281: Mind, Body and Spirit: The History of Wellness in America

BackStory

History, Education

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2019

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Recent estimates have put the value of the “Wellness Industry” at $4.2 billion, with celebrities like Jay-Z and Gwyneth Paltrow offering advice on how to get, and stay, well. But being holistically healthy hasn’t always involved a daily dose of meditation. Ed and Brian explore the history of Wellness, a story which takes in breakfast cereal, leotards and Sigmund Freud.

Image: Aerobics created by Fotoburo de Boer between 1983 and 1985

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Major funding for backstories provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.
0:11.0	For Virginia Humanities, this is Backstory.
0:20.0	Welcome to Backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines. I'm Ed Ayers.
0:26.0	And I'm Brian Balla. If you're new to the podcast, we're all historians and each week along with our colleagues Joanne Freeman and Nathan Connelly, we explore a different aspect of American history.
0:41.0	Now, close your eyes, relax your body and take a deep breath. Breathe out, breathe in, and breathe out.
0:56.0	And we thought we'd start you off this week with a little meditation courtesy of your favorite meditation teacher, Brian Balla.
1:08.0	Yes, said, you're the only person I know who speaks while he meditates. Let's try it again. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
1:23.0	I'm afraid you've put all our audience to sleep, Brian. It wouldn't be the first time in.
1:29.0	Meditation has gone mainstream recently, promoted by the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z. It's part of a broader wellness craze that's taken over the country and making lots of money.
1:40.0	Recent estimates have it that the global wellness industry is worth some $4.2 billion and growing.
1:48.0	This week on Backstory, we decided to dive into the history of wellness and explore practices that were embraced or rejected throughout history.
1:58.0	We'll bring you the story of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who brought seventh-day Adventist theology to his wellness center in the late 1800s.
2:08.0	And we'll learn about how Dr. Sigmund Freud's one and only visit to America carried cycle analysis across the Atlantic.
2:25.0	All right, here we go.
2:28.0	Both of my proponents are going to walk around.
2:31.0	All right.
2:42.0	What you're hearing is a clip from a local aerobics class. Don't worry, I'm not wearing my leotard.
2:49.0	You saw it in this line down in the middle.
2:52.0	All right, I'm going to walk you out side by side.
2:57.0	People, mostly women, sweating it out, dancing and jumping around to a choreographed routine.
3:10.0	Today, aerobics has been eclipsed by more popular kinds of exercise, like CrossFit and Yoga. But it used to be all the rage.
3:19.0	Aerobics was very popular in the 1980s, and there's a few ways that we can see this.
	...

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