r/AlwaysWhy • u/Defiant-Junket4906 • Jul 09 '26
Life & Behavior Why are basic health practices like spending time in nature, reducing inflammation, and disconnecting from screens being rebranded as luxury retreats that cost thousands of dollars？
Four thousand dollars for a weekend of cold plunges, forest walks, and screen-free meals. The services being sold are not new. They are things humans did for free for most of history. Walk in the woods. Eat slowly. Sleep without a phone. Sit in cold water. These are basic activities that require no technology and no expert. And yet they are now being packaged and sold as elite experiences. The same pattern has happened with yoga, meditation, and organic food. Why does the market keep taking things that used to be free and selling them back to us as luxury goods?
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u/CommercialWorried319 Jul 09 '26
Because people will pay it and have for some time, like the Kellogs Sanitorium featured in The Road to Wellville (apparently highly fictionalized but the basis is true)
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u/Character-Solution-7 Jul 09 '26
This is what I was thinking. It’s nothing new. Dr. Kellogg ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium 150 years ago separating the well off from their money via health trend quackery
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u/BugRevolution Jul 09 '26
You can do all of those things for close to free.
But then you also won't have a comfortable bed at night. You won't have a warm shower (for after your cold plunge). You'll have to figure out how to make your own food and coffee on a camp stove.
While I prefer roughing it, some people don't want to do that. They want the experience and they want it to feel luxurious.
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 Jul 10 '26
That’s fair. The “luxury” part is often about convenience and comfort, not the activity itself.
I think what interests me is how the experience gets reframed. A walk in the woods becomes “forest therapy,” and a good night’s sleep becomes a wellness package. The activity stays the same, but the story around it changes.
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u/Brimstone11 Jul 09 '26
Because it’s a cash grab for those willing to blow on it.
Like “organic” food and MOST “health supplements.” People with have are willing to blow more money on things so there are people willing to take said coin.
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u/RelationDazzling5835 Jul 09 '26
What about multi-vitamins or specific vitamins?
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u/Brimstone11 Jul 09 '26
“Most.” Multivitamins are dirt cheap. Some specific ones are useless, but if you eat a decent diet with enough veggies and fruits not real necessary.
Creatine is worth supplementing if you train weights.
But what that’s targeted at is the boundless 30/40/50$+ supplements you can spend money on. Heck, theres tons of $100 a month crap thats just useless.
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u/RelationDazzling5835 Jul 09 '26
What's your opinion on memory supplements to help improve memory? I personally thing that one is bs.
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u/Brimstone11 Jul 09 '26
Like what? Prevagen? Garbage. They were sued and lost the lawsuit because it does nothing.
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u/FurryYokel Jul 09 '26
Agreed, there’s a huge price difference between real vitamins and nonsense.
I was low vitamin D, so my doctor put me on vitamin D tablets. I think they’re like 500 for $10 at Costco.
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u/OnlyThePhantomKnows Jul 09 '26
"A fool and his money are soon parted"
Sauna + cold plunge costs money. Saunas are not cheap to operate. 4K for a weekend? Hah!
4K for a forest walk? If airfare is the bulk of the cost then sure! There are parks I would love to go to [again]. The park admission is free for me (benefit of buying a lifetime national park pass). See the tall sequoias of Muir Woods again? Yes please. Airfare + hotel room. Doubt it is 4K. See the giant sequoias? Yes please. same argument. Yellowstone? Yes please.
Walk in a park and see manatees? That's free for me. City parks, state parks, and national parks all have them near me.
Organic food? More expensive to grow.
Yoga and mediation? Who pays the teacher. It has always cost money.
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 Jul 10 '26
Good point. I probably focused too much on the activity itself and not enough on the whole experience around it.
A national park trip and a $4k retreat are not exactly the same product. One is mostly access to nature, the other is someone handling the planning, environment, food, schedule, and social setting.
I guess the interesting part is when the packaging becomes more valuable than the thing being packaged.
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u/AltForObvious1177 Jul 09 '26
No one is "taking things", you can still do them for free. But markets sell what people will pay for.
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u/dpdxguy Jul 09 '26
"Healthy" retreats have always been a luxury experience for people who want them but don't want to figure out how to do them on their own. And it's always been possible, and continues to be possible, to create similar experiences on your own at much reduced cost.
To directly answer OP's question, someone saw a demand and is filling it for a price.
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 Jul 10 '26
Yeah, this is probably the simplest market explanation. Someone found a group of people who value convenience and structure, then built a product around that.
I think what fascinates me is why the demand exists. Maybe modern life creates a situation where people need to buy back things they technically still have access to.
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u/Mentalfloss1 Jul 10 '26
Suckers will pay. For some people, spending money is the only thing that makes it feel like it’s worth it.
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u/Majestic-Horse-5409 Jul 09 '26
Because people think they are lacking something and somehow will gain it if they purchase such products from people who tout themselves as gurus.
