The Wallpaper* wellness report: Can analogue living cure digital burnout in 2025?

When it comes to wellness, are you a biohacker or a barefoot walker? Do you prefer hyperbaric chambers and cryotherapy to fresh air and cold water dipping? If you’re the former, all manner of concierge doctors are on hand at global clinics such Chenot in Switzerland, plus London’s Surrenne, the Neko Health Centre, Lanserhof at the Arts Club and NAD, where photobiomodulation and IV drips are offered alongside full body scans, brain mapping and epigenetic testing.

Such treatments can also come alongside ‘AI agents’ – or virtual ‘life coaches’ – who interpret your personalised data to create tailored health plans. The belief? That tech can play a key role in the quest for ‘longevity’, identifying risk factors, preventing disease and rapidly unlocking new neural, physiological and psychological potential.

The Wallpaper* wellness report: Can analogue living cure digital burnout?

However, in a world where technology feels inescapable, some prefer to pursue a state of ‘wellness’ with a back-to-basics approach. According to Beth McGroarty, director of research and PR at the Global Wellness Institute, a desire for ‘analogue living’ is set to rise in 2025. The likes of detox cabins in the woods and forest bathing, plus mindful walks in nature and wild swimming, remind us that an ‘analogue’ and perhaps slightly more accessible path to feeling good still exists. ‘Alongside this high-tech, costly “hard care” is an intuitive, affordable “soft care”,’ notes McGroarty.

‘In a bid to celebrate JOLO – the joy of logging off – we are embracing Luddite or nostalgic ways of life,’ she adds, explaining that pre-industrial skills such as shepherding and blacksmithing, alongside listening bars, social book clubs, sauna and reading clubs are particularly popular with Gen Z. (A 2023 Mindbody report stated that 25 per cent of Gen Z and millennial demographics in America say they focus on ‘wellness’ to feel connected with others.) Instead of maximising, enhancing and optimising, these digital natives want to log off, disconnect, seek and celebrate ancestral wisdom, spirituality and other esoteric, but fundamental, parts of humanity.

Specific activities sought out by this cohort include breathwork, sound healing, yoga and hiking in nature, all of which can be found at the likes of Off-Season, an Ibiza-based retreat founded by Florence Huntington Whitely in 2023. (Designed to heal burnout, part of her curative method also includes connecting with farm animals near the finca where Off-Season guests stay).

Grounding, mindfulness and meditation are key components in all of the above, considered an antidote to the fact that we now spend half our lives online. ‘I see it as a cry for help, especially among Gen Z,’ says McGroarty, a statement reiterated by the Oxford University Press, which identified ‘brain rot’ as its 2024 Word of the Year.

The cult Dutch movement Sanctum is tapping into an increased desire for the ‘offline’. Like a large, alcohol-free, silent disco, it combines dance moves with kundalini yoga, HIIT, mindfulness and more, and orchestrates ‘communal euphoria’ in evocative, open-air spaces. As co-founder Gabriel Olszewski explains: ‘Sanctum bridges the gap between individual introspection and collective energy, creating a place for people to reconnect – with themselves, each other and something bigger. It’s a space for transformation.’

This year, the Sanctum Frequency Festival takes place in Amsterdam and Ladbroke Hall in London. Loïc Le Gaillard, co-founder of Carpenters Workshop Gallery, owns the space and counts himself as a fan. ‘Sanctum brings people together in a fun way that is unlike anything else,’ he says. ‘It fits perfectly with our ethos where we look for original ways for people to connect, be it through our Friday jazz evening, classical concerts, food or art.’

When it comes to travel, the new ‘wellness’ voyager wants to take their health rituals home with them, too. In the spring of 2025, Six Senses Place will finally open its first social wellness club in the former Whiteleys department store in Bayswater, London. In a similar vein to Remedy Place in New York, the pioneering sustainability and wellness brand puts a focus on the importance of human connection for optimum health. Subsequently, residents are provided with automatic membership and access to the spa and its facilities in all other Six Senses Places around the world, including Six Senses The Forestias which also opens this year near Bangkok.

Certainly, wellness is following a minimalist maximalist paradigm in 2025. ‘Perhaps it’s reflective of what we’re experiencing globally, but I see the wellness world becoming this place of extremes,’ says Beth McGroarty. ‘On the one hand, we want to be stripped down, using our own two feet, eyes and ears. On the other, we have biohackers; hyper-optimisation; AI. The difference between the two is unprecedented.’