and are susceptible to phobias and panic attacks whereas neurotically minded extraverts tend to undervalue the impact of life events and might develop neuroses of denial and repression.
Eysenck drew on Carl Jung to formulate his classification of personality dimensions. About the same time that he was interviewing soldiers at the hospital Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs developed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, also based on Jung’s work, that categorizes individuals into one of 16 personality types based on their preferences in four dimensions: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving.
I suppose these generalizations are insufficient for one to conclude what kind of personality dimension dominates the wellness crowd. If you peruse the Web for wellness testimonials, you will see numerous success stories, that is, autobiographical tales of people who suffered from physical and psychological maladies that disappeared during treatments of various kinds. And I have no reason to question those testimonials, but some of them simply indicate the need for a push to change lifestyle. I read one testimonial from a man who accompanied his wife to the wellness center to have a common experience with her. At the wellness center he learned to cut out bread and sugar, resulting in his “feeling” better. Sugar. One has to ask how new the concept of refraining from its consumption was for the man. My hasty conclusion by extrapolation is that much of what drives people to spas and wellness centers is common sense and already known.
Who Might Not Go to a Wellness Center
It’s a cultural thing, this wellness craze upon which people have spent $trillions. It’s a sign of the times, also. People barely subsisting and people in the midst of war just don’t have the time or wealth to support their desires for luxurious lifestyles. But in times of relative peace the affluent do have the time and money to pursue wellness. The absence of personal physical threats makes a society somewhat “soft.” Anecdote alert! Dive, dive, dive.
My father, a marine who fought on Okinawa, was reared in a home without a father (he died when my. Dad was 8). He went through the Great Depression with his mother and two sisters, not a life of luxury. In 1980, when I was on sabbatical leave and living in Miami, both he and my mother visited us. Showing them around, my wife and I took them to Bal Harbour. As we walked around, I saw a quaint courtyard with a little coffee shop that served baked goods. I walked them in and said, “Come on, I’ll get you two a piece of pie and coffee.” He looked at the suspended chalkboard that listed the prices and said, “Three dollars for a piece of pie? I’d choke before I would eat that.” It didn’t matter to him that I said I would pay for the pie and coffee and that it would cost him nothing. He had been through Depression and war. Both combined to make him “hard” rather than “soft.” There would have been no way I could ever have gotten him to go to a spa or wellness center, even though it might have eased what I later believed was PTSD buried in his brain since World War II and the horrors of fighting in Okinawa.
Pavlovian Desires
So, in a “soft” society of affluence, I’m of a mind that Pavlovian conditioning might be at play. Keeping up with the Joneses doesn’t just apply just to owning stuff. We keep up by adopting lifestyles and behaviors. Going to a wellness center can be a matter of “They did it, why can’t we?” And possibly the free-wheeling anonymity of modern communications via social media might make extraverts flock to wellness centers for needed outside stimulation.
But at the risk of contradicting myself, I’ll note that those inward people, the introverts, might also use wellness experiences to intensify their feeling in the presence of strangers with whom they will never again interact. The eventual separation protects that anguished brain from outsiders. And the wellness center experience can enhance the moodiness.
The Search for Identity
Long a theme in literature, the search for identity has been a goal for many since the rise of the modern world. I suppose the culture of “finding oneself” entered into everyday consciousness during the Romantic period of the nineteenth century and then turned into the existentialism of the twentieth century. Going off to discover one’s “real Self” has motivated many to travel to exotic places, mountain vistas, and gurus of various leanings stereotyped by the shaman, the monk, and the astrologer. Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Transcendentalists at Brooke Farm and others set in motion a widespread notion that one could a’find oneself,’ or indeed that one “needed to find One’s Self” to be a “whole person.” That “wholeness,” a unity of selves, appears to be the goal at holistic wellness centers.
To Sum Up
There might be as many reasons for people to go to a wellness center as there are people, but that seems to be a silly statement in light of similarities among humans. Those personality dimensions identified by Jung and refined by Briggs, Briggs-Myers, and Eysenck link all humanity. Someone, maybe you, could identify a limited set of reasons. To a common search for identity and meaning that drives some to those centers, I might add boredom in an affluent society. Even those who have not experienced much of the planet by traveling have nevertheless experienced much vicariously through TV and books (as Emily Dickinson wrote, “There is no frigate like a book”). Many have “seen and done IT ALL” either in person or through those media. What’s left but frivolous luxury?
*50 Psychology Classics.2007.
A Bit of Background
According to Statista, Americans spent 300 billion bucks on wellness/spa tourism. That’s up from the low of 149 billion dollars spent during the pandemic of 2020. In 2023, the spa “industry” provided services for 182 million people, down ten million from the high in 2019 before COVID decimated the economy.
But we Americans aren’t the only people who seem to need days of respite. The worldwide wellness business raked in 6.3 trillion in 2023. Trillion, yeah, with a “t”; you read it correctly; it’s not a typo. Does such an outlay of wealth by customers (clients?) say anything about us? Anything about our priorities or character?
