The lost meaning of true Wellbeing - how Wellness culture is making us sick

Wellness has become a marketing buzzword, attached to everything and sold with endless self-improvement promises. Yet genuine wellbeing cannot be bought or achieved through accumulation. It emerges when we turn inward with patience, kindness and curiosity. Mindfulness meditation offers a sustainable way of relating to ourselves, others and the world, revealing wellbeing as a lifelong inquiry and practice rather than a destination. It is not a quick fix (although it is often sold as such), but requires a level of commitment, engagement and honest exploration.

Modern culture equates well-being with constant improvement, fixing and acquiring, fuelling chronic dissatisfaction. And despite unprecedented access to wellness products and advice, people seem more anxious, depressed and lonely than ever.

True wellbeing is less about happiness and more about psychological safety and groundedness. It is the capacity to meet life honestly and creatively, to know our inner needs, and to remain engaged with the present moment. Crucially, it can coexist with difficult emotions such as grief, disappointment and uncertainty. It is not dependent on things being good or perfect. This is a profound shift—because it allows us to step off the rollercoaster of only being okay when everything and everyone else is.

At its depth, well-being is a sense of coherence with what is real.

Mindfulness meditation invites us to draw from an inner well rather than being reliant on external resources. As the nervous system settles, stillness and sufficiency arise naturally. Over time, we learn to accept discomfort and unease rather than resist them. Restlessness, sadness, low mood and longing become teachers. By staying present, we process our experience more fully and develop a steadier, more resilient sense of contentment.

So when the urge for the next wellness quick fix appears, we can pause and ask: What do I actually need right now?

What mindfulness meditation really is — and why how it’s taught matters

Mindfulness has become increasingly popular in Ireland in recent years. You’ll find it in workplaces, schools, therapy rooms and all over the internet. That’s a positive thing in many ways, but it has also led to some confusion about what mindfulness actually is.

Because mindfulness meditation isn’t regulated here, it’s easy to assume that all meditation is much the same, and that the main purpose is to relax, switch off or reduce stress. While these things can happen, they’re not really what mindfulness meditation is about.

And this matters, particularly when we’re working with people who are struggling, feeling vulnerable, or living with the effects of stress or trauma.

Mindfulness isn’t about trying to relax

Mindfulness meditation, particularly within the Vipassanā, or insight meditation, tradition, isn’t about making yourself feel calm, peaceful or relaxed.

It’s about learning to pay attention to what’s happening in the present moment, with openness and curiosity, without immediately trying to change it or make it go away.

That means being willing to notice whatever is there, including things we might not find particularly comfortable:

  • Physical discomfort

  • Restlessness or agitation

  • Difficult emotions

  • Painful memories

  • Boredom, doubt or resistance

Sometimes, mindfulness practice can feel uncomfortable or even unsettling. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing it wrong. It may simply mean you’re becoming more aware of things that were already there, but that you’d usually distract yourself from or push away.

The practice is about learning to meet our experience as it is, rather than constantly trying to make it different.

Interestingly, when we stop struggling so much with what we’re feeling, things can begin to shift. We might notice that we’re holding tension in our bodies, resisting an emotion, or wishing a particular feeling would go away. As we begin to soften around these reactions, we may find a little more space, ease or relief.

Relaxation can indeed come from this, but it isn’t something we have to force or achieve.

Why it matters when mindfulness is presented as a way to relax

When mindfulness is mainly promoted as a way to calm down, switch off or feel better, it can create some real difficulties.

People may feel they’re doing something wrong if they don’t feel relaxed. Teachers may unintentionally encourage people to avoid difficult feelings rather than learn how to relate to them. And experiences that naturally arise during meditation may be seen as problems, rather than something that needs to be understood and approached with care.

People can also be caught off guard when meditation brings up feelings or sensations they weren’t expecting.

This is especially important for people living with anxiety, depression or the effects of trauma. When we begin paying closer attention to ourselves, we may become more aware of difficult emotions, physical sensations or painful memories. For some people, this can feel overwhelming, particularly if they haven’t been given the right guidance or support.

Mindfulness is not about forcing ourselves to sit with everything that comes up, regardless of how difficult it feels. Nor is it about pushing through discomfort at all costs.

It is about gradually developing our ability to be present with our experience, while recognising our own limits and working at a pace that feels manageable and safe.

This is why how mindfulness is taught matters so much. It’s not just about learning a technique. It’s about understanding the practice, knowing how to work with what arises, and recognising that the same approach won’t be right for everyone.

When mindfulness is taught with care, understanding and sensitivity, it can help us develop a different relationship with ourselves and our experiences — not by making difficult feelings disappear, but by helping us meet them with greater awareness and less struggle.

