700 yuan per hour, 70 million yuan per year, who is making money from young people's anxiety?

The healing industry has been gaining popularity in recent years. Whose wallets have been inflated first by the booming healing economy? Let's take a look.

In the three years since becoming a therapist, clients who have come to Liu Qian for consultation have faced various workplace and life problems, such as failed promotions, layoffs, heartbreak, and strained parent-child relationships. The incoherent emotions of young people have been alleviated with the help of therapists, which has also led to the rise of a series of emerging healing economies, from meditation and mindfulness to singing bowl therapy, aromatherapy, painting therapy, and Zen meditation and travel therapy.

For a time, the mind-body-spirit industry, which focuses on people's physical, psychological, mental health and personal growth, has once again attracted attention. However, due to the lack of a platform and standardized supervision, the current healing industry is both hot and wild.

On the one hand, the application scenarios of the healing industry are constantly expanding, including courses on various healing themes, which have become supporting value-added services in scenarios such as tourism, hotels, homestays, and yoga studios. Even the small courtyard where people boiled tea around a fire last year has become a meditation and healing theme with copying scriptures and drinking tea in the courtyard this year.

On the other hand, a mixed bag of training institutions describe the healing industry as a new trend. Their promotional slogans such as “If you do a good job in the body, mind and spirit track, you can earn seven figures a year” are all over the internet. They sell courses costing from eight thousand to tens of thousands of yuan, and claim that they can train a healer in three days to a week.

As people are increasingly willing to pay for their emotions, whose wallets will be inflated first by the booming healing economy?

1. The hot therapy, a new trend or new wine in old bottles?

How to define the profession of a therapist? This is a question Liu Qian always thinks about. Unlike a psychological counselor who needs to treat mental illness, healing is essentially about relieving people's negative emotions and stress, and is also called "soul massage" by netizens.

In the past, yoga, massage, steam spa and other activities have been ways for people to relieve stress. Painting, music, dance and other forms are also often used in various psychological consultations. Sometimes, Liu Qian feels that the currently popular singing bowl therapy and other methods are actually the same, nothing more than "new wine in old bottles". Everyone is groping forward in this new track. "Square dancing is also a way of self-healing, isn't it?"

Nowadays, healing does not necessarily mean relieving negative emotions, it may just be the "prevention" of negative emotions. Liu Qian introduced that many of her long-term clients do not actually have too much financial or life pressure, and they may come regularly for a "spiritual care" just like doing beauty and skin care.

With the rapid development of the healing industry, some healers have also become concerned. They have begun to remind users to carefully distinguish to avoid falling into various traps disguised as "healing".

Practitioner Chen Chen believes that the entry threshold of the healing industry is too low. "It seems that after reading a few books and taking a few days of courses, you can become a healer on the Internet. They may be particularly good at traffic operation, and even earn a lot of income by actively creating anxiety. You may have been in the industry for ten years, but you are not as good as those bloggers who have just entered the industry or college graduates who have just graduated. They have more operational thinking."

There is no unified market standard for the course content and fees in the healing industry, which is entirely up to the individual. A 60-minute offline singing bowl private teaching course at Tech Planet Consulting costs nearly 700 yuan, while some online platform hosts charge between 888 yuan and thousands of yuan for a "1V1 case" course, with the goal of helping users achieve "belief conversion" and "energy cleansing."

Moreover, there is no professional certification for therapists in China. Most practitioners rely on courses from some training institutions to obtain the title of therapist. Tech Planet saw from an offline healing studio in Beijing that one can become a therapist in just three days by purchasing a course worth 8,800 yuan. Another offline therapist training institution charges 19,800 yuan for a five-day course.

It is difficult for users to tell the value of a therapist. Therefore, many therapists on the market now add a series of introductions, and they usually endorse themselves with various authoritative identities such as psychological counselor, life coach, etc.

In Chen Chen's view, another challenge facing the current healing industry is that it is essentially a service industry, and the courses are non-standard products. There is no evaluation standard or system in the healing delivery process, and it all depends on personal feelings. "If the user feels that it relieves stress, then it is useful. If he feels that it is useless, then it is not useful."

When “selling” the course, a person in charge of an offline training institution also claimed that “the therapist’s certificate is not important. As long as the course is helpful to the user, he is a good therapist.”

2. In the booming healing business with an annual income of 70 million, who made money first?

When any industry emerges, it will always inflate some people's wallets first, and many people will inevitably become the first target group to be "harvested".

Wang Tian is the head of an offline training institution. Previously, she mainly led her team to operate online. On one content platform alone, the team has built more than 100 matrix accounts, and currently has nearly 40,000 students online. The live course fee is 1,800 yuan, which means that the maximum annual income can reach more than 70 million yuan.

