Once upon a time, “wellness” meant drinking lots of water and maybe attending the odd yoga class. These days? It’s a full-blown lifestyle movement, complete with branded rituals, suspicious powders and infuencers who look like they live inside a filtered Goop catalogue advertising dodgy candles….
By: Erica Lay
Welcome to the world of wellness overload. Let’s step in. But, please remove your shoes, leave your critical thinking at the door and prepare to have your chakras aggressively realigned with a mushroom coffee enema detox. Before breakfast.
From Green Smoothies to Raw Liver
Wellness used to be a corner of the self-help aisle. Now it’s a content category. On board, it’s no longer enough to do your job – you’re also expected to be spiritually chill, emotionally evolved, and functionally fasting.
Remember The Liver King? The shredded, shirtless influencer who preached a raw meat lifestyle and ancestral living? He went on every podcast known to man from Joe Rogan to Logan Paul’s Impaulsive, claiming he was “all natural” and never used any drugs, and definitely not steroids. Reels included family hunting trips, where he and his kids ate raw deer meat. Lovely. Until, it turned out he was a big old shirtless liar, spending a whopping $11k a month on steroids. Yeah, that guy. If you haven’t seen the Netflix doco, save it to your list. It’s worth it. So yep, The Liver King is just the poster boy for an industry full of confident charlatans.
Today’s fad diets come thick and fast: carnivore, keto, juice-only, water-only, light-and-air-only, good vibes only… Ok I made up the last one. Although… [rushes off to launch it as a diet that lost me 20kg in two days on Instagram and make a million]. One yacht engineer reportedly tried intermittent fasting so aggressively he fainted when he surfaced on deck to help the deck crew mid-washdown. “Fasting improves my clarity,” he mumbled as he face planted the teak.
Meanwhile, the chief stew hasn’t had bread since 2018 after reading that gluten is evil, but swears by “intuitive eating” – which seems to involve a lot of pistachios and fury. And the odd Haribo binge.
The Supplement Spiral
You haven’t seen true wellness mania until you’ve watched a deckhand unpack 12 tubs of powders, 6 unlabelled tinctures, and a suspicious bag of herbal “focus pills” into the dry store and label them “do not touch – these are for my gut health.”
Magnesium to sleep. B12 to wake up. Ashwagandha to chill. Spirulina to feel smug. L-theanine to cancel out the coffee and red bull, which they’re still drinking by the litre.
Crew on some yachts are now running full supplement schedules that look like tactical ops briefs:
05:00 – Pre-dawn electrolyte shot.
06:00 – Nootropic stack “for clarity” (read: anxiety in capsule form).
08:00 – Matcha mushroom collagen latte.
12:00 – Vitamin D, zinc, and “biohacked” fish oil (from a fish who probably regrets its life choices).
15:00 – Activated charcoal because someone on TikTok said it “removes toxins” (spoiler: it also removes common sense).
And god forbid someone opens the fridge and mistakes the captain’s adaptogenic brain tonic for iced coffee. That’s grounds for a disciplinary.
One charter guest recently had a full-on meltdown because her prized stash of collagen peptides got mixed up with the pastry chef’s powdered sugar. Guests were unknowingly served “beautifying pancakes.” Apparently, that’s not part of the official charter experience, although the chief stew did say their skin was glowing by lunchtime.
The Ceremony Circuit
Forget post-shift beers and a crew BBQ – it’s all about cacao ceremonies in the crew mess now. One stewardess recently led a “heart-opening ritual” with ceremonial-grade chocolate, Tibetan singing bowls, and a Spotify playlist titled Healing Frequencies for the Galactic Womb.
It started as breathwork. It ended with the bosun sobbing into a Turkish towel and the junior stew claiming she saw her past life as a Balinese goat herder.
Guests, of course, are not immune. Especially the ones who request “holistic experiences” as part of their charter. Think:
Morning sun salutations with a freelance yogi named Moonbeam who smells like BO and patchouli oil.
Midday sound baths on the sundeck (loud enough to disturb the charter next door).
And a “microdosing starter pack” delivered via tender like it’s fine wine.
One owner recently asked the chief stew to organise a full moon ceremony during a Balearics charter. Candles were lit, intentions were set, and the guests released their emotional baggage by screaming into the ocean – confusing a nearby Guardia Civil patrol boat in the process who thought they were being trafficked.
Crew are being roped in too. Engineers leading breathwork. Deckhands doubling as Reiki practitioners. One chef moonlights as a plant medicine facilitator and casually offers to “open your third eye” in the crew mess between lunch and canapés.
