What Is Woo-Woo Doing To You (And Your Wellbeing)?

When this person speaks about flying you feel the passion, excitement and joy that it brings to them, cause that is their thing. Not football, athletics, combat sports, weight training, cycling or swimming. This persons hobby is flying with a parachute that supports their safe descent on to land. They are part of a community and can be found in their spare time thinking about, practicing and preparing to do just that, flying.

Now, at some point in the past, the concept of sky-diving would’ve been dismissed as ridiculous, preposterous or to use modern parlance…..”woo-woo”. In the past, there was no reason to believe that humans can fly because there was no evidence to support its possibility, yet in 2023 there were 258,958 sky dives in the U.K alone, that’s 710 jumps per day.

Woo-woo is a phrase that dismisses a vision, idea or belief that is unproven, unrealistic, unconventional, irrational & perhaps magical or based on spiritual conviction. In my view, woo-woo is a lazy term that belittles the individual, group or movement for being perceived as nonsensical, just like human flight was once considered surreal.

Some of the most successful companies ever created started as uncompromising ideas delivering an alternative reality.

Amazon - Named after the natural phenomenon of the world’s largest river, the company was founded to become the world biggest bookstore much larger than its closest competitor. In 1994 when the company was created, the convention was that you went to the bookshop to buy a book. Bezos’ vision eventually resulted in his company becoming the world’s largest online retailer, not just of books. Today, at 62 years old, Bezos’ physique and bank account are in pretty good shape.

Apple - It is well documented that its founder, Steve Jobs, travelled to India in 1974, seeking enlightenment. He encountered Hindu & Buddhist ideas and returned to California where he also studied Zen practices for the remainder of his life. These concepts were intrinsic to the DNA & ethos of his company that valued intuition over data, simplicity over complexity and a deep obsession with architecture and holistic experiences for its users. The company went on to completely disrupt the personal computing, phone and music industries and launching Apple to become one of the most influential companies of our time.

Meta - When Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta Platforms Inc, it was easy to rationalise this as the company’s intention to pursue the metaverse, a digital reality providing an alternative to the physical world by designing an interactive virtual real estate for its users. Sounds quite woo-woo if you ask me but I digress. The term Meta is derived from a Greek word meaning transcendence, “the act of rising above normal limits, surpassing ordinary experience, or going beyond physical, material boundaries to a higher state. It involves intellectual, spiritual, or emotional growth, often characterised by a sense of deep connection, freedom from fear, or the overcoming of personal limitations.” This is a direct copy & paste from Cambridge Dictionary (not Cambridge Analytica #iykyk :)

Humankind has always dreamed, visualised and imagined. The most iconic humans of today and yesterday created alternative realities in their minds before you and I ever became aware of their manifestations. Yet, most of them were deemed eccentric, kooky, idiosyncratic and peculiar. That is until, their companies achieved the largest market capitalisations, their paintings were recognised across the globe, their sporting achievements were celebrated for decades or their inventions made the world unrecognisable to its former self.

We currently live in a time where science and spirituality are intertwined. Yet, the latter is the forerunner with the ‘ologies’ always playing catch up. 

• Science has proven that reality is often deeper than we can perceive with our conventional senses.
  

• Brain waves, heart signals, brain-heart coherence and nervous system activity are real, as measured on EEG and ECG diagnostic tests.
  

• Terms like energy, vibration and frequency are used across both disciplines although may not be used interchangeably. In science these are measured in joules & hertz, whilst in spirituality they are described by mood, emotion and other subjective perceptions.
  

• The study of psychology evidences that human perception influences our experience of reality and mindset shapes how we interpret reality.
  

1. Spirituality asks, “what feels meaningful to me, what feels real?”
2. Science asks, “what can we measure, what can we prove?”
3. Both are important. Neither should be dismissed.