Cultural appropriation is rife in western wellness circles

The argument

This argument holds that the wellness industry is racist because cultural appropriation is rife within it: the industry's core products are practices taken from non-white cultures, stripped of their context, rebranded, and sold — with the profits and authority flowing overwhelmingly to white practitioners and companies rather than to the communities that created them. The pattern runs through the industry's catalogue. Yoga, a centuries-old Indian spiritual discipline, has been repackaged in the West as a fitness product dominated by white instructors, studios and apparel brands. Meditation and mindfulness were lifted from Buddhist traditions and sold as productivity apps and corporate seminars. Ayurvedic medicine, smudging with white sage, turmeric 'golden milk' and other traditional practices are marketed as trendy discoveries — often without credit, and sometimes while the communities of origin were historically mocked, suppressed or criminalised for the very same practices. The commodification can even harm those communities materially, as when fashion-driven demand for white sage or palo santo strains resources sacred to Indigenous peoples. Proponents argue this is racism in structural form. Appropriation severs practice from people: the culture is welcome, the people are not — visible in an industry whose imagery, leadership and pricing centre affluent white consumers while practitioners of colour from the source traditions are marginalised as less marketable. Taking the heritage of non-white cultures while excluding their members from recognition and reward enacts precisely the hierarchy the industry claims to transcend. From this standpoint, an industry built so extensively on uncredited extraction from non-white cultures cannot be considered racially innocent. Because cultural appropriation is rife in Western wellness circles, this argument holds, the wellness industry is racist.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics of this argument accept much of its description while disputing what it establishes. That practices of non-Western origin have been commercialised, decontextualised and sold at scale is not seriously in question; that the resulting revenue concentrates among established Western companies is likewise observable. What is disputed is the step from those facts to the specific charge the position makes. First, 'taken' understates the agency of the source traditions. Modern postural yoga was propagated worldwide by Indian teachers and institutions — a deliberate export sustained across a century, and one the Indian state has continued to promote as cultural diplomacy. Clinical mindfulness programmes were developed with the participation of Buddhist teachers who wanted the practice disseminated. A description in which Western consumers are the only actors removes the choices the originating communities themselves made. Second, concentration of profit among incumbent firms is a general feature of commodified markets. It applies to goods with no non-white origin at all, and it follows from capital, distribution and marketing scale rather than from the ethnicity of a practice's inventors. To read a racial ordering off an unequal revenue distribution requires the further argument that the inequality is racial in its mechanism, which is precisely the disputed point rather than a premise already secured. Third, the harms the argument names are real but heterogeneous: strain on white sage supplies is an ecological and sovereignty question, uncredited borrowing is a question of attribution, and marketing that centres affluent white consumers is a question about who the industry sells to. Defenders argue these call for credit, consultation and supply-chain reform — not for the conclusion that the industry is racist, which is a claim about what the industry *is* rather than about what particular firms do.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Several of the practices named were actively exported by their source traditions — modern postural yoga was propagated worldwide by Indian teachers and institutions, and clinical mindfulness was developed with Buddhist teachers' participation — so 'taken' understates the agency of the communities of origin. [Rejecting P2] Concentration of profit among established Western firms is a general property of commodified markets and applies equally to goods with no non-white origin; an unequal distribution of revenue does not by itself demonstrate a racial ordering. [Rejecting P3] The move from appropriation to a racial hierarchy requires that the unequal outcomes be racial in mechanism, which is the contested conclusion rather than an established premise.