Ayahuasca retreats are now a thing among the burned-out, spiritually-inclined. Forget a post-season yoga camp and detox in Tulum, we’re talking jungle ceremonies in Peru, guided by a guy named Dave who used to work on deck and now calls himself a “sacred integration coach.”
And don’t get us started on crystals. One guest insisted on sleeping with a palm-sized lump of rose quartz under her pillow and blamed her husband’s snoring on “blocked feminine energy.” The third stew had to dig it out of the pillowcase during turndown and now claims to have developed psychic abilities.
Fitness as Performance Art
In a bygone era, fitness on board meant a cheeky jog down the dock or maybe a resistance band stuffed in a drawer. Now? It’s a competitive sport, complete with live-streamed workouts, matching activewear, and a GoPro duct-taped to the crew gym mirror.
Yachts have become floating arenas for performative fitness. Guests request onboard PTs who specialise in “quantum movement.” Chief stews are tracking their HRV scores more closely than the guest laundry. Deckhands are doing barefoot sprints on the swim platform “to ground themselves” – right before slipping on sea spray and nearly wiping out.
And don’t even think about disturbing someone mid–cold plunge.
Ice baths have become mandatory for anyone who considers themselves “resilient.” Not the spa-style ones either, we’re talking repurposed deck buckets, provisioning coolers, even a retired Champagne bin filled with hose water and rage. One bosun reportedly spent 11 minutes submerged while reciting positive affirmations about teak maintenance. The captain made it a crew challenge. The chef declined, citing “emotional cold intolerance.”
One chief officer was spotted doing Wim Hof breathing exercises in full uniform, right before leading a guest tender run. “It helps regulate my nervous system,” he explained, shivering.
Yoga has also escalated. It’s no longer about calm or connection – it’s a content opportunity. Headstands on the bow. Warrior II on the flybridge. Crew are contorting themselves into enlightened pretzels while guests sip green juice and pretend not to stare. One deckie fell overboard attempting crow pose on a SUP board. His ego remains unrecovered.
Guests, of course, are joining in. Or rather, expecting the crew to join them. A recent charter included a mandatory sunrise bootcamp for all departments. The second stew vomited behind the hot tub. The engineer pretended to have a knee injury. The deck team just pretended to be dead.
The gym is booked like a beach club. Morning breathwork. Midday hypertrophy lifts. Evening mobility. Guests now travel with their own kettlebells, foam rollers, and spiritual bodyworkers. And if the Peloton doesn’t have a sea view? Someone’s getting a bad review.
Meanwhile, somewhere deep in the bilge, the second engineer is quietly eating a Mars Bar and wondering what the hell happened to normal life.
The Dangerous Shift
It all starts innocently enough. A podcast here. A wellness reel there. A little turmeric latte to “reduce inflammation” (the chef is still trying to get the orange stains off, well everything). But blink, and suddenly the third stew’s refusing ibuprofen because “Big Pharma is trying to kill us,” and the chief engineer is attempting to treat a slipped disc with activated charcoal and cold plunges.
Wellness has become the new anti-science religion, and the superyacht world, with its petri-dish blend of high stress, high expectations, and highly isolated people, is fertile ground for it.
Crew working 14-hour days? Don’t need rest, apparently – just breathwork and beetroot capsules. Can’t sleep? Forget melatonin, just put a shungite crystal under your pillow and chant at the moon. A stew once tried to “clear” a crew member’s ear infection with a smudge stick and intention. Spoiler: he still needed antibiotics.
The dangerous shift is this: people are swapping qualified doctors for charismatic strangers on TikTok. Influencers with zero medical training are out here diagnosing hormonal imbalances, prescribing mushroom tinctures, and selling detox kits made from bark and blind optimism.
And on yachts, where access to medical care can be patchy, this isn’t just silly – it’s dangerous.
We’ve seen deckhands self-diagnosing via Reddit. Engineers doing coffee enemas “for alertness.” Stews ignoring serious health symptoms because someone on Instagram said it’s just “blocked energy.” Even guests are buying into it, arriving onboard with lists of banned ingredients, homeopathic prescriptions, and wildly undercooked medical opinions.
This isn’t wellness. It’s wishful thinking dressed up in Instagram fonts.
At best, it’s expensive and ineffective. At worst, it’s putting people’s health at real risk. Because newsflash: Just because it’s “natural” doesn’t mean it’s safe. Hemlock is natural. So is shark attack. Just sayin’.
