Is Woo-Woo the New Face of Modern Wellness?
Photo by Brya Sheridan
I T COULDN’T HAVE been more obvious. Precious and rectangular, its surface was adorned with an image of the Queen. With a forest hue that contrasted the white snow, it was awaiting discovery. She didn’t quite know what it was worth, but any money seemed like a lot for a small girl. Her mitten sifted through the snow until she uncovered an old bill. Waving the wet and tattered paper note in the air, she showed off her new prized possession, “Look, Mom, I’m rich!”
This was my first memory of jealousy. Six years old and fiery-eyed, I could hardly stand to watch my sister find a whole twenty dollars. After numerous complaints to my Mom, she jokingly voiced that I should hurry back to the bottom of the ski hill—maybe then I could find a fortune of my own. I raced up the magic carpet lift (or at least as fast as the conveyor belt would take me). Somehow, I knew that by the time I straight-lined it down the slope, there would be a twenty-dollar bill waiting for me.
I navigated my way to the bottom of the hill, maneuvering around any skiers blocking my path to riches. Lo and behold: a crisp twenty-dollar bill (that I must mention was in much better shape than the one my sister had found) lay atop the snow. After what seemed like forever, my family finally arrived at the bottom of the ski slope. “You were right, Mom!” I dangled the bill in front of my sister’s face to show her that I too was lucky enough to find free cash.
To this day, and after extensive questioning, my Mom still vouches that she never placed the bill there to appease me. Basically, this event marked my first experience with the power of thought.
Being a kid at the time, my instinct was to be open-minded. I didn’t question the likelihood of what was possible or what I could achieve. And all it took was to open a few spirituality books in my early twenties to conclude that this was a case of manifestation.
An article by The Click sheds light on the sudden surge of interest in manifestation, witchcraft, astrology, and tarot over the course of 2020. As TikTok provides users with a range of readily available content, Generation Z is now more spiritual than ever.
And here’s what's happening: Gen Z has grown up in a digital age that has made a plethora of information that’s easily accessible. People seek meaning and purpose in their lives and this information is spurring their wellness journeys into high gear. A reiki session from a spiritual healer is an effective way to explore energetic imbalances in a non-judgmental environment. Basically, an energetic imbalance is like a traffic jam in the body’s energy flow. Unlike doctors, reiki practitioners use their hands to deliver energy to the body, improving the flow and balance of your energy to support healing.
Spirituality encompasses a wide range of beliefs that seek to connect people with something greater than themselves, covering practices such as manifestation and EFT tapping. I’ll admit that these practices can seem whimsical, but spirituality is far more powerful than it seems.
The Investigation
Over the span of three months, I was determined to interview healers in Toronto to learn how our thoughts change the way we live. Although spirituality is malleable in its meaning, my findings share a common definition: choosing the right thoughts can lead to a more blissful life. There is correlation between spirituality and our thoughts, because the mind, body and spirit are connected. To cut through the jargon—we have the choice to think how we want to think; positive thoughts or negative thoughts, which means that our environment is a reflection of the energy we put into it.
A popular method for changing our thoughts is manifestation. It involves bringing one’s desires, intentions, and goals into reality using spiritual practices such as journaling, affirmation, or alignment with a higher consciousness. Manifestation typically begins with having a clear intention of the goal, desire, or outcome you wish to bring into your life. Positive affirmations and visualization are the next steps to align your thoughts and emotions with your dream reality. Once you can picture your manifestation, it’s important to trust the process and allow your desire to unfold naturally.
The law of attraction goes hand-in-hand with manifestation as it suggests that positive or negative thoughts can bring positive or negative experiences into a person's life. Often confused as ‘magical-thinking’ where there is no action taken to reach what one desires, manifestation is more of a productive tool that requires setting and visualizing your goals to align the subconscious mind with your surroundings.
Still, there is a misconception that spirituality is pseudoscience. Sometimes compared to toxic spirituality, a term that describes the belief that a person must always be positive, and that anything negative is indisputably bad. Some skeptics believe that spirituality is a practice that lacks evidence and is molded by concepts of God and religion. But, by judging spiritual practices solely based on their ‘feel-good’ ability and with the right questions and research, spiritual wellness has the potential to provide amazing benefits.
