Chapter 2
Wellbeing Spirituality Today
The span of transcendence is shrinking. Modern religious themes such as
‘self-realization’, personal autonomy and self-expression have become dominant.
(Thomas Luckmann, 1990, p. 138)
New Age beliefs and attitudes are now so widespread in our society and
its culture as to effectively dominate all areas of life. (Colin Campbell, 2004,
p. 40)
‘There is a new market category called wellness lifestyle, and in a whole range
of industries, if you are not addressing that category you are going to find it
increasingly hard to stay in business’, enthuses Kevin Kelly. This broad new
category, Mr Kelly goes on, ‘consolidates a lot of sub-categories’ including spas,
traditional medicine and alternative medicine, behavioural therapy, spirituality,
fitness, nutrition and beauty. As more customers demand a holistic approach
to feeling well, firms that have hitherto specialized in only one or two of these
areas are now facing growing market pressure to broaden their business. ‘You can
no longer satisfy consumers with just fitness, just medical, just spa’, says Mr Kelly.
(Economist, 6–12 January, 2007, p. 51)
The Wellness Revolution. How to Make a Fortune in the Next Trillion
Dollar Industry. (Paul Pilzer, 2003)
Take some time out for yourself and try a taster session or a talk from the Natural
Health Care Team in the Chaplaincy Centre, including homeopathy and reflexology.
Every day the Sports Centre is hosting taster sessions at lunch time, everything
from salsa to yoga. (Lancaster University ‘Staff Learning Festival’, 10–15
July 2006)
. . . the number of adherents (if that is not too strong a term for the consumers of
cultic religion) will decline. (Bruce, 2002, p. 79; my emphasis)
Since one of the main arguments I am addressing is that the growth of
New Age spiritualities of life can be explained away as being largely – if not
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© 2008 Paul Heelas. ISBN: 978-1-405-13937-3
entirely – a matter of secularistic consumption of a superficial kind, I now
provide a brief survey of some of the evidence for the recent growth
of wellbeing spirituality, paying particular attention to some of the more
significant sociocultural contexts where growth has occurred and the forms
it takes in these contexts. Without going into matters in any depth,
salient explanations are introduced when appropriate. (Salient because they
are drawn upon later.) What follows thus provides an opportunity for saying
something about where, how and why consumer activities could be in
evidence.
Of particular significance, I chart some of the ways in which innerlife
spirituality has permeated a great deal of the culture and its institutions.
Generally restricted to counter-culturalists during the sixties, then
the ‘cultic milieu’ which developed (including those more seriously involved
with seminar spirituality), it now has a home within an albeit variegated
cultural milieu. Writing in 1983, Martin Marty notes, ‘religion has unmistakably
and increasingly diffused through the culture’ (p. 273). Since
then, indeed since earlier, it has been the turn of spirituality to develop
into something akin to a ‘sacred canopy’. Certainly, inner-life spirituality
has sprung up within influential mainstream domains of the culture, such
as the press, perhaps relatively autonomously, perhaps influenced by
more specialized holistic activities and publications. It has also entered
‘nooks and crannies’, specific sites like bed and breakfast establishments,
Burnley College (Hopi healing in the one of the most deprived towns in
Britain), Looking Well (a holistic centre located in a ‘genuine’ working
people’s town, High Bentham near where I live), or the Sports Centre
of Lancaster University. In many parts of Britain, small villages or their
environs are likely to have a practitioner or two. More generally, the expression
‘mind-body-spirit’ has entered the ranks of ‘cultural belief’; so has the
term ‘holistic’, now encountered in contexts as diverse as medispas and
university mission statements, or for that matter, the Dawn newspaper
of Pakistan, one headline running, ‘Soomro [the Senate Chairman] for
Holistic Approach to Combat Terror’ (3 October, 2006, p. 19); and terms
like ‘inner-child’ have become a staple of the middlebrow press and women’s
magazines.
In some quarters, it has become customary to discuss the numerical
significance of ‘spirituality’ in ways which smack of exaggeration, often
with the feel of the indeterminate, and tending to gain their effect by listing
relatively ad hoc illustrations or by using poorly evidenced generalizations.
In The Making of the New Spirituality. The Eclipse of the Western Religious
Tradition (2003), for instance, James Herrick claims:
For many Westerners, the long-prophesied new spiritual age certainly has
arrived. The Revealed Word and its busy, personal God have faded into our
collective spiritual memory, and bright new spiritual commitments encourage
fresh religious thought. (p. 16)
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‘I have been asserting that a massive shift in Western religious attitudes
has taken place’, continues Herrick, then noting that ‘perhaps some basic
evidence of such a change is in order’ (p. 17; my emphasis). Whilst going on
to provide a certain amount of useful data, Herrick also makes statements of
the kind, ‘The pervasiveness of alternative spiritualities forcefully confronted
Americans with revelations that Ronald and Nancy Regan sought advice
from an (expensive) astrologer’ (p. 17). The relative paucity of survey data,
of information gathered by way of locality research, systematic interviewing
and the like means that it is tempting to have recourse to this kind of
statement. I shall do my best to avoid it.
What is Growing
With the development of the assumptions, beliefs, values and associated
experiences of the autonomous self, especially during and since the sixties,
subjective-life – so vital an aspect of the self-understanding of the unique
autonomous agent – has unquestionably become an ever-increasing focus of
attention and concern. (See Patricia Clough’s edited volume, The Affective
Turn, 2007.) Catering for subjective-life, fuelling the massive subjective turn
of modern culture, perhaps in measure constituting elements of subjectivelife,
subjective wellbeing culture has thus entered a range of occupations, from
shop floor assistants in major stores to spiritual therapists in hospices.1
Careers where subjective wellbeing culture, in various forms and in various
ways, has become a significant aspect of work, now add up to one of the
largest – if not the largest – employment ‘sectors’ of contemporary modernity.