Look, it’s great that people want to feel better. It’s great that wellness is a priority. But when self-care turns into a science-denying, supplement-slinging spiral of misinformation, it stops being helpful and starts being harmful.
You know what’s really holistic? A balanced approach. One that includes broccoli and modern medicine. One that values meditation, but also knows when to go to the bloody doctor.
The Glowy, Green, Exhausted Middle
Wellness culture tells us we should be radiant, high-vibing, glowy, grateful, hydrated, flexible, alkaline, and at one with the universe. We should be flexible in the hips, AND in our belief systems. Spiritually grounded, but also, fluid and floaty.
And somehow, we’re supposed to be all of this while working long days, dodging guest tantrums, surviving on three hours of broken sleep, and not throat-punching the provisioner who forgot the oat milk again.
It’s… exhausting.
There’s no shame in wanting to feel good. Move your body. Eat some real food. Sleep if you ever get the chance. But when self-care turns into a full-time identity, and a competitive sport, something’s gone off the rails.
If you’re not just going for a jog, you’re activating your lymphatic flow while listening to a podcast about gut biome trauma and recording it for your accountability circle. If you’re not just making a smoothie, but you’re biohacking your mitochondria with adaptogens, lion’s mane, and a splash of ceremonial cacao blessed by a man called River…
And don’t even think about skipping your morning routine. If you don’t journal, meditate, breathwork, dry brush, gratitude list, sun-gaze, and cold plunge before 7am, how will you ever reach your full potential?
Maybe we’ve reached the point where trying to feel well is making everyone feel worse.
Because, at the end of the day, you can’t oat-milk your way out of crew burnout. You can’t moon-charged-crystal your way past a terrible guest trip. And the only person who should be advising you on hormone function is a licenced professional, not a shirtless twenty-year-old guy on TikTok named Chad who sells powdered elk spleens, identifies as a “hormonal alchemist,” and once got a concussion during ecstatic dance.
We’re not saying wellness is bad. We’re saying maybe – just maybe – it’s okay to be a little bit normal. You can stretch without doing breathwork. You can take a nap without calling it “nervous system regulation.” You can eat a sandwich and not announce it as intuitive eating.
Sometimes the most radical act of self-care is just… having a snack and not filming it.
You Can Stretch and Take Ibuprofen
(AKA: The Moderately Well Manifesto)
Here’s a wild idea: what if we didn’t have to choose between celery juice and common sense?
What if you could stretch and take ibuprofen? Meditate and eat a sausage roll? Believe in gut health without believing Chad the elk-spleen enthusiast knows more about your personal health than your GP?
The truth is, balance isn’t sexy. It doesn’t sell. No one’s getting brand deals for saying “I sleep eight hours, eat some vegetables, and go to therapy.” There’s no algorithm boost for “I do yoga sometimes but also drink wine and scream into a pillow when I need to.”
But that’s the point. Wellness isn’t supposed to be a performance. Or a punishment. Or a personality. And it sure as hell shouldn’t be a competition to see who can fast the longest, plunge the coldest, or sweat out the most trauma in a tent on a volcano.
On yachts – where the pressure is high, the expectations are higher, and the access to anything resembling normal life is laughable – self-care matters. Real self-care. The kind that’s unfiltered and unbranded. The kind that says, “I’m going to skip the moon bath and just lie down for a bit.”
So go ahead. Take your supplements if they help. Do your yoga. Whisper your affirmations into a cold bucket if that’s your thing. But also? Drink the damn coffee. Take the antibiotics. Eat a carb. Say no to the mushroom ceremony if you’re not in the mood to unpack your soul on a Tuesday.
Wellness should support your life – not consume it.
And if all else fails, there’s always the crew mess sofa, a giant slab of lasagne, and the sweet, sweet hum of the dryer to lull you back to baseline.
Namaste. And maybe also… nap.
The Wellness Bingo Card Full House or Full Nonsense?:
Tick them off. No judgement. (OK, some judgement.) Winner gets a free shamanic healing session in the crew mess.
- Ice bath in a wheelie bin
- Paid £40 for a crystal you now call “Clarity”
- Swallowed a mushroom microdose and then cried at work
- Spent £300 on a juicer, used it once
- Fasted for 24 hours and then inhaled a croissant in rage
- Took lion’s mane and expected to become a genius
- Went to a breathwork class and screamed like a Victorian ghost
- Got medical advice from an influencer who also sells NFTs
- Posted a yoga selfie with the caption “just breathe”
- Bought supplements from a man called Blake with no qualifications but 400k followers
- Said “Western medicine doesn’t work” while holding a £900 phone and sipping oat milk
