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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
How New Age Wellness Became A Gateway To Conspiracy Cults
- Chris Williamson and Derek Beres explore “conspirituality,” the fusion of New Age spirituality and conspiracy thinking, particularly within yoga and wellness communities. Beres explains how social isolation, weak offline networks, and privileged, politically disengaged wellness cultures made these communities vulnerable during COVID and beyond. They examine how platforms like Instagram and TikTok, influencer grift, and in‑group/out‑group tribalism fuel radicalization, anti-vaccine rhetoric, and even QAnon penetration into yoga circles. The conversation also covers media trust, deplatforming, cult dynamics, and the difficulty of maintaining nuance and humility in an attention-driven online ecosystem.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasWeak real-world social networks increase susceptibility to conspiracies.
People who lack strong offline communities or diverse friend groups are less likely to have their ideas challenged, making them more vulnerable to online indoctrination and echo chambers.
New Age wellness rhetoric primed communities for anti-establishment conspiracies.
Longstanding messages like “you are your own doctor” and “your brain is your pharmacy” foster distrust of public health, making anti-vaccine and anti-mask narratives feel consistent rather than radical.
Conspiracies offer seductive in-group identity and “secret” knowledge.
The promise of inside information and spiritual superiority creates a powerful sense of belonging and status, which can outweigh factual corrections or evidence to the contrary.
Feelings often trump facts in spiritual-conspiracy spaces.
Beliefs like terrain theory or “meditate for world peace” persist not because they are empirically supported but because they feel empowering, optimistic, or spiritually flattering to adherents.
Influencers thrive by selling certainty, purity, and products.
Conspirituality leaders typically monetize attention through supplements, courses, or memberships, projecting omniscience and bodily “purity” while rarely showing genuine doubt or correcting errors.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesIn this world that we cover, feelings will trump facts or science or research at any moment.
— Derek Beres
If this thing makes me feel good, then I'm going to trust that. And that's how cult leaders have gotten people to leave their families and come into their groups.
— Derek Beres
War only happens when you're divided internally. It's such nonsense. What does that mean?
— Derek Beres (paraphrasing and critiquing influencer rhetoric)
What everybody is always looking to do… is bound together by mutual distaste of an out-group more than mutual love of an in-group.
— Chris Williamson
As soon as you label it a cult… history shows that power dynamics always come into play at some point.
— Derek Beres
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
