The Whole Truth | The rise of social wellness through community-driven healing events

Within the $4.5 trillion global wellness industry, the frontiers of human wellness are expanding at a dizzying rate. It’s hard to predict what’s next — I am waiting for this year’s Global Wellness Summit (in Qatar, November 6-9) to share with you first-hand, in this space, the insights and predictions of an industry that is no longer just driving optimum health, mind-body healing and longevity, but creating blueprints for how we should live our best selves.

Meanwhile, it’s obvious that one definite trend is the rise of niche, community-specific spaces, events, retreats and virtual rooms, which are bringing communities together to galvanise collective wholesomeness. Like everything in wellness, big investments and luxury are driving the concept of “social wellness”. Wellness trends follow the top to bottom route: From luxe to the hidden and offbeat. The Remedy Place opened in Los Angeles in 2019, described by its post-millennial founder Jonathan Leary as “the world’s first social wellness club”. The Remedy thereafter opened in New York. The most recent luxe social wellness hub in New York is a store-spa-cafe by Sporty & Rich, with focus on skincare, sexual wellness, products and dietary supplements.

In India, like everywhere else, wellness communities are beginning to show up as start-ups, social media groups and organizations. Former television CEO Tarun Katiyal and others are behind Coto, an online platform exclusively for women to support each other with their real-life experiences in sexual health, menstrual health, financial empowerment and other areas. There are around 5,000 communities around different issues, with over 200,000 registered members—mental health and menstruation are Coco’s most engaged and interactive communities. Members enter the Coto platform only through facial recognition.

A social healing group that has intrigued me recently, also a women-led initiative, is called WOLF (www.wolfgathering.com).  The name instantly took me back to a book I read in college that startled my logic-wired 19-year-old self, Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. In the hearteningly non-binary fluidity that Gen-Z is beginning to navigate today, Estés’ book, that uses Jungian archetypes, hag lore and wildlife observation to build an alternative feminine mythology, may seem a bit out of place. But it isn't really, because part of the non-binary way of thinking is to inhabit the inner synarchy of our bodies. Estés explains in the book’s introduction, “Over time, we have seen the feminine instinctive nature looted, driven back, overbuilt… but women’s flagging vitality can be restored by extensive ‘psychic-archeological’ digs into the ruins of the female underworld.” It is there that we might reveal “women’s deepest nature” and gain access to “the creative feminine.” In other words, own the feminine to gain real power.

The premise of WOLF is similar. It is a space where women can attune to and act upon “their deepest, wildest desires, and come together in a sacred circle where one can be oneself without fear”. The driving idea is strength and expression built on authenticity, and their first offline event, simply called ‘Wolf’, an “invite-curated community healing gathering for women", from October 19-22 in Goa, is meant for all individuals who self-identify as women. There are 50 spots for the event, which, says WOLF creator and “vision-holding-WOLF” Lilya Sabatiér, 37, is designed as a journey based on the shamanic medicine wheel.

I met Sabatiér in Mumbai to know more. With years of experience and training in personal development, alchemical transmutation, trauma recovery, and most importantly, embodied living, she brings to the gathering her journey as a community architect, experience designer, holistic guide, and facilitator in self-leadership using a multi-modality approach. Sabatiér has spent years in France, and various parts of India learning and witnessing healing practices and has a light, anti-marketing approach to organizing the event. “Both wolf and women have been tamed, shrunk, put in boxes in their ways of doing, thinking and feeling,” she says. Using mostly Instagram and word of mouth, she had 15 registrations for the event when we met in early July. “It’s deeply healing for me that this whole thing is based on trust,” she tells me.

A representation of the shamanic medicine wheel, the principles of which will be used in the WOLF retreat. (Graphic courtesy of WOLF)

Using techniques from pranic healing, reiki, yoga, breath work, permaculture, somatic therapy, trauma therapy and research, the facilitators of this retreat are invested more on gathered and lived wisdom rather than heavily knowledge-based, structured modalities. “I understand energy. Everybody has an energetic imprint, and we will be using techniques to shift energies so participants feel their primally authentic selves.”

There is enough mystery to this event, as it has no known precedent. And the wolves say, what happens at WOLF stays at WOLF.Note to readers: The Whole Truth is a fortnightly column on making sense of the new age of wellness.