In an Instagram live, two women chat cheerily about health and wellness. They talk about sleeping more, moving from cities to places with access to nature, and finding the source of their common ailments. The conversation is one pretty familiar to people interested in wellness — it’s about self-advocacy, making healthy choices, and being your best self. But as the women flow from talking about spirituality to treating menstrual cramps, they dip into subjects that have also become familiar in the wellness space: A distrust of commonly agreed upon science, including the COVID-19 vaccine.
In the Instagram live, Debra Williams worries that public health campaigns meant to prevent the spread of COVID are “destructive.”
“That's what I'm always trying to do … empower people with information,” she says.
Williams’s conversation seems aligned with a growing ideology many have come to call “conspirituality” — a critical term for the blend of conspiracy theory and spirituality often seen on social media among wellness proponents. It’s a label Williams says she’s heard of, but she generally thinks labels are divisive.
Some participate because they see it as an expanded way of thinking that’s best for themselves and their loved ones; not simply following medical advice, but instead finding your own answers. But, in their quest for health, they can spread misinformation and lean toward conspiratorial thinking. Others may go further and act as “superspreaders” of misinformation, experts say.
Whether it’s intentional or not, conspirituality has aided in the spread of misinformation about COVID-19, and experts worry the rise of this line of thinking might have dire consequences on the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.
You’re probably familiar with some of these posts. You might see a quote on a pastel background preaching independence and “sovereignty.” Or maybe it’s a woman twisted into a yoga pose with a long caption about the immune system and trust. These aren’t the aggressive, bold-colored conspiracy posts you might see in dark corners of the internet. Conspirituality comes in pretty pastel packages, pushing ideas that, on the surface, are relatable and seemingly harmless. But if you look a little deeper, it gets more sinister.
The term “conspirituality” emerged in 2011, when researchers published an article in the Journal of Contemporary Religion examining the overlap of New Age beliefs and conspiracy theory. The phrase has picked up recently, and there’s a podcast called Conspirituality dedicated to debunking theories its practitioners spread.
According to Timothy Caulfield, LL.M, professor of health law and science policy at the University of Alberta, there’s long been an overlap between the wellness community and conspiratorial thinking, particularly in areas of conventional health like vaccines. Since the start of the pandemic, Caulfield says that overlap has grown exponentially.
“We’ve definitely seen the alternative medicine community align with [anti-vaccine rhetoric],” Caulfield tells Teen Vogue. “The other thread was the connection to conspiracy theories and suspicion of conventional health. Some people have justified reasons for being suspicious or frustrated or upset. But what is happening is the anti-vaxx community is leveraging that rhetoric in order to push their agenda.”
A big part of that rhetoric, he says, is a narrative that anything natural is good and science-driven medicine is bad.
“Part of the reasons these wellness entities promote those things is [the idea that] conventional medicine and science is bad,” he says. “They try to create a false dichotomy. Our way [natural] is good.”
Lisa Fazio, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University, says it makes sense that these ideas have increased during the pandemic.
“One of the issues with being in a pandemic early on is a lack of certain scientific answers,” Fazio tells Teen Vogue. “That’s just the situation that it’s really easy for misinformation to take hold. When science isn’t giving you really easy answers, someone who’s peddling falsehoods definitely can — and they don’t have to be confined to the truth.”
Perhaps one of the best-known examples of this phenomenon is Jacob Chansley, AKA Jake Angeli, who’s become known as the “QAnon Shaman.” Angeli dressed in a viking hat while he participated in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. While he’s currently in jail awaiting trial for his part in the violent riot, Angeli previously posted on social media a blend of QAnon-inspired conspiracy while similarly offering his apparent expertise in various mystical areas like “energy healing.”
Angeli is an extreme case, but a recent Wired article examined how conspiracy has infiltrated the yoga community in much more subtle ways. And, in an article in the Atlantic in August, writer Kaitlyn Tiffany explored “pastel QAnon,” the phenomenon that made hardcore conspiracy theory easily digestible through aesthetically pleasing Instagram cards. Through that softening of conspiracy into “blush-colored squares,” spiritual-seeming phrases apparently became code for proponents of conspirituality. Phrases like “the great awakening,” which has ties to QAnon theories, and “truth seeker” show up under photos of white women in yoga poses.
