The Global Wellness Summit (GWS) has released its top nine wellness trends for 2021, reflecting how wellness is poised to take a bigger seat at the health care table.
It predicts a future industry that will be more inclusive, accessible and affordable. It also suggests how wellness will “get real” and more evidence-based, as well as tackle tougher, more crucial human pain-points. The report also predicts how wellness will continue to rewrite vast industries, from travel, to architecture and design, to the meetings industry. Click here to read the complete release.
This forecast is based on the insights of hundreds of top executives of wellness companies, economists, doctors, investors, academics and technologists that gathered in person and virtually at the recent Summit to debate where wellness was headed.
Here is a summary of the trends for 2021:
Hollywood, entertainment Industries jump in
Wellness will become a bigger, more meaningful programming focus in the TV and music industries, as Big Media digests the huge cultural force wellness has become.
If wellness programming on TV (whether Oprah or the Goop Lab) has been about wellness as a topic you passively consume, the future is TV content and platforms that involve and impact you.
Immune health: stop boosting, start balancing
In 2020, people were blitzed with “immune-boosting” supplements, foods and therapies, but the idea that you can “boost” your immunity is unscientific nonsense, and “more boosting” is precisely the wrong approach. The future: approaches that lead to immuno-stabilization, immuno-balance.
We will see more evidence-backed approaches to immune health, with metabolic health, the microbiome, and personalized nutrition becoming crucial—along with more experimentation with everything from “positive stress” experiences to intermittent fasting for immune resilience. And immunity programs at travel destinations will go deeper, more medical, with interventions that matter more than “immune-boosting” menus and IV drips.
Spiritual, numinous moments in architecture
In 2021, we will see new attention paid to creating everyday spaces that can incite sacred and numinous moments, that elevate our consciousness and potential, and ground us in gravitas in the midst of a mindless, consumerist society. Architecture and design will move up Maslow’s Pyramid, from our recent era of look-at-me, visually ostentatious fads like luxury McMansions to a new architecture reaching for the “Self-Actualization” tier—a built environment that can move our souls.
Just breathe
Practitioners are bringing breathwork to ever-larger audiences and pushing it into fascinating new territories, including rehabilitation, fitness, community building, and relief from chronic stress, trauma and PTSD. Cool, clubby breathwork parties and festivals are rising. There are even studies that point to breathwork as a possible therapeutic for one of the world’s deadliest diseases: hypertension. Perhaps the best part of all—this drug-free medicine costs absolutely nothing.
Where wellness and healthcare converge
Wellness is learning to lean into science, establish standards, and hold itself accountable. At the same time, healthcare is beginning to borrow from the wellness playbook—transforming a once sterile and strictly curative industry into a more holistic, lifestyle-oriented, and even pleasurable one. In this new era, hospitals will take inspiration from f5-star resorts, yoga studios might measure improved telomere length, and prescriptions may be coupled with hyper-personalized guides to optimal health.
Adding color to wellness
While diversity and inclusion have become a popular topic in the wellness industry, this trend argues that to generate substantive change, the wellness industry must recognize and address the false narrative that wellness is for affluent white people. It discusses how the industry can add color to wellness by valuing Black consumers and wellness professionals and describes the different ways that Black people actually experience wellness offerings and spaces, highlighting racial inequalities. Companies that value wellness for all racial groups and income levels will thrive as they expand their consumer markets and increase business innovation and profitability.
Resetting events with wellness
Top-of-mind topics like health, safety and immunity employ new protocols and technologies that mitigate risk in engaging ways. In 2021 and beyond, creativity is driving connection—and how we gather is taking on new—and healthier—meanings.
Financial wellness is finding its voice
A culture craving authenticity is breaking the money taboo—transforming finance from a hush-hush, one-size-fits-all, cut-and-dry industry to one that’s more human, empathetic, and, dare we say, fun.
Financial therapists are tackling the intersection between money and mental health, and the three billion views of #personalfinance content on TikTok prove that finance influencers are officially a thing.
The travel reset
The year 2021 may be the year that all travel becomes wellness travel. From the manic travel of 2019, which was the ninth year of record-setting growth in travel, outpacing global economic expansion, 2021 will be the year of the travel reset, going slower, nearer and more mindfully. But travel will reset fitfully, mirroring the vaccination rollout, which has prompted optimism as well as tentativeness.