Energy Doesn’t Lie
Vivian Osal’s melodious voice echoed through the phone despite our physical separation. “I use this amazing prayer. I can share it with you if you want?” she asked. I confirmed, and Osal, a spiritual coach and reiki master from Toronto, proceeded to lead me through her manifestation exercise. She first guided me to focus on the feeling of something I wish to welcome into my life, instructing me to first take an easy breath in, close my eyes, place at least one of my hands on my upper chest or heart area, and smile softly. I felt myself sinking into my chair as her words flowed through the phone. I must mention that I do not view myself as religious; I don’t exactly know what it means to pray, but I believe this is what makes spirituality so fluid.
After engaging in this meditation, I really did feel calmness wash over me. A therapy session is an excellent way to enhance a person’s mental and emotional health, but spiritual coaching has the potential to delve even deeper by healing a person on an energetic level.
Osal explains in detail how she uses manifestation to achieve success in her coaching practice. She speaks about her guided manifestation exercise by saying that, “when things are slow with my business and I’ve got too many empty slots in my calendar, there's an abundance prayer I will use from Dr. Joseph Murphy…that day I'll get two or three appointments and then my calendar starts filling up.” Murphy was a world-renowned scholar on mysticism and mind dynamics. He wrote numerous books, his most popular being The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, which uses research to show how the subconscious mind can promote healing.
As a spiritual teacher, Osal reflects on the law of attraction. It’s a theory that suggests that our thoughts are the energy that determines our reality. Osal explains that it’s a universal law: “There’s physics—there's science behind it…everything is energy, the emotion that you hold creates a certain vibrational waveform and that gets projected out through our heart because our heart is the strongest electromagnetic organ in our body.” Imagine your heart is like a magnet, drawing in anything that vibrates at the same frequency. So, the law of attraction exists because electromagnetic waves exist.
Although Osal does not consider herself religious, she believes that prayers can be transformative and magical. “Words create vibrations and create emotional states, so that’s what prayers are used for—to get people into particular states,” she says. Quantum physicists, such as Werner Heisenber, long ago theorized that physical matter doesn’t actually exist and that everything is simply energy in different vibrational forms. It seems that much like the heart, our words too have electromagnetic vibrations that can create an invisible but existing influence on our surroundings.
Lina Gonzalez is a Toronto-based creator and spiritual mentor, her handle is @linamariag_ on TikTok. #spiritualtiktok is a niche community made up of gurus and thought leaders who share their insights on self discovery and personal growth. Gonzalez’s motto is “energy doesn’t lie.” She considers manifestation to be a multi-dimensional process where the universe functions similar to a brain forming neurological synapses. “The more you resonate or vibrate a certain energy, the more the universe is going to fire and wire with that energy at the same time,” she says.
What this means is, just like our brains learn by forming connections based on repeated thoughts, the universe responds to our energy. If we continue to think a certain way (negatively or positively), Gonzalez believes that the universe responds by sending similar desires or experiences back to us.
The Problem with Spirituality
Despite its recent popularity on social media, many remain skeptical about the truths of spirituality. The problem is, skeptics often rely on empirical evidence and scientific support. Yet, as spirituality is molded by personal experiences that are next to impossible to replicate, it can be difficult to embrace and understand these concepts without concrete evidence.
An article by Grant Brenner from Psychology Today explores what he refers to as “The Trouble with Manifesting.” Brenner writes that manifestation can make people susceptible to risky decision-making and vulnerable to get-rich-quick schemes. “In the manifesting frame of mind, what may seem to one person a probable scam is to another (at least at first), a sign of vibrational attunement and success,” he says.
Others can agree that spirituality is falsely advertising self-improvement. Lee McKay Doe, a career therapist, reflects on spirituality as a “toxic brand” that is becoming more and more prevalent. She claims that we are in a new age of spirituality where influencers are profiting from their so-called ‘awakenings.’ In an article for Medium titled ‘What Toxic Spirituality Sounds Like,’ Doe writes, “It’s always positioned as a solo endeavour—with the implication, never explicitly stated but baked right into the premise—that anyone who fails just isn’t trying hard enough.”
