Why the Modern Wellness Retreat Isn't About Denial Anymore

The New Ritual of Discomfort

I remember the first time I walked into a dedicated wellness resort. It felt like walking into a cathedral of "shoulds." You should eat kale, you should meditate for forty minutes, you should absolutely not speak to anyone at dinner. There was a punitive edge to it, a sense that if I didn’t leave feeling like a Spartan warrior, I hadn’t done it right.

But recently, watching the cultural conversation shift—exemplified by the wry, self-aware commentary of comedians like Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak, whose podcast *Poog* has turned the earnest pursuit of wellness into a comedy of errors—I realized something important. The era of the "rigid retreat" is over. We are tired of performative health. What we are seeking now is something far more elusive: a space where we can be both deeply serious about our well-being and deeply unserious about the process itself.