Hi friends, welcome to the Wabi-Sobby podcast. This is episode number 154.

The singing bowl is back. While I'm in Brooklyn, staring at the clouds, I wanted to share thoughts today on the wellness

consumerism industry and how we can separate this belief system from what is true wellness

since the lines have been blurred and distorted.

Predominantly over the last 15 years, what is so interesting is that the practice of wellness

itself should be pure and simple, attainable, authentic, no attachment, no judgment, and free. And yet we have flipped wellness upside down

into a judgmental, expensive, unattainable, and almost, I hate to say this, but culturally

appropriated industry that is now for profit.

And I can specifically remember when I was booked on a show called Cook Yourself Thin,

the title was not my decision. That was Lifetime Television and Tiger Aspect, a production company based out of the UK.

I remembered the year was close to, I want to say, 2007.

And my agents told me that wellness was never going to become mainstream.

And it was not cool to show people

how to be healthy, especially pertaining to cooking and food and wellness and these practices

where I didn't even realize that the way my mother raised me as a Japanese mom in an American

household was actually based off of

eating real because in Japan, they typically ate a diet of sea vegetables, miso, rice,

fermented pickles called skimono, as well as, you know, a little bit of fish or tofu or maybe even

a natto for protein, adzuki beans, um, Sekihon, mountain mix veggies in your rice. I mean,

there were so many things that were very, very healthy.

And fermented foods, you know, like the typical miso paste or natto, soy sauce, and even the

tukimona pickles, like a lot of these, contained koji, which is also in sake. It's in

...