You and your day

A long-running client cancels a series she has booked for two years and explains, on the third call, that she has to choose between groceries and her sessions. A regulator publishes new guidance that touches part of your practice and the language is unclear. A new client arrives whose mental health needs are beyond what you are equipped to hold safely. A First Nations client mentions she has been looking for a practitioner who works with culturally informed methods and has not found one. A practitioner you train with mentions she is being criticised online for something she said about evidence-based practice.

The British scholar Sara Ahmed has written extensively about how institutions and industries treat the work of wellbeing as a private rather than political matter, and how that framing benefits some bodies and disadvantages others. The Australian wellness sector lives inside that argument continuously. Whose wellbeing is recognised by which systems, whose self-care is treated as luxury and whose as necessity, whose practices are accepted as legitimate and whose are dismissed, are all political questions before they are commercial or clinical ones.

Reading the politics is part of running a wellness business well. It is also part of how practitioners decide what kind of practice they are building and whose wellbeing they are equipped to support.

Your community and clients

Wellness sits inside community in particular ways. The yoga studio knows which members are absorbing financial pressure first. The doula knows which families are bringing children into politically uncertain conditions. The naturopath knows which clients have lost faith in mainstream medicine and which are still negotiating their relationship with it. Wellness practitioners hear things that no other industry hears.

Different communities have different wellness politics. A wealthy inner-city wellness market has very different politics than a working-class outer-suburban one. A queer wellness community has its own political mood. A First Nations healing practice carries political weight that mainstream wellness does not. A multicultural wellness community working in language other than English carries political conditions that wider commentary often misses. Disability-led wellness operates under different political conditions again.

When a long-running client cancels because of cost, the politics of cost of living and the politics of who can afford care are at the door. When a new client arrives with mental health needs beyond a practitioner’s scope, the politics of the gap between mainstream mental health services and what people actually need is at the door. The work is always already political.

Your Council and neighbourhood

Local Councils shape wellness businesses through planning, signage, trading rules, and the politics of which precincts welcome which kinds of practice. Council political composition shapes how supportive the local environment is for wellness operators, especially small operators and women-led businesses. Council libraries, public health programs, and community wellbeing initiatives also shape the local wellness ecosystem.

Whose voice is amplified in Council politics rarely includes wellness practitioners. Property owners and established business associations are heard more. Whose wellness is prioritised in local policy, and whose is not, is part of reading the politics.

Your state

State politics shapes wellness through health regulation, anti-discrimination law, vocational education funding, and consumer protection. Different states regulate wellness practitioners differently. Naturopathy, nutrition, and complementary therapies are regulated unevenly across the country. Mental health support outside the formal psychology framework also varies.

State politics also shapes how women’s health, sexual and reproductive health, and culturally diverse health are recognised. State multicultural health policy shapes whether multicultural wellness practices are supported or dismissed. State First Nations health policy shapes whether Aboriginal-led healing is recognised. The state-level layer of wellness politics covers health regulation, multicultural and First Nations affairs, anti-discrimination, and consumer protection.

The nation

National politics on wellness regulation, on therapeutic goods, on advertising standards, on the politics of evidence-based practice, and on the long-running debate about the boundary between health and wellness all reach the sector continuously. The federal political conversation about complementary therapies, about online wellness influencers, and about the cost of women’s care has been intensifying. The political settlement is still moving.

The national workforce conversation in wellness is also a gender, race, and class conversation. The wellness workforce is overwhelmingly women. The client base is overwhelmingly women. The conditions of work, including casualisation, low pay outside high-end practice, and limited workplace protection, are conditions of feminised labour. Inside the workforce, conditions vary sharply. A high-end wellness coach with a substantial client base, a casual yoga instructor cobbling together studio classes, a migrant wellness practitioner whose training is not formally recognised, and a First Nations healer working with community, all sit inside the same broad sector under different political conditions.

The region

Wellness across the Asia-Pacific is shaped by very different political settlements. Aotearoa New Zealand has been politically more integrated with Maori healing traditions than Australia has been with Aboriginal-led healing. Pacific Island wellness, often shaped by community and family-based practice, has its own political mood. Asian and South Asian healing traditions, present in Australia through migration, navigate political conditions about evidence, regulation, and recognition.

Migration politics shapes who can practise what in Australia. Practitioners arriving with overseas training in traditional medicine, in herbalism, in massage and bodywork, in midwifery and birth work, often find their qualifications partially recognised or not recognised at all.

The world

Globally, wellness is one of the fastest-growing industries, and one of the most politically loaded. The political question of who profits from women’s self-care, of whose practices are legitimate, of how AI and digital wellness reshape the industry, and of the politics of evidence in alternative health are all being negotiated continuously.

The political backlash against feminism, against women’s economic security, and against multicultural health practices is also reaching wellness. Industries built around women’s bodies and women’s work are politically exposed when feminist politics is contested.