When it comes to the COVID vaccine, this kind of rhetoric can manifest as either simple questioning, or a defense of personal autonomy.
“What’s happening with wellness and conspiracy theories and anti vaxx communities.... the venn diagrams overlap on concepts like choice and freedom and liberty,” Caulfield says. “That kind of ethos has existed in the wellness industry for a long time and [in] conspiracy [communities] and now they’re coming together.”
For Williams, it’s the idea of truth and freedom that’s so attractive.
Williams describes herself on Instagram as an “empowered and intentional living guide,” interested in “truth, health freedom, and human rights.” While she has used some of the phrases mentioned above, Williams has no affiliation to QAnon. (“For me, the great awakening might mean something completely different than it does to a QAnon follower,” she tells Teen Vogue.)
If you saw her account a year ago, you’d mostly find posts about nutrition, photos of smoothie bowls, and pleasant snaps of her smiling while exercising or posing on the beach. Since the start of the pandemic, her account looks significantly different.
Williams, who has a background in exercise science and worked as a healthy living coach at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, now posts almost exclusively about questioning COVID-19 regulations and conventional science. While she’s posted misinformation about disease and COVID in general, she doesn’t believe she’s “anti-science.” Instead, Williams says she is doing what she thinks is best for her.
“It’s like, this is what’s working well for me and if you believe that works for you when it comes to health, then by all means,” Williams says about her questioning of the COVID-19 vaccine. “I wish we had more acceptance for each other.”
Williams says she’s not anti-vaccine, instead saying she is for informed consent — the concept that each person should be able to opt in or out of medical therapies based on the information provided to them. (It’s important to note that the COVID vaccine currently is not mandatory and likely won’t be for the general public.)
But, eschewing vaccination isn’t just a personal choice that affects only the person making it. Vaccination hinges on the majority having immunity to harmful viruses to prevent the spread to those who can’t get vaccinated, or who are most susceptible to disease. Similarly, prevention methods like mask-wearing and isolation are meant to prevent otherwise healthy people from spreading the virus to people who could experience more dire consequences.
Still, Williams says she thinks personal choice in health is beneficial for public health — as long as people are making what she deems the right choices.
“Mostly there are people with pre-existing conditions that are affected [by COVID] and the elderly, we know that,” she says. “It’s not black and white. But really if we’re doing our very best to take care of ourselves and then we are leading by example in our communities, and this is a big pronged approach, and we are doing this the right way, and we are living our lives to nourish our body mind spirit (which most people don’t do), then this kind of stuff wouldn’t be happening.”
While young, healthy people do have a much higher chance of having a mild case of COVID-19 if they catch it, there are many cases of seemingly healthy young people who have become severely ill or died from it. And, about 10% of people who get COVID-19 are known as “long haulers,” developing symptoms that last months after their initial infection. According to UC Davis Health, these lingering symptoms can be severe, and can happen to anyone, regardless of age or underlying health. The chances of dying from COVID are also higher for people of color, Indigenous peoples, and low income people.
Despite overwhelming evidence that masks help reduce transmission of COVID-19, and the clinical trials that show the vaccine is safe, Williams says she’s skeptical of the reasoning behind them.
“I don’t always believe in following the biased, money-driven science,” she says.
Exploring new ideas and having access to information that can help individuals make independent decisions is generally something we can agree is good — which is why conspirituality-driven language can be attractive on the surface. The lines start to blur when the information being provided is faulty or harmful, but is presented as harmless questioning.
For Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine in New York City, that line is crystal clear when it comes to vaccines.
“What counts as adequate or reliable or acceptable medical information is what medical experts in the infectious disease or vaccine field agree it is,” he says. “It isn’t up for discussion with osteopaths, massage therapists, reiki devotees, and wellness gurus.”
In other words, the overwhelming word of the experts in that field is what determines truth — not a one-off statement or study.
According to Caulfield, years of tolerating “magical thinking” promoted by the wellness industry have made conspirituality easy for people in these communities to latch onto.