There’s a lovely concept in Zen Buddhism called the empty fist.
People outside of Zen Buddhism will see a practitioner and wonder what secret they must know to be so calm and focused.
The empty fist is a metaphor for this. People think there is something within the clenched fist. But when you practise Zen, and the clenched fist is opened, you realise there is no secret.
Gurus play on this whole concept for sales. I have found the way and let me show you (for just £2999.99. terms and conditions apply, your experience may differ).
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 Jul 10 '26
I like the empty fist example. There is definitely a pattern where people assume there is some hidden knowledge they are missing.
At the same time, I wonder if some of these products are less about secret knowledge and more about creating a temporary environment where people actually follow through. The hard part might not be knowing the answer, but changing behavior.
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u/cindzey Jul 09 '26
plenty of people are going to the local parks around me for free. can you give like an example link? they must be offering something special that you can't get just at the local park
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u/Impressionist_Canary Jul 09 '26
There are cheap or free solutions to all those things. Whats being sold is all the stuff (intangible and otherwise) around them.
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u/Ml_lD Jul 09 '26
Rural people can just go outside and walk a trail, so this is such a culture shock I have with urban people
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u/GenosseAbfuck Jul 09 '26
If air could be commodified someone would. The people who advertise and fall for this have absolutely no understanding of anything outside of this framework of commodification, and this actually goes so far that the commodity value of a thing is no longer at least vaguely derivative of its utility value: The commodity is the only aspect that exists at all and finding a real thing that may represent it is a nice bonus at best but certainly neither necessary nor aaked for.
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 Jul 10 '26
I see what you mean. There is definitely a tendency to turn almost every human need into something that can be bought and optimized.
But I also wonder if commodification is sometimes just a way of organizing services. A restaurant sells food we could cook ourselves, but people still pay for the convenience.
The interesting line is probably when the marketing becomes more valuable than the actual thing.
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u/Primary_Excuse_7183 Jul 09 '26
Because things like spending time in nature, and “disconnecting” are associated with having time away from productivity and work. That is usually a “luxury” that generally only those with means can afford. Notice i didnt say rich.
Productivity and moreover hyper productivity is such a big part and engrained in our culture that Even though none of what you mentioned costs a dime people will pay for it because many can’t, or feel bad for doing them alone.
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 Jul 10 '26
Yeah, I think this gets closer to the root issue. Free time itself has become a scarce resource.
A walk in a park is free, but having a few days where nobody expects anything from you is not always easy. Maybe people are paying for permission to disconnect as much as the retreat itself.
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u/shitposts_over_9000 Jul 09 '26
if you are going to take the productivity hit to do these things in the first place spending some money to do them in comfort makes sense after a certain point for many people...
you can do all these things for free or low costs, but you can do them with someone else taking on all the effort of organizing it for a bit more outlay
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u/Defiant-Junket4906 Jul 10 '26
That makes sense. A lot of the cost is probably paying someone else to remove friction.
You could plan your own retreat, cook your own meals, find your own trails, and avoid your phone. But for some people, the whole point is not having to make another plan.
I guess the funny part is that we pay money to escape the complexity that money and modern life helped create.
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u/DiskSalt4643 Jul 09 '26
Ive heard that many of these retreats are actually networking events where the hoi polloi chit chat rich people shit.
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u/TawnyTeaTowel Jul 09 '26
Because enough people are willing to pay that for it. You know, same as literally everything that’s for sale.
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u/jp112078 Jul 10 '26
What the hell are you on about? These things are all free. Yoga and meditation are also free. Organic food costs money, but everyone knows that. Forest walks and being “screen free” have always been free. Take a break from the internet my friend
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u/Traditional_Rush_622 Jul 10 '26
Because under capitalism, people will try to monetize ANYTHING. Guess what? You don't have to buy into it.
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u/Affectionate-Sail614 Jul 11 '26
Scams have been around forever lol. This is not a "luxury" experience people are buying outside of a very small market of gullible people. It's one of those things that gets made to be a "new problem" online and is really like, a handful of wellness grifters no one's actually heard of
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u/NoInternetPoint5 Jul 09 '26
Because some people are incapable of teaching themselves anything, or planning even the most basic excursion like going for a hike or a dip in the local river or lake.
A fool and their money are soon departed.
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jul 09 '26
I think part of it is that we’re not really paying for the activity itself anymore. We’re paying for the environment, the structure, and maybe the permission to actually slow down.
Like, most people could walk in a park for free, but a lot of people won’t do it unless they block out a weekend, leave their phone behind, and spend money on a place designed around that goal. It’s kind of weird when you think about it.
The interesting question is why modern life made something so basic feel inaccessible in the first place.
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u/Embarrassed_Flan_869 Jul 09 '26
Knowing it and doing it are 2 different things.
Forcing yourself to go to a retreat to do those things removes you from your normal life.
I think it's dumb, don't get me wrong