Anatoli Schlee
January 26th, 2005
Wellness is a pretty new word that was probably created by marketing executives. The word is very popular and everyone uses it in connection with all kinds of things.
People are willing to buy a lot of “wellness products” today. …But nobody knows exactly what this word means.
Why do we do this? A lot of us find ourselves in the higher regions of the maslows pyramid today, so “wellness” becomes more important for a large amount of people.
Globalisation and the global growth of welfare enables us to care about our “wellness”. To be healthy is not just important, for us the whole definition of health is different. The word “health” does not just mean physical health anymore but psychical health as well. So that is another corner where wellness products exist. I agree that reading a newspaper on sunday after a good breakfast could be “wellness” as well, but mostly it is consumed in a commercial way. For example in Germany we have a kind of wellness-boom, where we have “wellness-holidays”, wellness-products like “wellness-baths”, “wellness food” and so on. These products alone generate large amounts of money every year for the companies making and selling these products.
But what is wellness? How would we describe the word if we had to give a definition? I would say wellness is everything that keeps us healthy or prevents us from getting “ill”. The “concept” wellness includes physical health and a healthy mind. I think non-physical health is better described as having a good balanced and harmonyous psyche.
Why does the wellness concept have to include both parts? It is necessary because psychic and the physic health depend on each other. Often one part is the cause for the other.