“The tolerance of pseudo-science and tolerance of unproven therapies was ... the phenomenon that got us to where we are,” Caulfield says. “That idea of being anti-vaxx, of being suspicious of conventional sources of science, is part of the wellness [ideology]. The toleration of magical thinking ... has real consequences.”
For people already interested in wellness, Caulfield says the bridge between unproven therapies to more conspiratorial thinking isn’t a long one, especially if it appeals to their identity.
“They use language or concepts or philosophies that may have intuitive appeal, and that brings people into their community — choice, liberty, food freedom, holistic health. People say, ‘That aligns with my personal identity,’” Caulfield says. He also wrote an article about how identity is used to radicalize people. “They see people that are like them and have similar views. This allows the edification of ideas, but [also] allows the individual to become more wedded to all the philosophies embedded.”
So, while you might have liked yoga and organic food before, Caulfield says seeing others like you who like those things and are anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and believe the pandemic is a scam will make you more likely to adopt those tenets of the identity as well.
And, as Caulfield noted, some of the ideas are, on the surface, pretty universally ideal. That’s certainly the case with the truth and freedom aspects of conspirituality. Like Williams says, she’s not necessarily anti-vaccine, she’s for “informed consent.”
Caplan thinks language about freedom and choice surrounding vaccines is just a replacement for older, disproven anti-vaccine rhetoric about safety.
“There are a lot of anti-vaxxers who found their arguments about safety have weakened,” he says. “They are shifting ground to choice. In my view, it’s nonsense — it’s just a different way to oppose vaccines.”
While freedom is an appealing argument, Caplan notes that our freedoms have limits.
“Vaccination is about protecting your neighbor, protecting the weak and the vulnerable, protecting newborn babies who have no immune system or people who are suffering from cancer, or AIDs, or other things where they are especially likely to get sick and die from something,” Caplan says. “This notion of personal freedom, people tend to forget it carries responsibility. You’re not personally free to drive 150 miles per hour around the roads and ignore stop signs.”
And yet, rhetoric about medical freedom and things like ”health sovereignty” (another popular Instagram hashtag) is playing a part in how the public views the vaccine.
“People have their doubts about the COVID vaccine because it came so fast. While that’s a good thing, it also raises fears that maybe it went too fast,” he says, explaining that the vaccine was discovered and approved quickly because of the overwhelming amount of scientists dedicated to finding it, and funding that isn’t usually available during vaccination development. “They also have inherited some doubts about vaccines because they hear reports on the internet that people are having adverse events and they mix that up with long-term effects from the vaccine, as opposed to not feeling well the next day. And people take the occasional case of people having a real [non-vaccine related] problem and put that up with troubles with vaccines.”
But wanting to be well, Caplan says, shouldn’t be antithetical to getting vaccinated. While wellness often pits “natural” remedies against scientific ones, he said part of being well is staying alive — and the COVID vaccine is the best way to prevent deaths related to the virus.
“The case for taking the COVID vaccine is somewhere between overwhelming and unbelievably strong, best weapon we’ve got,” he says. “When you’re promoting wellness, you oughta be capturing that fact.”
Vaccines aren’t appropriate for everyone and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that certain small groups of people shouldn’t get the currently available vaccines. Still, it’s been found to be safe in clinical trials that included more than 70,000 people.
Beyond vaccines, not all alternative health is “magical thinking.” Ayurveda practices date back centuries, and many alternative therapies like acupuncture have been shown to be effective in managing the symptoms of some conditions. Ideas about holistic preventive health, including healthy eating and exercise, are universally accepted as beneficial and helpful in improving overall health.
It would be naive to say that we need science to backup everything in our lives. Sometimes, the benefits we feel or perceive are enough to prove that whatever we’re doing works, as long as it’s not harming us in the long run. But there’s a difference between, for example, taking cold showers because it makes you feel good, and claiming it will prevent COVID.
While the spread of this particular type of misinformation might affect the COVID vaccine rollout, Caulfield says he remains optimistic.
“I do think things are going to get better because ... people are taking the spread of misinformation much more seriously,” he says. “I hope one of the legacies of the pandemic is a greater appreciation of the value of science in our lives and the harm the tolerance and spread of pseudoscience can inflict. If that legacy plays out, I hope we’re going to be going in the right direction.”