But Gonzalez doesn’t take any negative criticism from skeptics to heart. She unpacks skepticism by saying, “there is a really big difference between understanding things and knowing things…You can understand many concepts and read millions of books, and yet not know what it is because you have not experienced it in your reality.”
Understanding the Skeptic
I’ve had my fair share of skepticism. After endless Google searches pleading, “how to be more spiritual” in early 2014, I stumbled upon The Law of Attraction book series by Esther and Jerry Hicks. These psychics claim that spirits told them about the Law of Attraction—a belief that nothing happens by accident and that we attract whatever comes our way as a result of our thoughts.
While I can’t say I completely agree with the idea of talking spirits, I do think that the Hickses were onto something. Similar to, yet not as overdone as Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, these books introduced me to a world way beyond the physical. I wanted to have certainty in everything I read, but I couldn’t help but wonder how on earth a person could be channeling the teachings of a group of non-physical beings—specifically those who channel entities called “Abraham.” I wanted to believe it, but it sounded absurd.
I’m not sure if it was the craziness that compelled me to continue reading, but I did. The misunderstanding here is that skepticism is bad. “It’s okay to be a skeptic, it's good. I might use a different word—discerning…As long as you’re not coming from a place of fear,” says Osal. So, skepticism is great. Especially when it works as a motivator.
As a creator on #spiritualtiktok, Gonzalez raises the question of whether or not the platform serves as a channel for toxic spirituality. While there are many users on TikTok who are well-educated, culturally sensitive, and create content with meaningful intentions, trends such as non-indigenous peoples burning sage raises the question of whether some content is pushing the boundaries of cultural appropriation. If people don’t understand where certain spiritual practices originate from, they can strip cultural traditions of their depth and significance. After all, when people ‘borrow’ spiritual symbols or teachings (such as dreamcatchers, smudging, henna, and tribal tattoos) and mark them as a trend, this can diminish cultural wisdom and can further marginalize those communities. Gonzalez accepts that people today are disconnected from their emotions and are all looking for the next ‘shiny object.’ She says that there will be people on every social media platform who lack integrity. “They may call themselves spiritual, but there's still a lot of things that are not embodied or integrated…There are still a lot of people that are motivated by numbers, by money, by power, by fame,” Gonzalez says.
Gonzalez suggests that it’s easy to get caught up in the superficial techniques that are flooding social media platforms, specifically because there are many manifestation schemes that fail to consider. Gonzalez unmasks the many larger laws that make manifestation possible, such as the law of condensation, the law of oneness, the law of karma, the law of cause and effect, which are rarely seen as interconnected.
“I really enjoy being that unusual character, having unusual conversations with people who are uncomfortable with [spirituality],” says Toronto-based reiki master and concussion healer Orion Mott. Reiki is an alternative wellbeing therapy where practitioners use their hands to channel relaxing energy and promote healing in a recipient's body. Despite facing skepticism in his career, Mott says he has an 85 per cent success rate using energy to heal concussions. He activates the pineal gland (a small, pea-shaped gland in the brain that is believed to be a lens for consciousness) to rebalance and create profound change in the brain. He uses techniques such as spiritual counselling, energy healing, and medical intuitive readings to enhance pineal gland activity.
Mott did a healing session for a group of young goalies from Brampton aiming for NHL careers. “Out of the whole group there were three guys that had the pineal gland that was active, and those three guys were the only ones that got drafted to the NHL,” says Mott. He explains that the reason behind this success was that they were able to perceive and feel the play, not just see it. Mott worked with these goalies by encouraging them to practice quieting the body and waking up the pineal gland.
Simply put, your body has an internal clock called the circadian rhythm that lets you know when to wake up and when to go to sleep. The role of the pineal gland is to maintain this rhythm by producing a hormone called melatonin. With this said, better sleep leads to an enhanced mood. So, as melatonin has a record for promoting overall health and well-being, by activating their pineal glands the players could better focus when they were on the ice.
As it turns out, everyone wants to live a healthy and happy life, and while the solution seems too easy, spirituality and positive thinking can do just the trick. Even though it’s not clear whether a rosy outlook can actually help our long-term health, ultimately, we get to choose how we feel and what we think. A study by Jagiellonian University’s Institute of Psychology shows how positive association with spirituality—going beyond “the real I” (who you are as a physical being) and experiencing transcendence through inner peace, harmony, or connectedness to others—drastically improves a person’s psychological well-being.