And especially during the last decade or so, the development of the
culture of subjective wellbeing has increasingly become very much part and
parcel of the development of inner-life spirituality.
All cultures are bound up with the (subjective) wellbeing, or not, of
their citizens. Subjective wellbeing culture is marked out by the explicit,
sometimes highly elaborated, attention paid to subjective life. One sees
this, for example, in the difference between the car ad that provides the
objective facts (fuel consumption, number of cylinders, etc.) and those that
declare, ‘Experience’, ‘Experience the Difference’ or ‘The Drive of Your Life’,
with only a photograph. Clearly, you might be pleased about the fuel
consumption figure. But the fact remains that the life of experience is not
explicitly addressed in objective, impersonal promotions of the factual variety.
Those working within subjective wellbeing culture seek to align their
provisions and activities with the elementary ‘logic’ of enhancing the quality
of subjective-life. Within the constraints of brand identity or style, the fact
that the subjective-life of any particular individual is unique means that
provisions or activities are personalized or individualized as much as possible
(or are left intentionally vague so as to be inclusive whilst being open to
personal interpretation). The key is to enable people to be themselves (which is
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62 Portraying Spiritualities of Life
where the unique comes in) only better (which is where the enhancement
of quality comes in) – a two-fold aim which is frequently advanced by
encouraging people to go ‘deeper’ into their experiences of themselves to
develop their qualities and circumvent their limitations (and especially for all
those who regard life as unfathomable, there is plenty of scope for going
deeper). ‘Feel the difference’ or ‘‘‘know the difference’’ for yourself’ are
perhaps the major litmus tests for wellbeing-cum-wellness in subjectivized
mode. From child-centred, progressive or ‘independent’ education, to the
manager-centredness of ‘soft capitalism’, to patient-centred nursing, to
guest-centred spas and hotels, to the more individuated health and fitness
clubs, to customer-centred shop floor assistants, to ‘person’-centred call
centre operatives, to viewer-centred reality TV shows, to reader-‘engaging’
or ‘life-provoking’ autobiographies and women’s magazines, to advertising,
to client-centred therapists, to life-skill coaches – provisions and services offer
a wide range of ways of being yourself only better. The child-centred primary
school teacher works in the spirit of Rousseau or Froebel to cultivate the
particular abilities or ‘gifts’ of individual children and to help particular
children to develop their own ‘well-rounded’ personalities; the therapist at
the spa endeavours to work with her guest to facilitate the best possible
experiences; those producing reality TV shows aim to provide as many opportunities
as possible for the individual viewer to learn from the ‘personalities’,
both how to avoid ill-being and how to be happy and successful as a person;
those working for development agencies increasingly ‘put people first’ – their
‘capacities’, ‘capabilities’, their ‘potential’ (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993).
What has all this got to do with the growth of New Age spiritualities of
life? Within the ranks of those supplying the provisions of purchasing culture,
any good market researcher will be aware of the numerical significance of the
inner-life beliefs of the kind reported by Eileen Barker and others (see below
and the Appendix). Market researchers will know that the sales of newspapers
like the Daily Mail or magazines like O The Oprah Magazine benefit
from the inclusion of articles catering to the hopes of those with beliefs of
a mind-body-spirituality variety; market researchers will know that ‘spiritual’
products sold in health and beauty shops are likely to appeal to those who
think that holistic spirituality might well improve their quality of life. And in
turn, the widespread presence of spiritually ‘significant’ provisions – not least
the many books housed under the ‘self-improvement’, ‘health and fitness’
and, of course, ‘mind-body-spirit’ categories in the wellbeing zones of major
bookstores – could sometimes be contributing to the number of people who
‘believe’ in inner-spirituality, perhaps by influencing all those who say they
‘believe in something’ or ‘definitely believe in something’ but who do not
know what to call it; who have not wanted to pin it down or take away the
mystery by applying an unrealistic ‘label’.
‘Capitalizing’ on widespread ‘beliefs’ in what lies within and what this
realm has to offer, many of the provisions and activities of subjective wellbeing
culture have introduced holistic, mind-body-spirit themes. Sometimes
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these are well developed; sometimes they provide a ‘taste’; sometimes they
take the form of allusions to inner-life spirituality and hints of what
it promises. Relative to the context of subjective wellbeing culture, innerlife
spirituality is thriving. It adds to the ‘better’ or ‘more’ of more secular
forms of subjective wellbeing culture by offering additional means to the end
of the ‘more’. Working from within the heart of the person, to flow through
her or his personal life, it does not distract from the unique – the ‘I am what I
am’ anchorage of so much of modern culture – and appeals accordingly.
Whether or not people are taken in by the advertising (etc.) of much of
subjective wellbeing culture, what matters is that they have the opportunity
to be ‘taken in to’ their subjectivities – and this leads some to the ‘real
thing’ – activities like reflexology. The heartland of inner-life spirituality,
today, is found within the holistic milieu. The milieu takes the form of holistic
activities – activities which are run by spiritual practitioners. Some run small
groups; others one-to-one activities. Adept in the arts of practising spiritualities
of life of the mind-body-spirit variety, the focus of tai chi groups
or one-to-one reiki sessions, for example, is generally orientated towards
wellbeing-cum-‘healing’-cum-health; the ‘well-life’.
The assumptions and values of subjective wellbeing culture – the
importance of subjective life; the positive, ‘can do’ way it is envisaged; the
theme of exercising autonomy to develop, express and celebrate who you
really are – are writ large in the holistic milieu. The affinities are close.
