We are entering an era where wellness is no longer defined by optimized productivity apps, wearable tech that tracks every heartbeat (along with your whereabouts for companies that do... surveillance... for some reason). We're broke. So broke that we laugh, but not shit is funny. We're tired. Beat-down, even.
The girls (myself included, as swearing off mindless consumerism to volunteer and mentor HUMBLED MEEEEE literally to my core and made me so much more grateful) are so quiet about their luxury wellness routines lately because the economy has them realizing those $3000 infrared yoga mats sold as “must-have” recovery tools aren't just unsustainable— there are free (and nearly-free!) alternatives and solutions to be found in nature!
I originally started my public social media diary project to be a sort of satirical and ego-shattering multimedia exploration of the self to help me overcome stage fright and anxiety. It worked in a weird twisted way, which has been hilarious, isolating, my worst nightmare come true (I knew it would come true), and also one of the coolest, most freeing and rewarding things I've ever done. I really do believe with everything in my heart that the future of wellness is quieter, older, and far more revolutionary than the current market wants you to know.
It is a deliberate disconnection from the always-on digital matrix and a deliberate reconnection to the earth, to ancestral rhythms, and to the indigenous and African teachings that have always understood the human body as inseparable from land, season, and spirit.
The data points are already clear. Social media trend cycles I track—combined with astrological transits like the looooooooong Pluto in Aquarius arc we’re living through (2024–2044 I believe?? Again, I'm not a certified astrologer or anything, I'm self-taught and keep track because it satisfies whatever type of OCD it is that I have)—are signaling a mass rejection of hyper-individualistic, tech-mediated “self-optimization.” Neptune’s lingering dance in Pisces, now moving toward Aries in time for the 2026 Spring Equinox, is dissolving the illusions we’ve built around constant connectivity. People are exhausted. Being connected is becoming more draining than convenient. Burnout is no longer a personal failing; it is a collective diagnosis. We are burned the fuck out. Everyone is chopped, evil, and miserable. And WE ALL KNOW that the antidote is not another subscription box or biohacking gadget. The antidote is return.
True self-care is not consumption. It is devotion.
It is the daily, intentional act of honoring the person you are becoming. When you carve out time to use your gua sha for lymphatic drainage or lie out in the sun on your shakti mat or sit with tea brewed from plants you grew or foraged, when you walk barefoot on soil and let your nervous system recalibrate to the earth’s frequency, when you anoint your body with oil and moisturizing lotions and speak gratitude to your ancestors for the body you get to care for every day— you are performing a ritual of becoming. You are saying: I am sacred, and this life is an offering to the version of myself that is still unfolding.
Indigenous and African cosmologies have never, ever separated care of the self from care of the collective and the land. In many African traditional practices, wellness is maintained through communal rituals, offerings to ancestors, and deep listening to the body as a vessel that carries both personal and intergenerational memory. The Yoruba concept of àṣẹ—the power to make things happen, the life force—is cultivated through alignment, not force. Indigenous North American traditions teach that we are in constant relation with the seen and unseen world; neglect of that relation is illness. These are not simply cute little ideas. They are blueprints we are remembering because the modern experiment has failed us.The ability to care for ourselves is being systematically dismantled by systems that profit from our depletion.
Corporate greed thrives on the myth that we are infinite resources. Hustle culture, gig economies, and “always available” work norms steal the unstructured time required for true rest and ritual. Meanwhile, the "wellness" industry—valued at over $5 TRILLION (a very EVIL ASS EXPLOITATIVE-LOOKING NUMBER!!!) globally—has co-opted the language of self-care to sell us back our own exhaustion in branded form. Substances, under-eye masks that leave you scaly and raw, lip-shredding "lip masks", and moonstone-infused water bottles become substitutes for the deeper work of slowing down, noticing, listening deeply, grounding, saying no, and reclaiming time.
The result? People outsource their well-being to corporations that have no stake in our liberation. They buy “calm” in an app while the same tech ecosystem fragments our attention and harvests our data. They purchase plastic “grounding” mats while the extractive economy destroys the very Earth we were designed to touch. This is not wellness; it is pacification dressed in pastel aesthetics. I didn't even realize how guilty I was until I started paying more attention to everything around me and how it was really making me feel.
In metaphysical and ancestral frameworks, a "portal" is a threshold—an intentional opening between states of being, between worlds, between the visible and invisible. Building consistent self-care rituals creates exactly that: a portal!
Every time you return to your self-care practices: your journal, your walk, your meditation, your breathwork, your garden, your ancestral prayers— you step through a doorway. You leave behind the conditioned self that believes scarcity, urgency, and productivity are the only truths. You enter a space where, maybe time dilates, and maybe your intuition sharpens, maybe you remember you are truly not separate from the intelligence of the natural world.
Your "rituals" (I know that word scares a certain type of people who don't know very much about cultures and spiritual practices, my apologies) do not have to be elaborate. Consistency is the key that turns the lock.Over time, these small portals accumulate. They become a pathway back to wholeness. They become revolutionary acts in a society that wants us dysregulated, fragmented, and ever-consuming.
The trends that I and many wonderful other voices help to forecast— rooted in cultural signals, planetary timing, and on-the-ground movements—point to a wellness renaissance grounded in land, lineage, and liberation. Community herbalism is rising. Land-back initiatives and regenerative agriculture are expanding. Young people are apprenticing with elders, learning plant medicine, ceremony, and earth-based spirituality. Digital detox retreats are filling up faster than luxury wellness resorts. And every day, despite the efforts of those in power to erase the past, more and more of us are asking: Who were my people before colonization stole their rituals? What did they know about living well?
This is not a trend that will peak and fade. This is a return that will deepen with each passing year. There is nothing anyone can do to stop this awakening of the people. It is fueled by love.
As we move further into 2026 and beyond, please try your very very best to choose devotion to self and a better, brighter future for all over distraction! So many others are saying this as well. I really need to compile a list of talented voices of all ages who help guide me as I navigate this life. Choose self-care ritual over rush.
A portal to my world is open. Step through if you're curious!
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