Stop and go. Light and dark. Up and down. It’s easy to see how opposites shape our world—and wellness is no exception. In fact, two paths have emerged on opposite ends of the wellness spectrum offering contrasting approaches to the same wellness goals. On one end, you’ve got “softcare”—soothing and simpler practices. On the other side there’s “hardcare”—a rigorous, attention-to-detail approach that tracks health and fitness progress with detailed metrics, or utilizes biohacking to enhance well-being. Yet despite their differences, both methods aim for the same goal: optimal wellness.
Soft wellness is like a cozy, weighted blanket on a rainy day. The approach is known for being gentle, introspective, subtly rejecting a hustle culture mindset, and embracing well-being through community and connections. It’s also typically cheaper and more accessible than hard wellness.
We’ve seen this trend take hold—not only through more traditional “soft” practices like yoga by candlelight or journaling every morning—but through more recent viral sensations, like bed rotting or the now-permanent popularity of hot girl walks. Or just consider how ubiquitous meditation and mindfulness have become. According to a survey from the National Institutes of Health, those who practiced meditation more than doubled from 2002 to 2022, jumping from just 7.5 percent to 17.3 percent. And businesses are taking note, too. Revenue from meditation apps is expected to reach $5.1 billion globally in 2024, according to Statista.
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Joan Choi, a licensed mental health counselor, says that soft wellness practices are also about nurturing parts of yourself that are rooted in personal values, rather than competition or comparison.
“These practices can help us make space to return to parts of us that are often neglected or judged, and to process thoughts and feelings that may otherwise be bypassed, especially in a society where we’re constantly moving forward and forced to consume information,” Choi says.
“My offer is for people to try and engage in activities simply for the purpose of being present, feeling joy, slowing down, and having a deeper understanding of how it feels to receive intentional care from themselves. Our nervous systems, bodies, and minds deserve time to breathe and reset in the absence of apps, smart watches, and other ways that outwardly or subconsciously drive us to center metrics and results.”
But if all that is sounding a little too woo-woo for your tastes, on the other side of the spectrum there’s hard wellness. It’s the antithesis to tuning into your feelings—and instead relies heavily on the hyper-optimization of health. Think: the rapid growth of wearable technology, metrics for every aspect of life from workouts, to sleep, to “readiness,” and even the rise of full-body scans or blood tests that measure hundreds of biomarkers.
“My offer is for people to try and engage in activities simply for the purpose of being present, feeling joy, slowing down, and having a deeper understanding of how it feels to receive intentional care from themselves.” -Joan Choi, Licensed mental health counselor
Mark Hyman, MD, a longevity expert, is one of the doctors betting on hard wellness—a trend that he attributes to a growing desire for agency and autonomy in healthcare.
“Health care is failing. We have a disease-care system, not a healthcare system. People want to know how to be empowered to take care of their own health,” he says. It’s one of the reasons behind his latest venture, Function Health, which offers access to 100-plus lab tests purportedly to allow people to have a more holistic vision of their overall well-being. The company is just one of a handful of concierge services with an aim at preventative care.
While the idea sounds simple enough—a plethora of tests to provide a well-rounded view of your health—critics argue that testing without a legitimate medical reason to do so doesn’t necessarily lead to better health outcomes, or that concierge services might lead to greater health disparities.
According to a 2022 systematic review in BMJ Journals, research suggests that overuse of diagnostic testing can potentially harm patients rather than help them— not to mention the expenses that come with it.
The benefits and insights of Function come with a price tag—a $499 membership fee, to be exact—and they don’t take insurance. You’ll have to join an exclusive waitlist in order to get a spot, along with the estimated 400,000 people already in line to join.
Dr. Hyman points to the COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst for consumers seeking a better understanding.
“People are frustrated. After COVID, they now understand the frailty and flaws in healthcare, so they want to have agency,” Dr. Hyman says. “People want to be empowered with their own information and data. And they want to own their own data, not just rely on the healthcare system to decide when and what they can do.”
On the fringes of hard wellness, you’ll also find the rise of direct-to-consumer testing—health screenings and tests that can seemingly be done without the involvement of a healthcare professional. Companies like InsideTracker and Everlywell offer consumers at-home tests to determine food allergies, stress levels, metabolic health, and more. The problem with these tests is the overall lack of oversight. While some DTC tests are reviewed by the FDA, others are not before they’re offered to consumers.
Like a lab test, hard wellness is outcome-focused. While soft wellness may emphasize mental clarity or a general vibe, hard wellness usually has visible, measurable results and markers like resting heart rate, heart rate variability, or sleep quality, among others.
And while plenty of people who might wear an Apple Watch or even opt for a full-body CT scan, then there’s Bryan Johnson. The viral sensation billionaire is known for self-funding bizarre and often untested procedures in an attempt to live forever. Johnson, who infamously tracks his nighttime erections as one health metric, has tried a number of radical medical procedures—like injecting a “fat-derived extracellular matrix” into his face to restore lost volume or replacing all of the plasma in his body with albumin, a protein found in blood.
But you don’t need to be a billionaire or even pick one approach over the other. The magic of combining soft and hard wellness is that you’ll meet somewhere in the middle and get the best of both worlds. Maybe you wear your Whoop while journaling; or you’re tracking sleep methodically but allow the mood to guide your outdoor runs.
The dual approach to wellness recognizes that self-care and self-awareness are equally important. By tapping into both “soft” and “hard” wellness, you’re giving yourself a broader toolkit to take control of your health. And ultimately, that means you’re also shaping a wellness journey that’s as dynamic as you are.