Accordingly, expectations aroused by subjective wellbeing culture can serve
to direct people to the specialized zone of the milieu itself. Here, they can
engage in associational, face-to-face activities to go (yet) deeper into what is
to be found in other areas of the culture. One reads about yoga and wellbeing
(or ‘wellness’) in a popular magazine; one decides to ‘work out’ whilst
watching a yoga DVD; one gets interested, buys a book or two and reads
about chakras, energy flows, kundalini, and what yoga has to do with the
purpose of life; one gets older and starts thinking about one’s health and
what one’s life is all about; one exercises one’s autonomy to find out what
works best; one finally settles with a tai chi group; one ‘realizes’ things about
oneself that one had not fully appreciated or known about before. Or again:
a primary school teacher feels that she should really do something to prepare
for the upcoming Ofsted inspection during which ‘spiritual development’
will be assessed; she introduces ‘stilling’ sessions; she experiences the effects
for herself and observes the results in the classroom; she decides to join
a meditation group.
Many of the practitioners and participants of the holistic milieu work, or
have worked, in person-centred, wellbeing professions – nursing, education,
counselling, therapy, HRD, and so on. Some become active in the holistic
milieu because they have been unable to fulfil their holistic, person-centred,
subjective wellbeing concerns within the workplace. Take NHS hospital
nurses as an example. On the one hand, governmental policies direct them
to respond to the ‘spiritual needs’ of their patients; on the other, they are
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terribly busy working to comply with scientistic and bureaucratic procedures.
A number of nurses who have been interviewed are seriously interested in
their own ‘growth’, by working closely with others, and with what holistic
spirituality has to offer their patients, but have become so frustrated with the
iron cage of the ward, perhaps fed, especially the seemingly ever-increasing
number of regulations, procedures and targets, that they have simply left or
gone part-time – to liberate themselves by learning to become holistic
practitioners in their own right (Heelas, 2006b).
Summarizing the evidence for growth rather more systematically, during
the Kendal Project research we erred on the side of caution by working with a
strict definition of what counts as belonging to the holistic milieu (Heelas
and Woodhead, 2005, pp. 36–7). Our paradigmatic criterion of a holistic
milieu activity is that it is run by a spiritual practitioner. Normally open to
the public, activities are held in private. The milieu is comprised of specialized
activities. That is to say, rather than taking place within and with
reference to more encompassing sociocultural contexts like schools or companies,
groups and one-to-one activities are ‘self-contained’. All that is
required is available within them. Taking place in a setting like a hired
room which is not ‘linked up’ with surrounding (or other) settings, activities
are specifically focused on what is taking place as people gather to make
progress. Activities provide ‘time-out’. Not taking place within and with
reference to broader institutional contexts, institutional issues need not
dominate. This characterization certainly serves to distinguish holistic milieu
activities from – say –spiritually or holistically informed management training
taking place within a company, and therefore open to all sorts of company
factors (aims, ‘philosophy’, etc.).
Kendal Project research shows that during the autumn of 2001, 95
spiritual practitioners were providing the activities of Kendal and environs.
During a typical week, 600 people were participating in 126 separate
activities – comprising 1.6 percent of the population of the area. As argued
in The Spiritual Revolution, there are very good reasons for supposing
that Kendal can be taken to be representative of Great Britain as a whole.
This means that slightly over 900,000 inhabitants are active on a weekly
basis in the holistic milieux of the nation, of whom 146,000 are spiritual
practitioners.2
At much the same time, Church of England regular Sunday
attendance was around 960,000 (Brierley, 2003, p. 8.3); as of 2005, for
England, 870,600 (Brierley, 2006, p. 2.3). Thinking of the USA, using
different sources of evidence (including recent surveys), our estimate is that
between 2.5 and 8 percent of the population are involved in holistic milieu
activities provided by spiritual practitioners. And in Britain, together with
many other western countries, holistic milieu activities have grown during
the last few decades – from being very few and far between in Britain in
1960 or 1970, to the number we find today.
One of the drawbacks of the research carried out during the Kendal
Project is that we did not think through the very tricky problem of
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distinguishing holistic milieu activities from relatively ‘specialized’ activities
taking place within the primary schools of Kendal, the local hospital and
the like; or, for that matter, Kendalians participating in spiritual reflexology
one-to-one sessions whilst on a cruise holiday: ‘specialized’, but with a good
chance of the experiences, challenges and opportunities of life aboard entering
into the sessions. For complicated reasons, I am now pretty firmly
convinced that it not possible to identify a strictly defined holistic milieu
of the kind we attempted to operationalize during the Kendal Project.
Accordingly, for present purposes I am going to drop the tricky ‘selfcontained’
criterion. I shall simply use the term ‘holistic activities’ to refer
to mind-body-spiritualities, run by spiritual, holistic practitioners, wherever
they are found.
Mind-body-spirituality wellbeing activities have become relatively widespread
in a range of contexts where person-centred subjective wellbeing
culture is in demand. These include hotels (of the more luxurious variety),
spas (again, of the more upmarket variety), ‘adventurous’, New Age holidays
(where the experiential adventures lie within), shops (like the ‘therapy
rooms’ of the naturalistic outlet, Org, in Leeds), stores (Boots toyed with
it, Harvey Nichols have done it), beauty salons, airports, prisons, (relatively)
designated spaces in hospitals, general practices, Healthy Living Centres,
meeting places for pensioners, (some) nursing homes, rehabilitation centres
(tai chi at the Meadows), training or personal consultancy rooms in companies,
lecture rooms in Colleges of Further Education (especially when
the topics include beauty treatments, health and fitness), classes within
Adult Education facilities, MA/MBA university courses (whether in state
or private management or business schools), some restaurants and clubs,
health and fitness emporia, the areas around bed and breakfast facilities
in remoter reaches of the land, new social movements (in particular
environmentalist), primary school quiet rooms, class rooms, assemblies and
after-school activities, sporting and recreational activities (meditative forest
walking, for example) and the meeting rooms of therapists and counsellors
(although my own counsellor is primarily psychological-cum-humanistic,
he nevertheless describes himself ‘as God’). Then there are also enclaves
within – or associated with – the United Nations (Mikhail Gorbachev and
Maurice Strong’s ‘The Earth Charter’, with ‘sacred trust’ placed in the
‘interconnected[ness]’ of the ‘environmental, economic, political, social
and spiritual challenges facing the world), government quarters, most
especially departments of health and education, and to go further afield,
INGOs and NGOs.
