Healing the Self to Heal the World

This chapter examines how LOHAS salvages its “New Age” focus on self-development or actualization. It examines the Mind Cure, New Thought, and New Age movements in terms of their relationship to capitalism to show how LOHAS extends and expands these movements through the LOHAS category of Personal Development (also referred to as the Mind/Body/Spirit market). In Personal Development goods and services, physical and spiritual self-healing reflects a moral pragmatism by linking self-healing work with that of healing the world. Threaded through the LOHAS discourse is a popular American theme—the power of positive thinking—and this healing modality is put to use in so-called the quantum spiritualities, the latest incarnation of the American therapeutic tradition. The end of the chapter shows how the LOHAS texts use examples of healed selves as testimonials to show that it is indeed possible for individuals to transform themselves to social warriors.