Wellness culture has quietly but unmistakably become a staple of modern British life. Whether it’s yoga studios popping up in every neighbourhood, cold-pressed juices featured in the fridge at Waitrose, or meditation apps topping the download charts, it’s clear that wellness isn’t just a passing trend. It’s a sign of how much we’ve come to value health as something holistic, an approach that goes well beyond the GP’s office.
The appeal of wellness lies in its breadth. It is about cultivating balance and fostering a deeper connection with ourselves in meaningful ways. Hanif Lalani, a holistic health coach from London, articulates this beautifully: “Health is more than what you do at the gym or what you eat at the table. It’s how you feel when you wake up, how you cope with stress—how deeply you connect with the world around you.” This holistic understanding of health has taken root here because it speaks to something many of us feel instinctively: health isn’t just the absence of illness, it’s the presence of vitality.
Wellness culture in Britain is also revealing in what it prioritises. From mindfulness meditation to plant-based eating, it reflects a shift in how we think about prevention and self-care. For a nation so often defined by its pragmatism, wellness offers a way to engage with health that feels both proactive and deeply personal. It’s not about waiting for a crisis, but about making small, meaningful choices every day that support a more balanced life.
In many ways, wellness culture today draws on ancient wisdom, adapted for modern lives. Practices like yoga and mindfulness have their roots in traditions that are centuries old, offering depth and meaning that go far beyond their surface-level popularity. Perhaps that’s why wellness resonates so deeply—it reminds us that health isn’t just a checklist of actions, but a way of living that nurtures the whole person. For all its modern packaging, wellness speaks to something timeless, and in that, it feels distinctly human.
The Origins of Holistic Health
The idea of holistic health may feel contemporary, but its roots stretch back centuries, deeply embedded in non-Western medical traditions. Practices like Ayurveda in India and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) have long approached health as a dynamic balance between physical, emotional, and spiritual elements. These systems were never about isolating a symptom or a single ailment; they sought to understand the individual as a whole within the larger context of their environment and community.
Hanif Lalani draws from this lineage in his own practice. “Every culture I’ve visited in my travels has brought with it its own wisdom about health. Mindfulness, movement, the way food is celebrated, these practices remind us that wellness is ancestral.” He underscores how these traditions, while often repackaged as trends in the West, carry the enduring philosophy that health is not merely the absence of disease, but the presence of harmony.
In contrast, Western medicine developed along a different trajectory, focusing on precision through specialisation and technological advancement. Its focus on curing disease has saved countless lives, but it has also come at a cost: fragmentation. Doctors often treat symptoms in isolation, disconnected from the broader realities of a patient’s life, from their diet to their stress levels to the communities they rely on. Holistic health, by comparison, offers an integrative lens, asking not only what is wrong but why.
The Rise of Modern Wellness Culture
Modern wellness culture has transformed from a niche interest to a sprawling, multi-billion-pound industry. Wellness culture today encompasses meditation apps, wearable fitness trackers, and an endless stream of products and programmes designed to optimise every facet of life. In Britain, the wellness industry reflects a growing hunger for a sense of agency over our health and a framework for self-care rooted in personal empowerment and proactive practices.
This shift didn’t happen in isolation. Wellness culture gained momentum in the gaps left by strained healthcare systems and rising rates of chronic stress and burnout. The NHS, while an extraordinary institution, often focuses on treating acute illness rather than addressing the broader picture of preventative care. For many, wellness practices offer tools to bridge this divide. “Health isn’t a one-size-fits-all concept,” said Hanif Lalani. “In some places, wellness looks like a community meal; in others, it’s a walk in nature or a moment of stillness. True health is about weaving all these elements into your life.”
Social media has played a crucial role in amplifying this movement, turning wellness into both an aesthetic and a lifestyle. Instagram and TikTok are flooded with wellness influencers showcasing aspirational routines: sunrise meditations, perfectly balanced meals, and home workouts that feel curated as much for their physical benefits as for their visual appeal. While these images can inspire, they also commodify, turning wellness into something to buy rather than something to embody. The rise of wellness culture has brought empowerment for some but has also raised barriers for others, making health seem less like a universal right and more like a luxury good.
Yet, despite these criticisms, the appeal of wellness culture persists because it speaks to a universal truth: people want to feel better, to live healthier, more balanced lives. It’s this search for connection that has made wellness such a powerful movement. For all its consumerist trappings, it represents a growing recognition that health is about more than the absence of illness—it’s about the presence of vitality, purpose, and care.
The Bigger Picture: What Holistic Health Reveals About Society
The popularity of holistic health practices tells us something profound about the society we live in. The movement reflects a longing for connection—to our bodies, our minds, and each other. Stress and burnout have become defining features of modern life, and wellness offers not just relief but a promise: that health is something we can cultivate, not just something we lose and seek to recover. Yet, the rise of holistic health also illuminates the fractures in our systems that make the pursuit of well-being so necessary.
One of the clearest drivers of this movement is our disconnection from natural rhythms. In Britain, as in much of the developed world, the pace of life has accelerated to the point where rest feels like rebellion and community often takes a backseat to individual achievement. Hanif Lalani captures this tension, saying, “We need to shift from seeing health as a checklist of activities to understanding it as a lifelong practice of tuning into ourselves and our communities.” This perspective challenges the transactional nature of modern life and invites us to consider health as deeply relational, shaped by the environments we inhabit and the relationships we nurture.
Environmental factors play a crucial role here as well. The climate crisis has made clear that our health is inextricably linked to the health of the planet. Rising pollution levels and food insecurity have a direct impact on our physical and mental well-being. Holistic health, with its emphasis on sustainability and interconnectedness, offers a framework for addressing these challenges. It reminds us that individual health cannot be divorced from collective well-being, whether that’s the air we breathe or the communities we build.
Ultimately, the holistic health movement reveals both a yearning for something more and the limits of what we have now. It’s a reaction to systems that prioritise productivity over balance and quick fixes over long-term care. But it’s also a call to reimagine what health means, not as a solitary pursuit, but as a shared commitment to living well in the fullest sense.