Before looking more closely at several of these settings, I should emphasize
that the term ‘wellbeing’ (or the somewhat more health-focused term ‘wellness’)
should not be taken to automatically evoke the ideas of the trivial or
the consumeristic. True, the term is used in the sense of ‘feeling good about
oneself’ – the ‘feelgood’ factor that one should experience after a pampering
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session at a spa. However, the term is also used in somewhat different
contexts. Amartya Sen, for example, writes:
The functionings relevant for well-being vary from such elementary ones as
escaping morbidity and mortality, being adequately nourished, having mobility,
etc., to complex ones such as being happy, achieving self-respect, taking part in
the life the community, appearing in public without shame . . . The claim is that
these functionings make up a person’s being, and the evaluation of a person’s
well-being has to take the form of an assessment of these constituent elements.
(1993, pp. 36–7)
As it might be said, much of what used to go under the rubric of welfare now
falls under the rubric of wellbeing; or the shift of emphasis from the basics of
traditional trade unionism to the subjective wellbeing and personal qualities
of soft, ‘participatory’ capitalism. Much of expressivistic subjective wellbeing
culture is humanistic – not just within national and international charities
or other organizations, but also within (certain) shops on the high street
and (certain) businesses. Although there are basic themes running through
subjective wellbeing culture per se, the extent to which its products or
services are so to speak ‘taken in’ in an arguably consumeristic manner, or
the extent to which products or services have to do with the kind of more
‘complex functionings’ which Sen writes about, depends on context.
Google Data
For obvious reasons, this kind of data provides only a rough guide. Nevertheless,
a simple search using Google serves to indicate the relative popularity of
ways in which spirituality has come to be considered. At the end of January
2006, a straightforward search for ‘spirituality and . . . ’ on Google.com
resulted in the following figures: spirituality and health, 20,400,000; spirituality
and business, 16,100,000 (with Peter Senge heading the list); spirituality
and education, 14,800,000, spirituality and enlightenment, 2,200,000.
A search at the end of January 2007, now using Google.co.uk, provides
the same sequencing: health, 1,270,000; business, 1,200,000; education,
918,000 and enlightenment, 132,000. With this pulse of public, quasi-academic
and academic interest in mind, I adopt the same sequence.3
Health
By 2001, almost half the general practices of England were providing access
to CAM activities – those complementary and alternative forms of medicine
which take a ‘mind-body’ form (approximately two thirds) together
with those of a ‘mind-body-spirituality’ nature.4
Almost one third of the
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CAM activities were provided in-house by doctors themselves or their staff
(Dobson, 2003). Much the same picture is found in the USA, one indicator
being that 75 out of 125 medical schools, including Harvard, offer courses
on CAM, including prescribing courses of action (Wetzel et al., 1998; and
see Baer, 2004). Given that around a third of CAM activities incorporate a
spiritual dimension, generally of an inner-life variety, it is apparent that the
inner-life is by no means viewed unfavourably by considerable numbers of
the medical establishment.
Within the sphere of public services, specifically the UK’s National Health
Service, government charters and plans state that nurses must attend to
‘the spiritual needs’ of their patients. Reflecting their own experiencescum-beliefs,
it is perfectly apparent that hospital nurses are increasingly
exercised by the values and experiences of holistic, mind-body-spirit spirituality,
their growing interest owing a fair amount to what patients are
looking for in terms of their prior values, beliefs or expectations. Turning
to hospices, cancer care centres (normally charities) and similar organizations,
holistic spirituality is considerably more in evidence – almost certainly
to the extent of having eclipsed Christianity. Cancer Care-Kendal, for
example, provides an ‘extensive range of complementary therapies’, including
those with a spiritual dimension; the Penny Brohn Cancer Care
Centre (formerly the Bristol Cancer Help Centre) offers ‘a unique range of
physical, emotional and spiritual support’, facilitating ‘inner strengths and
resources’. (See also Hedges and Beckford, 2000; Partridge, 2005, pp. 4–41;
Heelas, 2006b.)
As for CAM itself, a considerable amount of research attests to its popularity.
To mention several indicative findings, Toby Murcott (2005) reports
that ‘Half the population of the UK has visited an alternative practitioner’
(p. 36), many of whom will be working with spirituality. And during 2007
it was widely reported that Britons spent £1.6 billion annually on CAM.
As long ago as the mid-1990s, the New Age and kindred therapeutic practices
of the USA – which will certainly have included a considerable amount
that has come to be known as CAM – were generating around $14 billion a
year from personal spending (Ferguson and Lee, 1996); and arrestingly,
Raymond Tallis (2004) reports research which shows that ‘By 1996,
expenditure [on ‘alternative therapies’] in the USA . . . exceeded the total
amount out-of-pocket in the entire mainstream medical system’ (p. 127).
Returning briefly to the UK, under the title ‘Booming Subjects’, The
Times Higher Educational Supplement (19 January 2007, p. 19) places
‘complementary medicine’ first, undergraduate applications having increased
by 36.5 per cent between the years 2005 and 2006; and, it can be added, rose
by 31 per cent during the 2006–7 admission process (Paton, 2007).
‘Nothing really matters except health’, says Danish supermodel Helena
Christensen. Surely a widely held evaluation, and one which helps explain the
conjunction of spirituality with the wellbeing of health – one which directs us
to the realm of health and fitness clubs, spas and the like.
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Leo Hickman (2006) states that ‘On January 1, 2005, there were
7,036,118 members of 5,486 public and private health and fitness clubs in
the UK – 11.8 per cent of the population’ (p. 5). Tom Dart and Jonathan
Keane (2002) provide more information: ‘Between 1994 and 1999 the value
of the UK fitness market grew by 81 per cent’, also noting that ‘14 per cent
of the [American] population belongs to a health club’ (p. 31). And
Matthew Goodman (2006) notes that the health and beauty-spa market of
Britain is valued at £1.5 billion. Every health and fitness club (or leisure
centre) which I have visited to collect brochures (and this is now a significant
number) provides holistic activities; interviews and other sources of
information indicate that these are normally run by spiritual practitioners.
