Are we actually well?

I recently tried to book a sound bath. One person. One session. The instructor was not a certified therapist or medical professional. She ran a studio. The cost was ₹10,000.

I did not book it.

But plenty of people did. And that, more than the price tag, is what got me thinking.

The global wellness market is valued at $2 trillion, growing at roughly 10% annually, more than double the rate of the broader health and beauty category. In India, the numbers are moving in the same direction, faster. Pilates studios are opening on every corner of every affluent neighbourhood. A group session runs upwards of ₹2,500. A one-on-one is closer to ₹5,000. To be fair, there is a real difference between the two. A one-on-one allows the instructor to assess your posture, understand your history, and customise your programme. A group session cannot. But most people booking these pilates sessions are not asking that question. They are booking because everyone else is booking.

Then there is Dhun, Mira Kapoor’s wellness sanctuary in Mumbai. A seven day programme is priced at ₹1.75 lakh. To her credit, Mira Kapoor takes an active operational role and the brand has raised $4 million from credible institutional investors. This is not a celebrity vanity project. But it is, by design, aimed at 0.05% or less of India’s population. Wellness at that price point is not a health product. It is a luxury consumption category with a health narrative attached.

Now, zoom out to the West.

A Goop article I recently came across opened with a scene from an IV therapy lounge in Santa Monica, where two ultra-fit millennials flirted for twenty minutes while their bloodstreams absorbed vitamin B12 and magnesium. They exchanged numbers. They vowed to meet for a cold plunge. The article described it, earnestly, as a ‘meet-cute for the wellness generation’.

This is the world the wellness industry has built. Private social wellness clubs are now promoting IRL connection alongside state-of-the-art wellness activations. Matchas are the new martinis. Memberships at these clubs range from $280 a month at the entry level to $6,500 annually plus a $2,500 initiation fee at the higher end, for services including IV therapy movie nights, hyperbaric chambers, and what one club calls the Ammortal Chamber. The same Goop newsletter also contained a vagina scented candle. It sold out.

That is the wellness industry in one sentence. Genuinely interesting ideas, credible thinkers, and a cervical crystal, all on the same platform, all carrying the same implicit endorsement.

What began as a genuine movement toward better health has become increasingly polluted by social media influencers and celebrity endorsements peddling unproven remedies. Celebrity influence is now the dominant force behind most wellness trends, often outweighing scientific credibility. Bryan Johnson’s extreme longevity routine birthed a $2.7 billion market of unproven budget alternatives. A man’s personal obsession with not dying became an industry overnight, not because the science was validated, but because the anxiety it spoke to was real and the aspiration it sold was compelling.

There are real things here.

Sleep matters. Movement matters. Stress management matters. Some of the ancient practices being repackaged and repriced, breathwork, yoga, Ayurveda, have genuine evidence behind them when practiced correctly.

The problem is not that people are paying attention to their health. The problem is that the industry has figured out that anxiety is extraordinarily monetisable, and that a generation of people who feel vaguely unwell are willing to pay almost anything for something that promises to fix it, without asking too many questions about whether it actually will.

Nobody is asking those questions.

Is my sound bath instructor certified?

Does this pilates group session actually address my specific mobility issues, or does it just make me feel like I am doing something?

Is the ₹10,000 I am about to spend on a single session going to produce a different outcome than a ₹500 session with a certified physiotherapist?

The wellness industry has industrialised the avoidance of those questions. It has replaced them with aesthetics, influencer endorsements, and the vague but powerful feeling that if you are doing this, you are someone who takes care of themselves.

The honest question worth sitting with is whether any of this is actually making us well. Not calmer for an afternoon. Not more aesthetically aligned with what a healthy person looks like on Instagram. Actually, measurably, clinically better.

For most of what is being sold at these price points, the answer is probably not. And the fact that we are not asking that question, has me asking the uncomfortable question of how well we actually are?