Healing and Wellness under Capitalism

Healing and Wellness under Capitalism

Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” As climate change and environmental collapse become the new norm and late-stage capitalism results in an increasingly precarious and unequal world, how can we really heal? Using a variety of creative practices including writing prompts, mindfulness, food medicine, and more, we will explore how to develop authentic wellness practices that sustain us and our world within this peculiar moment of late-stage capitalism and environmental collapse.

Together we will explore the effects of growing up in a hypercapitalist society and the struggle to heal within a system that constructs a 4.2 trillion dollar “wellness” industry while failing to meet basic collective needs in food, education, housing, or healthcare. How do we survive and heal within these systems while also articulating a more brilliant vision for the world and our collective future? In facilitating these discussions, I will draw on both my academic scholarship and my intensely personal experience growing up as an early and committed activist who experienced intense burnout, spurring an ongoing journey of self-healing and sustainable activism. Having facilitated and taught workshops around the United States and in Argentina on poetry and creativity, I am interested in hosting a space where we can (safely and in loving community) excavate the truth of our lives within profoundly inhumane and destructive systems.

Potential topics include: the “wellness” industry, dark crystals, sustainable plant medicine, white/colonialist takeovers of traditional healing practices, mindful eating and daily living practices, sensory healing modalities, and sustainable activism.

Healing and Wellness under Capitalism will be shared by Zavi Kang Engles.