09 Jun 2026

Meditating on the Wellness Grift

by jj skolnik

Photo illustration by Joe MacLeod

I have meditated every single day for 400 days today, according to my tracker app. I took up the practice after a traumatic incident threw me out of balance; I needed very badly to self-regulate, and focusing on my breath, letting my thoughts come and go without judgment, felt like it could help. And it did. Sitting for five minutes—then 10, 15, 30—helped me step back from intrusive thoughts and feelings. It’s become a crucial tool for me.

I want to point out here that I was also in PTSD-focused therapy at the time I began my meditation practice. I have been in some kind of therapy for most of my life. I was marked with a significant amount of difference from the outset and experienced violence during childhood; I’ve been running uphill against the wind basically the whole time and have needed some extra help. I haven’t always been able to afford it, but I’ve had consistent access for a good long while now, and I’m so grateful for it.

Wellness grifters often treat meditation as a magical cure (though not quite a panacea, since they don’t just have retreats to sell you; they’ve got supplements, cleanses, and an assortment of accessories too). Quacks and mountebanks have been a consistent feature of life in the U.S. for roughly as long as it’s existed, and they are currently experiencing one of their cyclical renaissances. I recommend Ronald Purser’s McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality for an excellent analysis of how easily meditation was commandeered into the service of the consumerism, egotism, and capitalist needs you might have thought it was intended to oppose. It is much cheaper, after all, to offer workers “mindfulness breaks” than it is to give them better health benefits, and sitting too long with the wrong intentions can be used to isolate and control someone very quickly. Instead of breaking feedback loops, the way I’ve been able to do, it can also be used to trap you in them.