A Bit More Background
Although I question the validity of his conclusions because they ultimately came from self-reporting surveys, I see some value in Hans Eysenck’s classification of personality “dimensions.” Those dimensions are extroversion/introversion and neuroticism. I believe they might in a cursory way explain the modern need for wellness centers in a society not bogged down by a global war. (Eysenck surveyed soldiers in the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital during WWII, drawing conclusions from his extensive surveys of hundreds of soldiers) War resets priorities of people formerly living in relative safety and comfort. That Eysenck derived much of his thinking for Dimensions of Personality from a wartime world probably makes his work a little less applicable to today’s cushy life for the wellness crowd. Nevertheless, see whether or not you might want to draw your own conclusions from the following characteristics associated with extroversion, introversion, and neuroticism (summary statements by Tom Butler-Bowdon*):
Extraversion
The extravert’s brain is the opposite of what we would expect; it is less excitable than the introvert’s. Because there is less going on inside, extraverts naturally seek outside stimulation and contact with others to really feel alive.
Introversion
The introvert’s brain is more excitable, making them more vulnerable to moods and having intense inner lives. Introverts have a rich inner life, so they don’t need much social interaction. They have a deeper and more anguished response to life.
Neuroticism
Apparently both extraverts and introverts can be neurotically minded. In Eysenck’s view, for example, neurotically minded introverts over-respond to stimuli and are susceptible to phobias and panic attacks whereas neurotically minded extraverts tend to undervalue the impact of life events and might develop neuroses of denial and repression.
Eysenck drew on Carl Jung to formulate his classification of personality dimensions. About the same time that he was interviewing soldiers at the hospital Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs developed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, also based on Jung’s work, that categorizes individuals into one of 16 personality types based on their preferences in four dimensions: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving.
I suppose these generalizations are insufficient for one to conclude what kind of personality dimension dominates the wellness crowd. If you peruse the Web for wellness testimonials, you will see numerous success stories, that is, autobiographical tales of people who suffered from physical and psychological maladies that disappeared during treatments of various kinds. And I have no reason to question those testimonials, but some of them simply indicate the need for a push to change lifestyle. I read one testimonial from a man who accompanied his wife to the wellness center to have a common experience with her. At the wellness center he learned to cut out bread and sugar, resulting in his “feeling” better. Sugar. One has to ask how new the concept of refraining from its consumption was for the man. My hasty conclusion by extrapolation is that much of what drives people to spas and wellness centers is common sense and already known.
Who Might Not Go to a Wellness Center
It’s a cultural thing, this wellness craze upon which people have spent $trillions. It’s a sign of the times, also. People barely subsisting and people in the midst of war just don’t have the time or wealth to support their desires for luxurious lifestyles. But in times of relative peace the affluent do have the time and money to pursue wellness. The absence of personal physical threats makes a society somewhat “soft.” Anecdote alert! Dive, dive, dive.
My father, a marine who fought on Okinawa, was reared in a home without a father (he died when my. Dad was 8). He went through the Great Depression with his mother and two sisters, not a life of luxury. In 1980, when I was on sabbatical leave and living in Miami, both he and my mother visited us. Showing them around, my wife and I took them to Bal Harbour. As we walked around, I saw a quaint courtyard with a little coffee shop that served baked goods. I walked them in and said, “Come on, I’ll get you two a piece of pie and coffee.” He looked at the suspended chalkboard that listed the prices and said, “Three dollars for a piece of pie? I’d choke before I would eat that.” It didn’t matter to him that I said I would pay for the pie and coffee and that it would cost him nothing. He had been through Depression and war. Both combined to make him “hard” rather than “soft.” There would have been no way I could ever have gotten him to go to a spa or wellness center, even though it might have eased what I later believed was PTSD buried in his brain since World War II and the horrors of fighting in Okinawa.
Pavlovian Desires
So, in a “soft” society of affluence, I’m of a mind that Pavlovian conditioning might be at play. Keeping up with the Joneses doesn’t just apply just to owning stuff. We keep up by adopting lifestyles and behaviors. Going to a wellness center can be a matter of “They did it, why can’t we?” And possibly the free-wheeling anonymity of modern communications via social media might make extraverts flock to wellness centers for needed outside stimulation.
But at the risk of contradicting myself, I’ll note that those inward people, the introverts, might also use wellness experiences to intensify their feeling in the presence of strangers with whom they will never again interact. The eventual separation protects that anguished brain from outsiders. And the wellness center experience can enhance the moodiness.
The Search for Identity
Long a theme in literature, the search for identity has been a goal for many since the rise of the modern world. I suppose the culture of “finding oneself” entered into everyday consciousness during the Romantic period of the nineteenth century and then turned into the existentialism of the twentieth century. Going off to discover one’s “real Self” has motivated many to travel to exotic places, mountain vistas, and gurus of various leanings stereotyped by the shaman, the monk, and the astrologer. Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Transcendentalists at Brooke Farm and others set in motion a widespread notion that one could a’find oneself,’ or indeed that one “needed to find One’s Self” to be a “whole person.” That “wholeness,” a unity of selves, appears to be the goal at holistic wellness centers.
To Sum Up
There might be as many reasons for people to go to a wellness center as there are people, but that seems to be a silly statement in light of similarities among humans. Those personality dimensions identified by Jung and refined by Briggs, Briggs-Myers, and Eysenck link all humanity. Someone, maybe you, could identify a limited set of reasons. To a common search for identity and meaning that drives some to those centers, I might add boredom in an affluent society. Even those who have not experienced much of the planet by traveling have nevertheless experienced much vicariously through TV and books (as Emily Dickinson wrote, “There is no frigate like a book”). Many have “seen and done IT ALL” either in person or through those media. What’s left but frivolous luxury?
*50 Psychology Classics.2007.
RSS Feed