Healthy, Holistic & Hot: The Fastest Growing Trends in Holistic Wellness Today

Healthy living is the world's best trending movement.

This spring I drove across the United States from the Pacific Northwest all the way to New England - the long way via the California Coast, Texas, and up through the Southeast - everywhere I went I found healthy food, yoga studios, and new businesses and events popping up celebrating healthy living. 

I ran into pop-up yoga classes in the park in Oklahoma, organic food stores in small towns in Texas, amazing coops in Kentucky, and new juice bars in almost every city.

I met massage therapists, doulas, essential oil enthusiasts, martial artists, herbalists, chiropractors, and energy healers from the West to East Coasts.

It wasn't this way before. I remember when I moved away from my home state of New Hampshire 20 years ago and organic food was something most people didn't know about, and I had to drive far and wide to get it, and there was only one yoga class at a local community center.

Moving to the West Coast in the '90's felt like a whole new world of abundant organic food choices and healing arts practitioners, and was a great place to expand, learn, begin, and grow my work as a wellness entrepreneur.  

Now I've returned to the city I grew up in to find multiple grocery stores to shop for organic and healthy foods, an abundance of yoga studios, holistic centers, and movement studios offering everything from aerial yoga to Reiki to parkour.

There's farm-to-table restaurants, cafes with smoothies and bowls galore, and a farmer's market in the downtown. The healthy living movement has expanded everywhere and most rapidly in the past 10 years. 

I've driven across the USA now 7 times in the past 20 years, and it's easier than ever before to find holistic options across the country.

Now I'll cruise through a small town in the middle of the country and call out signs for holistic businesses as I see them: "Tai Chi! Yoga! Smoothies! Organic Coffee! Brazilian Jiu Jitsu! Underwater Massage!"

No longer do I carry a tattered copy of the Tofu Tollbooth (a fun, yet outdated, book from the 90's) on my roadtrips to find the few and far between health food stores. Now my smart phone gives me exact directions to an abundance of options for natural grocery stores and locavore restaurants wherever I go - and there's new ones opening all the time! 

Wellness is growing worldwide! 

Global Wellness Institute, Global Wellness Economy Monitor, January 2017

While the US is the global leader in the wellness movement, healthy living is a growing global trend with Europe and China also leading the way.

From 2013 to 2015 the Global Wellness Industry rose 10.6% to $3.72 trillion, while the global economy actually decreased -3.6%. 

The options for healthy living and empowered holistic self-care is rising all over the world.

I see this in my work supporting holistic wellness educators, coaches, and professionals globally in my courses and coaching, and hear the stories of new opportunities and services being offered everywhere.

You can take yoga classes in Kenya, get doula services in Sweden, experience healing massage in the Netherlands, sit in a women's circle in Israel, go to the spa in Japan, learn energy healing in Malaysia, hire a midwife in Chile, and find herbal healing in South Africa.

Wherever you go, if you look around you'll find that self-care is the new healthcare.

More and more people are looking to support their health naturally to prevent sickness or disease before it strikes. 

What's Hot in Holistic Health Now

The expansive wellness movement is creating new opportunities in healthy living for personal empowerment, professional practice, and wellness entrepreneurs. 

If you want to start or grow a wellness business - this is the best time to join the party (you know, the kind of party with raw cacao, flower essences, rooftop deck yoga, and crystal bowl music - rather than alcohol, drugs, or all-night warehouse raves). 

Here's some of the hottest trends in wellness today...

Beauty gets better.

The beauty industry is getting a makeover; now looking good is about feeling good.

Clean beauty, supplements, probiotics, mood support, massage, acupuncture, and brain practices to de-stress to get happy are shaping the high growth of the new pure beauty movement.

In addition to the new beauty practices being attentive to inner beauty, spa environments are getting a makeover too, as attention to beautiful architecture, healing spaces, lighting, sound, and saunas all become magnets for people desiring the most beautiful spaces to get their beauty treatments done. 

Happiness is key.

The largest focus in the wellness market is mental well-being.

Mood boosting and mind-body-spirit balancing is seen growing everywhere as spas, hotels, and health centers focus on creating beautiful environments, adding more meditation, sound healing, and creative arts programs.

Healthy food, supplements, essential oils, and bodywork are focused not just on physical benefits but the emotional and mental benefits too.

From breathwork, to brainwaves, to sleeping - health is now all about enhancing our minds and our moods. 

Accessibility Booms

It's easier than ever to find wellness in more communities thanks to the growing focus on healthy spaces and giving back to communities.

Wellness tourism and travel are a huge part of the growing healthy lifestyle market. Wellness hotels are popping up in all the big cities and cities are rebranding themselves as wellness destinations, promoting their local holistic practitioners, health centers, and nature activities for the health conscious visitor. 

In local communities, there are more mind-body-spirit classes and practitioners, and community gardens, labyrinths, and rejuvenating places are growing all over.

Practitioners are giving back in bigger ways, and now you can find classes on how to make green smoothies at senior centers, and yoga teachers at women's shelters. 

This is a great time to think outside of the box - and expand your offerings of wellness to the community in new ways. Now more than ever people are open and receptive to learning methods of feeling better, and staying healthy. 

Wellness at Work

The corporate world is hip to health. 

Employers are realizing the powerful benefits of helping their employees to stay healthy and happy. 

There's an increase in calm meditative spaces in offices for yoga, silence, and even napping, as well as more demand for yoga, meditation, aromatherapy, and fun fitness (like office mini-golf and playground slides) in the corporate world. 

Corporate wellness programs pay off by increasing job productivity and focus, as well as reducing absenteeism and sick-days. 

Nutrition Gets a Boost

We're going beyond superfoods, now the nutritional buzzwords are adaptogens, mushrooms, collagen, and liposomal delivery systems. 

Customizable whole food diets, meal plans, and enhancing our daily supplements and meals with extra boosts of nutrition are all hot right now. 

We're still living in a super-size world in which fast-food is available off every major highway exit in the USA, and gigantic cheeseburgers and fried food are pop culture favorites on food television.

Thus the need and demand for healthy food, weight-loss support, and nutritional awareness are rising to counter act the excessive eating culture.

Luckily, more choices are arising everywhere, and new ones every year - but with all the new products, education and personal guidance on how to utilize and stick with these options are essential too, and thus is creating lots of demand for health coaches, chefs, spas, and wellness practitioners to help guide people through these choices. 

Grow Your Wellness Business

The worldwide wellness industry is rising, and is impervious to other factors such as job rates, and global economy. In fact, the desire for self empowered wellbeing seems to have an opposite effect of growing stronger and faster, despite their being a slump in the global economy in recent years. 

Wellness is not a fad, our global information age is just raising more awareness about the impacts our lifestyle factors have on our health - from rest, exercise, nutrition, stress, and environmental influences. 

Now more people than ever before are interested and ready to integrate these holistic health practices into their self-care routine, daily meals, work spaces, date nights, family life, and travel activities.

The opportunity is greater than ever before for wellness entrepreneurs to innovate, integrate, and shine in new business ideas and customized healing arts experiential offerings.