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American Detox

The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal

Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
For readers of Hope in the Dark and Natural Causes—The myth of wellness is a lie. And until we learn to confront and dismantle its toxic systems, we can’t ever be well.
Better, stronger, healthier, whole—we’re an America obsessed with self-seeking and self-perfection. We've bought into the idea that with enough intention, dedication, and green smoothies, “wellness” is ours for the taking. But despite a $650 billion industry and infinite good vibes, we don’t feel good. We aren’t happy or healthy. We’re isolated, unwell, and inequitable—and the myth of wellness is making it worse.
 
In American Detox, yoga activist, wellness disruptor, and CTZNWELL founder Kerri Kelly sounds a wake-up call. We don’t need more green juices and self-care fads—we need to divest from the separation and scarcity that fuel the modern wellness movement and hold us back from making truly positive change for self and society. In the single-minded pursuit of feeling good, we fail to ask: is all this self-focus really making the world a better place? How does the stuff we consume in the name of “wellness” hurt communities and the planet? Whom do we harm when we divorce wellness practices from their cultural origins, and who’s left out?
 
To build wellness models designed for everyone, we need to dismantle a culture rooted in exclusivity, individualism, consumerism, and white supremacy. We need to resist, disrupt, and dream better futures of what being well can really mean—and do the inner work necessary to unlearn the harmful messages that we’ve internalized about what “healthy” looks like, who gets to be well, and why wellness is not a solo pursuit. 
Each chapter includes personal reflections and prompts for collective action to help readers reimagine wellness, understand positionality and privilege, and become agents for whole wellness on a society-level scale.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 4, 2022
      Whitewashed wellness culture gets a withering critique in this fiery debut by yoga teacher Kelly. Calling wellness “extreme materialism masquerading as a spiritual practice,” she suggests that the commodification of South Asian and Indigenous American mind-body traditions dilutes them and continues colonization’s legacy of injustice. Kelly traces the roots of wellness’s concern with attaining a “healthy” and “normal” body back to early eugenicists, finding that wellness places the “moral imperative” for health on the individual despite research showing “things like poverty, racism, and violence influence our well-being far more than individual behaviors.” The author also debunks the myth that fatness means ill health, drawing on studies that contest the relationship between BMI and chronic disease. Activities encourage readers to get involved in mutual aid, examine their “proximity to power and privilege,” and form community activism groups. With a crusader’s spirit and an activist’s mindset, Kelly joins a bounty of historical, sociological, and medical evidence in an informed understanding of how injustices intersect under the banner of wellness. Anyone interested in a more equitable approach to alternative medicine should read this.

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Languages

  • English

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