The Eastern Philosophy to Western Wellness Trend Pipeline
I peer at my too-bright phone screen, knowing I should be asleep – depression insomnia at an all-time high. A young woman with perfect glowing skin in a perfectly manicured modern living room tells me that I just need to change my “self-concept” to achieve my goals and become “the woman of my dreams”. If I just change my identity to “a person who eats healthy”, I will have no problem turning down the office breakroom doughnut or the ultra-processed food-filled girl’s night. I’m just not the kind of person who eats that stuff. “Your mentality creates your reality.” Well I guess my mentality created a reality where my job is a dead end, my skin is a mess, the earth is rapidly heating, I’ll never get out from under my student loans, and I’ll never lose the last ten pounds I gained after moving in with my partner. I close the app and roll over. The next day, sitting in meditation a realization floated across the open sky of my mind. What she was explainin...