These are the new cathedrals of so many of our towns and cities – externally
bare, bland and monumental shells housing the life of health and fitness.
Remaining with the theme of capitalist services in the mode of relaxation,
pleasure or rejuvenation (capitalist in that they almost always aim to make
a good profit), the International Spa Association’s (ISPA) definition of a spa
transforms the Latin salus per aquam (‘health from water’) to an ‘entity
devoted to enhancing overall wellbeing through professional services that
encourage the renewal of mind, body and spirit’. The Association reports
that in 2001, 156 million spa visits were made in the USA, with $11 billion
in revenue (up from $6 billion in 1999). Certainly, the more up-market (and
utterly luxurious) spas of the USA, Britain, Bali or that world capital,
Bangkok, and – indeed – those located all over the globe in uplifting places,
have drawn on their market research (which presumably shows the popularity
of the spiritual dimension of the life of wellbeing for the people they aim to
attract) to invest considerable sums in catering for the spiritual expectations
of their target clientele.5
Mainstream Business
In Madeleine Bunting’s (2004a) estimation, ‘what the ‘‘super-performance’’
companies require from employees involves a process of transformation
of potential, of self-discovery and self-realization and transcendence of limitations,
which springs directly from the New Age spirituality of the sixties’
(p. 115). Within the context of what has come to be known as soft capitalism
(Thrift, 2005), talk is of ‘bringing life back to work’, ‘people come first’, ‘the
learning organization’, ‘personal growth through work’ – and, of course,
‘unlocking human potential’. The state of being of employees is taken to be
critical. The emphasis lies with work ‘from the inside out’. So if called for,
inner-life spirituality is quite naturally at home.
As indicated by the Google measuring rod, holistic spirituality has established
a relatively significant presence within the heartlands of ‘big business’
capitalism: corporate cultures, trainings, weekend courses, talks, seminars
and so on. Clearly, the Google figure for ‘spiritual and business’ will include
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businesses of an ‘alternative’ bent. However, the Google figure for ‘spirituality
and alternative business’ is 1,970,000 – a relatively small percentage of
the 16,100,000 items under ‘spirituality and business’. Equally clearly, the
Google figure for ‘spiritual and business’ will include Christian spirituality.
However, my 2006 Google.com search provided a figure of 13,500,000
for ‘New Age spirituality and business’ (in effect ‘out of’ the 16,100,000
number) – compared with a figure of 1,700,000 for ‘Evangelical Christianity,
spirituality and business’.6
Moving to more solid ground, Douglas Hicks (2003) summarizes his
study of USA companies by noting:
One of the most significant and complicated developments in American
religion that contributes to interest in spirituality at work and elsewhere is the
rise of New Age traditions. Indeed, along with a new public Christian evangelicalism,
New Age language fundamentally shapes discussions of contemporary
workplace spirituality. (p. 31; my emphasis)
Significantly, Hicks also notes that ‘the aging of the boomer-dominated
workforce has been a prime factor of the rise of spirituality in the office’
(p. 28) – significantly because many of these boomers, who have obtained
positions of influence (especially in HRD, etc.), will previously have had
contact with the spiritualities of the 1960s whilst they were at college. These
are the people, one can surmize, who are likely to have faith in what lies within;
the contribution it can make to the workplace. These are the people who
organize or participate in the training, courses and seminars – the events which
aim to release and optimize the resources of the inner-life; the spiritual
‘energy’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘creativity’ (‘spark’ or ‘flair’). These are the people
who read, and contribute to, the journals which have flourished, largely during
and since the 1980s. These are the people who buy works by Peter Senge (for
example The Fifth Discipline, 1999): minimally quasi-spiritual in approach, a
person who has become increasingly spiritually orientated over the years, who
refers to ‘the spiritual revolution’, and who is of very considerable influence
as an advocate of the self-development focused ‘learning organization’.
Ian Mitroff and Elizabeth Denton’s A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America
(1999) provides more evidence. Although the surveys and interviews of their
project can hardly be said to address corporate America as a whole (a huge
task!), this pioneering study is reasonably representative. Finding that the ‘first
choice of everyone we interviewed regarding what gave them meaning and
purpose in their job was ‘‘the ability to realize my full potential as a person’’’
(p. 36), it comes as no surprise to read that ‘Roughly 60 per cent, of the
majority of those to whom Mitroff talked, had a positive view of spirituality
and a negative view of religion’ (p. 39). ‘For these people’, we also read, ‘it is
taken for granted as a fact that everyone is a spiritual being and that spirituality
is an integral part of humankind’s basic makeup’ (p. 41) – with ‘integration’
and cooperation being highly valued.
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Briefly mentioning spiritual activities (management training, etc.), the
popular demand indicated by Google, together with the amount of material
which has been written about spirituality and business (publications which
have taken off since the earlier 1980s), suggests that many are interested in
implementing what they have read about (perhaps by looking at the wealth
of material in Robert Giacalone and Carol Jurkiewicz’s edited volume,
Handbook of Workplace Spirituality and Organizational Performance,
2004). Comparing the situation with the 1980s and earlier (which I endeavoured
to chart in The New Age Movement, 1996), it is perfectly clear that
there is much more activity taking place today – one source of information
being all those journals which have sprung up catering for interest in what
workplace spirituality can offer; in its effective implementation.7
Mainstream Education
I might have missed something, but it very much looks as though systematic
investigations, whether by way of locality study or by way of survey, have yet
to be carried out. A big job, which would require looking at syllabuses,
teaching content and practice, assemblies, after-school activities, activities
on university campuses, departments in universities (including management
and health), colleges (including beauty and health departments), adult
education, and so on.
