It seems, there is a con­stant bar­rage of dos and don'ts about healthy liv­ing, well­ness and such. The truth is these con­cerns pre­oc­cu­py one's mind as one grows old­er. I re­mem­ber al­ways hear­ing the ex­pres­sion 'age grace­ful­ly' and it all makes com­plete sense.

It is so over­whelm­ing, this an­ti-age­ing ab­sorp­tion, but more­over, it is sim­ply about liv­ing well - Liv­ing in­ten­tion­al­ly well and shy­ing away from en­cum­brances, be they emo­tion­al, so­cial, phys­i­cal or even en­vi­ron­men­tal. Well­ness is not just be­ing free from ill­ness. The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion con­firms that it is "...a state of com­plete phys­i­cal, men­tal, and so­cial well-be­ing, and not mere­ly the ab­sence of dis­ease or in­fir­mi­ty." It's a more holis­tic prospect that has now mush­roomed in­to a well­ness econ­o­my. Well­ness is now a way of life. It is in­deed in style!

Now, it is not to be as­sumed that it is mere­ly a fad, for usu­al­ly what is deemed as 'trend­ing' phe­nom­e­na ap­pear on­ly as tran­sient as­pects of con­tem­po­rary liv­ing. Well­ness has now been in­cul­cat­ed, all in­clu­sive­ly, to pro­mote sus­tain­abil­i­ty and fos­ter di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strate­gies for liv­ing well, in the present, in ad­di­tion to en­sur­ing the well­be­ing of fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. Just as "style is eter­nal", es­poused by the inim­itable Yves St Lau­rent, liv­ing well is al­most the en­tire world's dream.

Well­ness is the cor­ner­stone of how we de­fine the qual­i­ty of our lives. In or­der to ap­pre­ci­ate ful­fil­ment, we must de­vel­op an in­te­gra­tionist ap­proach, quite akin to mul­ti­task­ing, so as to be bet­ter equipped to face our re­al­i­ties and grap­ple with its chal­lenges. I recog­nise that this new un­der­stand­ing has be­come a vo­ca­tion, an ac­tive pur­suit. Ac­cord­ing to The Glob­al Well­ness In­sti­tute, "We must ac­tive­ly pur­sue ac­tiv­i­ties, choic­es and lifestyles that lead to a state of holis­tic health." Well­ness is now a look! Many a mod­el, as well as per­sons in­volved in oth­er as­pects of the fash­ion and beau­ty busi­ness, have been drawn to cal­is­then­ics, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the icon­ic Nao­mi Camp­bell. The mod­el keeps her 49-year-old frame in ex­cel­lent form, main­tain­ing her rel­e­vance and hence her com­pet­i­tive­ness in what might oth­er­wise be deemed a cold and com­mod­i­fied ca­reer. Lo­cal mod­el, Athali­ah Samuel, pro­claims "at first, you may be stay­ing in shape to keep be­ing mar­ketable but then it be­comes a lifestyle choice!" She em­pha­sizes that her talk­ing the talk and walk­ing the walk, in terms of stay­ing fit men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly is her way of stay­ing cen­tred. She quips, "That's how I keep sane!"

With Men­tal Health Day just passed on Oc­to­ber 10th, we are quick­ly recog­nis­ing and be­com­ing keen­ly aware of how sig­nif­i­cant men­tal health is to our sense of well be­ing and that al­ter­na­tive ther­a­pies now fit in­to our quest for well­ness as part of our over­all lifestyle choice. To be styl­ish, one needs to live well. The well­ness in­dus­try is grow­ing by leaps and bounds, with the well­ness econ­o­my ex­pand­ing faster than glob­al eco­nom­ic growth, for it is ac­com­mo­dat­ing a wider spec­trum of in­ter­ests to ar­rive at a holis­tic and bal­anced life for all, fu­elled by self-re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and pos­i­tive/proac­tive val­ues.

There have been sev­er­al mod­i­fi­ca­tions in re­cent well­ness trends. Yo­ga has be­come main­stream and sleep is more so seen as a pri­or­i­ty. Well­ness in the work­place in­creas­es pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the beau­ty and spa in­dus­tries have seen sky­rock­et­ed pro­por­tions. It seems every­one is in­to med­i­ta­tion or some form of ayurvedic prac­tice. Nu­tri­tion and fit­ness are al­ways on the tip of the tongue, with fluc­tu­at­ing ways to en­hance one's look. It's al­most man­ic! Well­ness tourism and trans­for­ma­tion­al trav­el seem the or­der of the day, all de­signed with­in a well­ness lifestyle re­al es­tate. Well­ness has been in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to liv­ing in style ku­dos. An­ti-age­ing is still at the fore­front, and as a re­sult, per­son­al care, pre­ven­tive med­i­cine, weight loss regimes and a vi­brant re­turn to tra­di­tion­al med­i­cines all dom­i­nate our con­scious­ness to crave well­ness style, some­times un­can­ni­ly wrapped up in how best to look young, but nonethe­less in­vig­o­rat­ing our sense of self-worth and re­defin­ing our­selves through a dy­nam­ic process of change and growth. Vir­gil's prog­nos­ti­ca­tion still per­tains, "the great­est wealth is health." Well­ness is al­ways in style!