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4 February 2019
The concept of ‘Dying Well’ has been identified by the Global Wellness Summit (GWS) as one of eight wellness trends for 2019.
Other trends include: ‘Nutrition Gets Very Personalised’; ‘Wellness Takes on Over-tourism’; ‘Prescribing Nature’; ‘Meditation Goes Plural’; ‘Well Fashion – Way Beyond Ahtleisure’; ‘MediScent: Fragrance Gets a Wellness Makeover’; and ‘China – Uncovering the Wealth In Wellness’.
States the 2019 GWS Trends report: “Each of the eight trends speaks to topics that push the health and wellness envelope in unprecedented ways. We predict that these very new directions in wellness will grow worldwide and become big business in the years ahead.”
In terms of ‘Dying Well’, the GWS report references the ‘death positive’ movement, where everything around dying is getting radically rethought – from making the experience more humane, to mourning and funerals getting reimagined, to people actively exploring death as part of a mentally healthy life. “Finally,” states the report, “a ‘better death’ is becoming integral to the idea of a ‘well life.”
Said Amy McDonald at the 2018 Global Wellness Summit in Italy: “The wellness world has been obsessed with ‘living well,’ and the relentless focus has been all about staying beautiful and young. But we now must tackle dying well…or how can we lay claim to ‘wellness’ at all?”
The GWS report foresees the rise of a new practitioner, the death doula, who fills the gap in care between medicine and hospice, families and fear – and who is dedicated to giving people a better, more meaningful and peaceful death.
Moving onto the ‘Personalised Nutrition’ trend, the GWS reports that this being propelled into the mainstream by diet confusion, new tech and the ‘power of me’. The age of personalised nutrition will see science and technology dictating what food is right for us – not only for weight management but, more importantly, to manage our overall health and wellness.
As for the ‘Wellness Takes on Over-tourism’ trend, the GWS report notes that the current tourism expansion is highly concentrated. It quotes Euromonitor International’s statistic that 46% of all travelers go to just 100 destinations.
The report maintains that over-tourism is a wellness issue for the world, as travel to over-touristed places ‘is not a well experience for visitors nor for locals’. Diversifying the tourism product helps to relieve pressure on natural and cultural resources and achieves a more equitable distribution of tourism benefits for residents. Wellness assets provide a path toward diversification and distribution and thus wellness travel can draw visitors to under-visited regions.
To access the report log on to https://www.globalwellnesssummit.com/press/press-releases/gws-releases-eight-wellness-trends-for-2019/
Image sourced from GWS website