All the schools of England and Wales are legally required to attend to the
spiritual development of their pupils. David Bell, until recently the Chief
Inspector of Schools of England and Wales, sets the tone when he says (it will
be recalled) that ‘spirituality has come into its own as encapsulating those
very qualities that make us human’ (my emphasis). More formally, to cite in
full the definition of spirituality used by Ofsted (1994), the non-ministerial
government department responsible for inspecting the standards of schools
and teachers in England,
Spiritual development relates to that aspect of inner life through which pupils
acquire insights into their personal experience which are of enduring worth.
It is characterized by reflection, the attribution of meaning to experience,
valuing a non-material dimension to life and intimations of an enduring reality.
(p. 86; my emphases)
It is then explicitly stated that ‘‘‘spiritual’’ is not synonymous with religious’
(p. 86). Going a little more comprehensively into the matter of the nature of
the ‘spiritual’, probably the most useful document is Ofsted’s ‘Promotion
and Evaluating Pupils’ Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development’
(2004). A web-based publication, it includes most of the relevant points.
To pull some of them out, we read of the acquisition of ‘personal beliefs and
values’ (pp. 10–11); ‘the spiritual quest’ (p. 11); ‘the belief that one’s inner
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resources provide the ability to rise above everyday experiences’ (p. 12); ‘the
essence of being human, involving the ability to surpass the boundaries of the
physical and material’ (p. 13); ‘a propensity to foster human attributes such
as love, faithfulness and goodness, that cannot be classed as physical’ (p. 13);
‘the inner world of creativity and imagination’ (p. 13); ‘the quest for meaning
in life (p. 13; my emphasis); ‘the sense of identity and self-worth which
enables us to value others’ (p. 13); ‘the human spirit’ (p. 14); ‘their own
spirituality’ (p. 14; my emphasis); ‘a pupil’s ‘‘spirit’’’ (p. 12); and of
‘encouraging pupils to explore and develop what animates themselves and
others’ (p. 18). Vitalism alive and well today.
Although there are also more theistically orientated passages (partly so as
not to leave anyone out), it is clear that the extracts I have provided associate
spirituality with humanistic-cum-expressivistic values, and more than hint
that many will find that the ‘inner world’ is important. Taking their cue
from governmental documentation, it is certainly the case that numbers of
teachers encourage inner-life spirituality. After all, schools are inspected, the
Chief Inspector of Schools having the general duty of keeping the Secretary
of State informed about spiritual – moral, social and cultural – matters. The
emphasis is on spiritual development, frequently taking place within child- or
student-centred contexts where holistic themes are in evidence, where a
fair number of teachers are ‘believers’ (maybe holistic participants, even
practitioners), with faith in ‘spirituality’ as a way of being inclusivistic enough
to handle monocultural and multicultural issues; teachers who welcome
relief from the routine focus on exam results. With these and other factors
encouraging ‘spiritual development’ in addition to ‘merely’ teaching about
spirituality, it is not surprising that inner-life, experiential activities are
becoming more popular within the mainstream educational system.8
Although I do not yet have systematic evidence, research to date in an area
around Lancaster ranging from Blackpool in the southwest to Settle to the
northeast suggests that many primary schools now provide yoga or tai chi for
their pupils (and parents); some have special areas where pupils can go for
creative, calming and holistic therapies. Certainly, local schools around where
I live in the Yorkshire Dales (perhaps an unlikely setting in that many pupils
come from traditional, Methodist farming families), including Ingleton
Middle School and the Church of England Primary School which I serve as
a member of the Board of Governors, are active.
Provisions
In 1998, Daniel Mears and Christopher Ellison (2000) carried out an
innovative study. With a 60 per cent response rate to their telephone survey
of Texas residents, they found that 22 per cent of respondents answered
in the affirmative to the question, ‘In the past year, have you purchased,
read or listened to any ‘‘New Age’’ materials (books, magazines, audio or
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72 Portraying Spiritualities of Life
videotapes)?’ (p. 297). What is especially important to note is that New
Age themes are in evidence: 66 per cent of the 22 per cent of purchasers
believe that ‘spiritual truth comes from within’, for instance (p. 300). The
‘consumption’, as Mears and Ellison designate it, of ‘New Age materials’ is
predominantly by ‘New Agers’ (p. 300).
A great deal of hard evidence, collected by publishers and publishing
agencies, supports the contention that the most noticeable area of growth
of New Age provisions along the high street has taken place within bookshops
(or shops which have a book section). Volumes addressing inner-life
spirituality are becoming ever more numerous, one major chain in Britain
(which must remain anonymous) selling something in the order of four
times more mind-body-spirituality publications than those devoted to traditional
theistic world religions. And in newsagents, magazines and newspapers
contain increasing amounts of material on mind-body-spirituality. More
systematically, unpublished research by Andrea Cheshire (2001), then of
Lancaster University, shows that in January 2001, 56 of the 187 high-street
shops of Kendal were selling New Age products – products which signalled,
encouraged or aimed to facilitate holistic spirituality. Replicating the research
in April 2003, Cheshire found that the proportion of these shops had risen
from 30 to 45 per cent, with a number being serviced by companies specializing
in New Age provisions. It is true that ‘new spiritual outlets’, as I call
those ‘alternative’ shops specializing in New Age provisions, have not grown
as fast as one might expect – but this is surely due to their being rendered
relatively redundant by the ‘mainstreaming’ of such provisions within more
conventional outlets.9
The Unbelievable
Probably the most arresting evidence concerning the popularity of New Age
spiritualities of life is provided by the numerical significance of relevant
‘beliefs’.10
The findings from a number of countries are indeed rather
unbelievable.