Tapping the Negativity Away
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is a holistic healing method that aims to alleviate emotional distress by tapping on acupressure points on the body. An acupressure point is a specific part of the body where pressure is applied to activate healing, promote relaxation, or relieve pain. As EFT tapping involves concentrating on a problem in your life, the first thing that came to my mind was: the sinister 9-to-5. Apart from being focused on my studies, work tends to trigger my anxious thoughts. Hence, I decided to try tapping these feelings away.
I began by tapping on the top of my head, then the eyebrow, side of my eyes, under the eyes, and so on. Accompanied by the steady beat of my fingertips, I made sure to repeat positive affirmations in my head. Slowly, my muscles began to relax and I fell more into a trance-like state with every tap. Overall, what I felt was…nothing—exactly what I wanted to feel.
EFT tapping is a great way to quiet the mind and pull your attention away from negative thoughts. Although the benefits vary from person to person, I noticed a release of both physical and emotional tension. To boil it down, EFT tapping earns two big thumbs up from me.
Wendy Sun is a Toronto-based psychotherapist who combines heart-centered psychotherapy with energy psychology techniques to promote transformation and healing. After the death of her brother, Sun discovered EFT tapping as a technique to help her change both her relationship with negative emotions and her outlook on life.
Sun was introduced to energy healing through reiki in 2010 and later became interested in therapeutic touch, also known as EFT tapping. She also explains that EFT is more digestible for people who are cynical about spiritual practices. EFT tapping is “an energy psychology…definitely one way to help those skeptics to be more on board,” says Sun. A study from 2019 measured physiological change from 203 participants at six Clinical EFT workshops. Participants experienced lower cortisol levels, increased immune system function and significant decreases in pain, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Sun elaborates on this technique highlighting that it works on a cellular level, is evidence-based, and is recognized by science.
Dr. Elizabeth Pang spent her entire career working as a neurophysiologist and scientist at SickKids Hospital. Pang’s mindfulness journey began after a traumatic bicycle accident where she used it as a tool for her recovery. She now teaches Neuroscience, Mindfulness, and Mindfulness Meditation, a course at the University of Toronto, where students learn about the brain’s effect on how people think, feel, act, learn, and change. “We do different visualizations where you imagine the qualities that you want to develop and then you imagine having those qualities…that trains the brain to respond as if you have them,” she says.
During our interview, Pang referenced a European study by Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences where participants’ brains were scanned in the fMRI, a brain imaging machine that measures changes in blood flow, before and after being shown distressing images. These people were taught mindfulness compassion meditation for six weeks and asked to practice it every day. The results? Not only were the participants less affected by the images, but a different emotion in the brain lit up: compassion.
Pang expands on this study by discussing the advantages of mindfulness. She does not refer to the outcome as ‘spiritual benefits’ and does not believe mindfulness meditation needs to be associated with any religious traditions. “If we practice, it makes us more human and helps build the qualities that are truly human—qualities like compassion, gratitude, and kindness,” Pang says.
Questioning Reality
Spirituality seems to be a blend of universal laws and physical practices not tied to a specific belief or religion. Instead, it’s about doing what feels good for you. Spiritual wellness really can seem absurd at first glance, because after all, it can go against everything we think we know. But the truth is, there’s much more beyond what the eye can see.
Science shows that everything is energy. And these healers all have two beliefs in common: energy and purpose. So, the truth about human thoughts and how they change the way we live is actually quite simple—even though you haven’t experienced something, it doesn’t mean it can’t exist.
About a month ago, I found a large white sheet of Bristol board tossed to the curb. I’ve always wanted to make a vision board, something where I could paste images of my desires. I wrote in my journal and looked for weeks to find old magazines—anything that I could use to start piecing together my vision board. Yet, nothing was manifesting. It wasn’t until I stopped questioning whether it was possible that my reality began to change. I abandoned my usual route to the post office on account of construction, to which I was forced to take the longer path. As if placed intentionally, a lone magazine rested quietly in the grass.
Call it “woo-woo,” but to me, there’s much more to our universe than we can even begin to imagine.