Beyond “McMindfulness”: When Mindfulness Becomes Avoidance

There is a form of mindfulness that has become very popular in recent years: mindful cups of tea, breathing exercises, grounding techniques, nervous system regulation, corporate wellness workshops, and “stress reduction” practices packaged into digestible soundbites or tools.

Some of it can genuinely help people.

But increasingly, I find myself asking:

At what point does mindfulness stop being inquiry and become avoidance?

The term “McMindfulness” has emerged as a critique of mindfulness stripped of depth — mindfulness reduced to a consumable wellness product. In this form, mindfulness often becomes less about understanding suffering and more about managing symptoms just enough to remain functional within stressful systems.

Take a breath.
Calm down.
Regulate.
Return to the present moment.

None of these is inherently bad. In fact, practices like box breathing or mindful attention to sensory experience can be deeply supportive, especially for people experiencing overwhelm or dysregulation.

But there is a difference between:

  • calming the nervous system,
    and

  • understanding the mind.

This distinction matters. Mindfulness has two essential aspects: first, calming and settling the mind using an anchor, and second, developing insight into the workings of the mind and the underlying causes of suffering. We need to spend time cultivating stability before we can effectively engage in this deeper inquiry. These two aspects are like the two wings of a bird: both are essential, and neither alone is sufficient for the journey towards greater understanding and freedom.

Regulation Is Not the Same as Insight

Much contemporary mindfulness focuses almost entirely on regulation:

  • lowering anxiety,

  • reducing stress,

  • improving focus,

  • increasing productivity,

  • creating temporary calm.

These are important points to consider. Many people need accessible tools to feel safer in their bodies. For many, these practices can be very useful—and even essential—as an initial step toward engaging more in mindfulness practices later.

But mindfulness, in its deeper traditions, was never only about relaxation. It was also about inquiry.

About turning toward:

  • craving,

  • fear,

  • attachment,

  • identity,

  • defensiveness,

  • avoidance,

  • conditioning,

  • ego,

  • suffering.

It asked difficult questions:

  • Why does the mind cling?

  • Why do we react the way we do?

  • What unhelpful thinking patterns have we have developed?

  • What are we avoiding?

  • Who are we when the stories quieten?

  • What happens when we stop trying to fix experience and actually meet it?

Without this dimension, mindfulness can become strangely superficial — a way to soothe ourselves without ever examining the underlying structures shaping our distress. Like anything superficial, it fails to address the root causes of the dysregulation in the first place.

When Mindfulness Becomes Spiritual Bypassing

Psychotherapist John Welwood coined the term “spiritual bypassing” to describe the use of spiritual ideas and practices to avoid unresolved emotional or psychological material.

This can look like:

  • using calmness to suppress anger,

  • using “presence” and breathing techniques to avoid conflict or to avoid processing grief,

  • using non-judgmental awareness to sidestep accountability,

  • or using all of the above to cope with a stressful situation that really requires a strong boundary.

In these cases, mindfulness becomes less about awakening and more about emotional management.

A way of staying comfortable.
A way of staying untouched.

And sometimes, beneath the language of “peace” and “presence,” there can be a subtle fear of genuinely encountering the complexity of the human psyche.

The Commodification of Awareness

Mindfulness has also become highly marketable.

It fits neatly into the quick-fix wellness culture:

  • aesthetically pleasing,

  • emotionally safe,

  • easy to package,

  • easy to sell.

But deep, transformational work is rarely neat.

Real inquiry into the mind can destabilise us. It can expose contradiction, grief, shame, fear, dependency, illusion, and trauma. It can dismantle identities we’ve spent years constructing. But, it can provide profound insights and lead to genuine transformation.

That kind of work cannot always be condensed into a lunchtime workshop or a branded self-care exercise.

And perhaps this is part of the discomfort and frustration that many people rightly feel around modern mindfulness culture: not that mindfulness itself is empty, but that it is often presented without depth, ethics, psychology, or genuine inquiry.

Mindfulness Is Not the Problem

I want to be clear: I am not dismissing simple practices.

A mindful cup of tea can be beautiful.
A breathing exercise can help someone through a panic attack.
Grounding techniques can genuinely support nervous system regulation.

But these practices are beginnings, not endings.

The danger arises when mindfulness becomes limited to merely soothing our discomfort rather than transforming the habits, patterns, and ways of being that create the need for self-soothing in the first place.

Awareness, at its deepest, is not merely calming.

It is revealing.

And sometimes what it reveals is uncomfortable.

That discomfort is not failure.
It may actually be where the real work begins.