The RAMP (Religious and Moral Pluralism) survey of the late 1990s was
carried out in 11 European countries. Of particular significance for present
purposes, religious ‘beliefs’ were probed by adding an option to the kind of
list which has long been in use. In answer to the question ‘Which of these
statements comes nearest to your own?’ respondents were provided with the
opportunity to select ‘I believe that God is something within each person,
rather than something out there’. Drawing on a range of sources, including
Eileen Barker (2004 ‘Summary of Research Results’, www.regard.ac.uk),
respondents from the 11 countries provided the following responses:
Portugal (979 respondents) 39.1 %
Great Britain (1,423 respondents) 37.2 %
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Wellbeing Spirituality Today 73
Sweden (1,007 respondents) 36 %
Italy (2,149 respondents) 35.9 %
Denmark (597 respondents) 35.2 %
Belgium (1,659 respondents) 30.8 %
Finland (758 respondents) 28.9 %
Netherlands (1,002 respondents) 26.4 %
Norway (480 respondents) 25 %
Hungary (979 respondents) 24.6 %
Poland (1,133 respondents) 18.4 %
Total 29 %
It is also noteworthy that in 6 of the 11 countries, percentages for the ‘God
within’ are higher than percentages for the ‘personal god’:
Sweden personal
God ¼ 18 %
God within ¼ 36 % difference ¼ 18 %
Denmark personal
God ¼ 20.1 %
God within ¼ 35.2 % difference ¼ 15.1 %
Great Britain personal
God ¼ 23.4 %
God within ¼ 37.2 % difference ¼ 13.8 %
Portugal personal
God ¼ 25.9 %
God within ¼ 39.1 % difference ¼ 13.2 %
Belgium personal
God ¼ 21.5 %
God within ¼ 30.8 % difference ¼ 9.3 %
Netherlands personal
God ¼ 23.4 %
God within ¼ 26.4 % difference ¼ 3 %
Using ‘I believe in a God with whom I can have a personal relationship’ as
a rough guide to belief in the theistic God of Christianity (and other traditions),
and using ‘God within’ as a rough guide for inner-spirituality, the
data could be taken as signifying a spiritual revolution of belief.
In the USA, Wade Clark Roof (1999b) draws attention to the fact that
‘The Barna Research Group estimates that one out of five Americans, or
20 per cent, are what it calls ‘‘New Age Practitioners’’’ (p. 136). The
importance of inner-life spirituality is also indicated by George Gallup and
Timothy Jones’s (2000) finding that ‘almost a third of our survey defined
spirituality with no reference to . . . a higher authority’, a typical response
being that spirituality is ‘the essence of my personal being’ (p. 49).
Although longitudinal comparison is somewhat tricky – not least because
survey questions have tended to change over the years – it is safe to say that
there has been a considerable increase in the number of people in Europe,
and almost certainly the USA and elsewhere (including Australia and Japan),
who have ‘turned within’ for belief. It is not an exaggeration to say that the
inhabitants of a number of European countries are living through the most
radical period of spiritual-religious change of belief since Christianity took
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74 Portraying Spiritualities of Life
root in their lands.11
Without denying for one moment that there are
problems with this kind of data, including the near-certainty that God within
‘beliefs’ does not always mean that respondents explicitly refer to inner-life
spirituality, the findings can hardly be ignored. (For further discussion, see
Heelas, 2007a, 2008a; Heelas and Houtman, 2008; Palmisano, forthcoming.)
They must indicate something – almost certainly a great deal. And the fact
that a broadly similar picture emerges from other surveys gives us some
confidence that the findings are reasonably reliable (see the Appendix).
The numerical importance of inner-life beliefs among the general population
of Britain and elsewhere is considerable. Obviously, though, buying
a mind-body-spirit volume, let alone reading a mind-body-spirit article in a
magazine or newspaper, could indicate interest or amusement rather than
belief. Neither does participating in mind-body-spirituality activities within a
relatively secular spa necessarily involve belief. Far from it. With only around
half of the participants of the holistic milieu of Kendal according spiritual
significance to their activities, the figure is likely to be less within spas. Nor,
for that matter, need belief be involved when primary school teachers are
leading ‘centring’ activities – neither for the teachers themselves nor for their
students. Nevertheless, publishers and spa owners, for example, would not
be interested in the holistic, spirit-body-mind dynamic if their market
research had not led them to the conclusion that there was a market to be
catered for; a ‘cultural platform’ to capitalize upon. Equally, businesses
would not spend considerable sums on cultivating inner-life spirituality
among employees unless employers had a good idea that it would be adopted
(and prove effective).
The number and range of provisions and activities found in cultural-cuminstitutional
settings would not have proliferated as they have unless there
was a receptive sector of the population; unless they were in tune with the
beliefs, expectations, values or interests of a significant number of people.
The 37 per cent of the British who apparently see God as ‘inside each person’
serves as a basis for provisions and activities to cater for, for spirituality to
flow into new settings. And given the pretty solid evidence from a reasonable
amount of research showing that inner-spirituality is associated with expressivistic
values, higher levels of educational attainment and the person-centred
professions (see chapter 5), there is little doubt that teachers, nurses, HRD
personnel and the like are most likely to be ‘believers’, maybe contributing to
growth in their sectors of expertise accordingly.
Concluding Thoughts
Earlier in this chapter I mentioned the fact that slightly over 900,000
inhabitants of Great Britain are active on a weekly basis in the holistic milieux
of the nation. Numbers of participants swell if one includes those who
experience their activities as spiritual even though their practitioners do
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Wellbeing Spirituality Today 75
not. Given the ‘God within’ percentage, and the likelihood that this is higher
among those attracted by (say) more secular (body-mind) holistic forms
of CAM, the number of participants of this kind could be considerable.
Furthermore, there are those who ‘participate’ alone: yoga at home; lifemeditation
whilst walking; etc. Mike Savage et al.’s (1992) analysis of British
Market Research Bureau data suggests that this number could be relatively
significant for those health, education and welfare professionals who practise
yoga (p. 108). As for beliefs, much hangs on whether one includes
those humanistic expressivists who ‘believe’ in their ‘true’ or ‘authentic’
self; those who do not use the language of spirituality but who ‘believe’ in
an inner, authentic self which somehow lies beyond society and culture. On
the one hand, the idea of this true self most certainly smacks of the metaphysical
(Shils, 1981, pp. 10–11; Tipton, 1982; Heelas, 2000, pp. 244–48).
