Wait, is ‘wellness’ a sneaky right-wing cult?

Last Saturday morning, post-yoga, I was chatting with an old client at a studio where I once taught workout classes. It had been lovely catching up... until she said something that stopped me in my tracks.

We were talking about how rampant influenza and COVID-19 had been this winter and after flashing her my freshly flu-jabbed shoulder, she suddenly came out with, "Oh I’m anti all that — it’s terrible all the toxins we put in our bodies."

Watch a Wellness blogger apologises for calling cancer "good" for the body. Post continues after the video.

An instructor popped her head around the corner to contribute, "The one time I got the flu shot, I got the flu!" And several other clients nodded in agreement.

In many spaces, this is as far as it goes — a difference in opinion when it comes to conventional medicine. However, looking back at the pandemic, it's almost impossible to ignore how the pursuit of wellness inadvertently opened us up to far-right propaganda.

And it hasn't really gone away.

Despite the fact Donald Trump is no longer the US president, and life has returned to something resembling ‘normal’, conspiracy theories still abound in wellness spaces. And if we’re not on the lookout, it can be a pretty slippery slope from inner peace to full-blown conspiracy.

Because, as many people would agree, there’s just something special about finding ‘your people’. Whether it’s a fitness program, a meditation class or an online alternative wellness group, finding belonging in a community is instrumental to our well-being.

But what if your people go from exchanging gluten-free recipes to sharing articles about how many toxins vaccines contain? Or if your favourite yoga teacher goes from talking about aligning chakras, to theories about the ‘deep state’?

Well, that’s precisely what happened to Jaclyn Gelb, a devoted student of the now infamous Guru Jagat (born Katie Griggs). 

In case you haven't heard of Jagat, she is a charismatic American yoga Kundalini teacher and self-proclaimed spiritual guru.

As Gelb shared, she had thought she’d found her people — a place of belonging, where she instantly connected with the spiritual teachings of her newfound guru. And she was in a pretty high-profile company, with celebs such as Demi Moore and Kate Hudson as devoted followers. 

"I was, like, all in," Gelb told NPR’s All Things Considered, "A yoga teacher that talked like that, that was real, that was grounded — I knew instantly this is my teacher."

Gelb went on to share that she had seen hints of Jugat’s tendency toward conspiracy thinking in the lead-up to the pandemic, but nothing that raised obvious red flags — until suddenly, things took a darker turn. 

Jagat began preaching Q-anon conspiracy theories about the pandemic, defying mask mandates and stay-at-home orders.

"And, I mean, that caught my attention 'cause it was like, oh, she's falling into rabbit holes," Gelb told NPR. "When she brought in David Icke, I mean, that just was not something that the woman I knew before would do. That was so deeply offensive." 

After interviewing Ike (a notorious conspiracy theorist and anti-Semite) on her podcast, Guru Jagat left no doubt in anyone’s mind where her beliefs stood, and she would continue to preach conspiracy theories to her followers right up to her death in 2021.

In 2020, during the early COVID-19 lockdowns, Sarah Wilson, author of I Quit Sugar and wellness influencer told the Sydney Morning Herald she was being bombarded by conspiracy thinking on social media stating, "This is across the spectrum... that’s what’s most alarming. These aren’t otherwise extreme people."

This spurs from the fact that the early pandemic was, of course, a time of deep fear and uncertainty. A time when people were turning to the gospel of wellness to maintain a sense of control over an otherwise unrecognisable world.

A 2022 research paper from Melbourne’s Deakin University looking into the rise and risks of spirituality and wellness in Australia, used the term 'conspirituality' to cover the direct pipeline from spirituality to conspiracy thinking. 

The authors reference a cohort, already disillusioned by conventional medicine, turning to alternative therapies to treat chronic problems. 

As the authors state: "During the first year of COVID-19 lockdowns, it was then not surprising that many individuals and communities took up online spiritual practices, such as yoga, meditation, mindfulness, prayer and conscious dance, as coping mechanisms."

The authors note the study "revealed a more disturbing spiritual exceptionalism, in which some wellness influencers positioned themselves as having access to the 'real' and 'hidden' truth behind the pandemic and sought to convince others that they were in a spiritual war, and of the need to resist lockdowns and vaccine mandates that were threatening their freedom and sovereignty."

While this might sound extreme, it's more common than you might think. And our reverence for leaders in the industries of fitness and wellness ultimately plays a massive role in our personal views and beliefs — it's easy to see how these kinds of ideas can proliferate and spread among followers. 

Because the fact is, the world of wellness offers more than just a workout or low-sugar recipes. 

Wellness spaces offer a community and a sense of belonging that can leave us open to accepting ideas we might otherwise scoff at. We develop an openness to what our teachers and leaders are suggesting because they’ve helped us take control of our lives, our bodies and our minds in ways that can be truly life-enhancing.

Even seemingly harmless ideas about chemicals in our food, water, or sunscreen can seep in without any solid scientific backing because an influencer we trust claims they "did the research".

So, how can we separate the wheatgrass from the chaff? 

With a healthy dose of scepticism and a good understanding of how these things spread.

We don’t have to give up our favourite yoga class just because the teacher believes that sugar is poison — it’s okay to be exposed to belief systems that deviate from our own. It’s possible to still get what we need from these spaces, as long as we can keep one ear open for when alternative beliefs take a more sinister turn.

What are your thoughts on this? Share with us in the comment section below.

Feature Image: Getty/Canva.