Extreme Relaxation

From marijuana massages to sound baths, algae wraps to acro yoga, wellness is getting radical.

- Anjuly Mathai

When the 21-day meditation programme by Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra popped up on my Facebook homepage, I signed up for it because I was researching this story and wanted to get a taste of what wellness was all about. Every day, an audio clip would be emailed to you, in which Chopra would give a “centering thought”, a few details of what he hoped to achieve, and then guide you through a session of meditation lasting around 10 minutes. So, on the first day, I went with my laptop to a private office cubicle and played the video. The centering thought for the day was: “Today I have all the energy I need and want.” After a brief introduction, he gave us a mantra—purnaye. It signified that I was tapping into the ‘infinite source of energy, whole, complete and without limits’. I closed my eyes and chanted the mantra for 10 minutes, but the infinite source of energy eluded me. I felt sleepy, and the Zen-like, trippy music did not help. But apparently, I was the exception. The video got more than two lakh comments within a day of posting. People ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ over what it had done for them, and expressed their gratitude to Chopra in highly effusive language.

It brought home to me once again how big wellness is in the world that we are living in. And no longer is it dominated by the west. According to Euromonitor International, “In 2017, health and wellness continues to look to Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa for global growth, with these two regions posting retail value growth of 3.3 per cent and 4.2 per cent respectively. This is noticeable in the ranking of leading growth markets globally, headed by Egypt and India.”