It is an interior self which has a great deal in common with the ‘spiritual self’.
One might say it is spiritual in all but name – Gilbert Ryle’s (1963) ‘ghost in
the machine’ comes to mind. On the other hand, though, the language of
spirituality is not used; and perhaps other than serving as an inner source of
wisdom, the authentic self of the mode of expressive humanism under
consideration is relatively secular. The (healing, etc.) powers of the sacred
are not in evidence. At the same time, however, the mode of selfhood under
consideration is only relatively secular: various aspects of inner-life spirituality,
such as the theme of holistic integration, could well be in evidence –
‘psychological’ integration of a ‘magical’ kind which scientistic psychologists
would dismiss. In short, there is a spectrum between the spiritual self and the
relatively secular, numerical significance varying in accord with where a line is
drawn; and it has to be said that it is exceedingly doubtful that a useful line
can be drawn between, say, the functionally (and to an extent metaphysically)
similar ideas of ‘unlocking human potential’ and ‘expressing one’s spirituality’.
(See also chapter 8.)
Drawing his discussion of religion and ‘alternative’ spirituality in Britain to
a close, Bruce (1996) writes that ‘in so far as we can measure any aspect of
religious interest, belief or action and can compare 1995 with 1895, the only
description for the change between the two points is ‘‘decline’’’ (p. 273).
Whatever the very considerable virtues of Bruce’s data survey in connection
with the decline of traditional, theistic religion, in so far as ‘alternative’
spiritualities are concerned the evidence which has been presented shows
that Bruce’s assessment can be reversed – to run, ‘the only description
for. . . change . . . is ‘‘growth’’’. ‘New Age beliefs and attitudes’ might not
have become important enough to ‘effectively dominate all areas of life’, as
Campbell would have it (to think of the quotation at the beginning of this
chapter). But the flow through society and culture, as well as whatever
‘independent ‘‘invention’’’ which has taken place, is of an arresting order.
Even Gleneagles, that bastion of baronial establishmentarianism, has ‘gone
with the flow’ – ‘The Spa’, ‘recognized as the best hotel spa in Scotland
following the Annual Conde Nast Reader Traveller Awards 2006’, ‘offers
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76 Portraying Spiritualities of Life
beauty care and therapeutic treatments for ladies and gentlemen, including
the innovative ESPA holistic programmes in life enhancement and unique
organic healing and therapeutic Ytsara treatments’. (ESPA treatments are as
much for the ‘inner self’ as anything else.)
Spiritual revolutions – defined as beliefs and/or activities of an inner-life
spirituality nature becoming more numerous than the beliefs and/or activities
of life-as religion and the spiritualities of transcendent theism – have taken
place, or might very well be underway, in a variety of contexts: book store
chains, associational activities (the fortunes of the holistic milieu compared
with the fortunes of the congregational domain), educational practices,
mainstream health provision, mainstream business activities, personal beliefs,
for example. But are these revolutions – or revolutions in the making –
significantly ‘spiritual’?
Growth: which means that more people have the opportunity to engage
in ‘spiritual’ consumption than, say, in 1970. The pleasurable titillation of
the spiritual massage; the healthy hedonism provided by the holistic spa; the
glow that comes from believing that one is a spiritual being; the enchantment
stimulated by the ‘moving’ spiritual autobiography; the purchased freedom
provided by the spiritual adventure story; the pride felt in connection with
the status display of the ‘Tibetan’ Buddha in the hall (that ‘symbol of
restrained good taste’, as Mick Brown (1998) puts it). Or is this entirely
fair, at least as an overall portrayal? Could it be the case, for example, that
even the most ‘trivial’ of New Age provisions or services can serve to lead
people away from whatever consumeristic processes are in evidence to ‘deeper’
things – beyond the orbit of ‘merely’ gratifying the individual? Then what
about nurses and primary school teachers? Is it a matter of somehow dividing
up the provisions and activities of New Age spiritualities of life into consumer
and non-consumer dominated categories?
It is likely that a considerable number of those purchasing commodities are
already of a spiritual disposition. Mears and Ellison’s finding – that the
‘consumption’ of New Age materials is predominantly by New Agers –
provides support. So does the consideration that those who purchase commodities
are primarily middle class, expressivistic, and more likely to belong
to the ‘God within’ camp than the 37 per cent for Britain as a whole; and are
also more likely to see ‘God’ as a spirit or life-force than the typical person
(the national average being 14 per cent – see the Appendix). Perhaps
‘believers’ are less likely to be consuming New Age commodities than nonbelievers.
Perhaps they are more likely to be finding spiritual significance in
what they buy, over-and-above secular self-satisfaction.
It can be argued that inner-life beliefs are sustained, perhaps developed,
perhaps solidified, perhaps enriched by mind-body-spirituality provisions,
let alone holistic activities. It can be argued that inner-life beliefs would
not be so popular without the provisions (and holistic activities) – provisions
(including magazine articles about celebrities and spirituality) playing an
important role in acclimatizing, perhaps interesting, younger people, for
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example. It can be argued that provisions (and activities) would not be so
popular without the beliefs, the popularity of provisions owing a great deal
to the ways in which they resonate with beliefs, associated expectations,
‘demand’. It could also be argued that feedback is taking place, commodities
contributing to belief, belief encouraging appropriate purchases. But none
of these possibilities are especially significant if the presence of spirituality
really only means the presence of consumption.
Finally, although I have not gone into it in detail in this chapter, governmental
agencies in the UK (most noticeably in the form of Ofsted and
the NHS), and no doubt governmental agencies elsewhere, have had a role
in encouraging some of the growth areas. This is taken up later.
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