Starting this year, Wang Tian began to conduct large-scale offline training, charging 19,800 yuan for a five-day course. The course is divided into two training directions, one is to become a meditation instructor for enterprises and large-scale events, and the other is to become a healer in offline studios. In particular, the demand for singing bowl healers is very hot. Wang Tian said that in October this year alone, the team organized five offline training courses, with prices ranging from 888 yuan, 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan, and the monthly income can basically reach one million yuan during the peak period.

Nowadays, many scenarios require therapists and the supply is insufficient to meet the demand. Wang Tian said that the team has cooperated with many hotels, homestays, yoga studios and other places. For example, hotels also hope to have regular therapists stationed there, mainly targeting high-end customers, and they generally adopt a profit-sharing model with therapists.

If you search for "therapist" as the keyword on recruitment websites, you can see that the current monthly salary of a therapist is basically between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan. Some companies are recruiting "sleep aid live instructors" for mindfulness meditation live courses, with a monthly salary of up to 30,000 yuan.

For many young people with anxiety, various therapists are establishing connections with them through live broadcasts, short videos, offline studios and other channels.

Liu Qian, who has been working in the healing industry for three years, admits that online pricing is even more confusing. Many bloggers use auspicious numbers such as 666 yuan and 888 yuan to quote their courses. In fact, there is no standard. Some healers may charge 199 yuan this year, but it may be 999 yuan in a while. "If a user has just experienced a cliff-like emotional drop and urgently needs a healer, he will be willing to pay whatever he wants."

Companies in the healing industry also attract users to participate in various ways. Tech Planet saw from the WeChat Moments of several company leaders that they basically posted screenshots of their interactions with students. The common point of these student cases is that the packaging marks are relatively obvious. Students not only get rid of negative emotions through healing, but also achieve highlights such as increased work income and successful entrepreneurship. "I feel like money is chasing me now," said a student.

For many online bloggers, specific cases can enhance user trust, attract users to sign up for courses, and increase the number of fans. Liu Qian said that on some platforms, bloggers who call themselves healers may have obtained users' consent in advance to present their past healing cases in the form of voice dialogues. If her target group is young people with emotional anxiety, then the case stories are usually "cool heroine"-like counterattack plots.

3. How long will the trillion-dollar healing economy last?

According to a report from the Global Wellness Institute, the global healing economy will grow at a rate of approximately 10% per year, and by 2025, the market size of the healing economy will reach US$7 trillion.

The healing economy, a trillion-dollar market, is attracting more participants. However, since there are many ways to achieve healing, users' preferences are also changing rapidly. For example, "hugging a tree" is now popular among young people, which is their new psychological massage method.

As a lover of the healing industry, Zhang Yue told Tech Planet that she has tried many new healing methods, not only singing bowls, but also Hertz sound therapy, five-tone medicine, fruit rattles, hand pans, and crystal array therapy full of metaphysical colors, etc., either for the need to help sleep or to enhance the so-called body "energy", but most of them are out of curiosity, involving paid courses and products, and have a low desire to buy. For example, in many singing bowl live broadcast rooms, there will be a shopping link for the bowl in the lower left corner, and the blogger will remind and guide users to buy from time to time.

At present, the healing industry is still in its early stages of development, and practitioners are groping their way forward. There is no unicorn-sized company in the industry yet. A consumer investor said that the demand for the healing industry is not stable, and young people may only choose it when they are depressed. In addition, the talent is uneven, and the business model is difficult to replicate, making it difficult for a large-scale chain store model to emerge.

Judging from the commercialization paths of companies such as "FLOW Meditation", which are currently relatively well-known in the industry, in addition to meditation apps and offline spaces that are directly aimed at users, they are also exploring cooperation with the corporate side, including providing exclusive memberships, customized courses, travel and team building activities.

Moreover, the current entrants are mixed, and the industry is growing wildly. It will take some time for the industry to settle down. Li Ran, who has been engaged in the meditation industry for more than ten years, said in an interview with Xinsheng Pro that meditation used to be more of an elite circle. In 2022, with the fermentation of the epidemic, the whole society began to have more demand for meditation. In his opinion, the current market chaos is the fast foodization of meditation. "I think this will kill the industry. You can lower the threshold, but you can't exaggerate that you will no longer be anxious in five minutes. Everyone will think that this short and fast thing will not work, and will have prejudice against this industry."

Liu Qian is not too worried about the chaos in the industry. In her impression, although it is obvious that more people have joined the industry this year and various "healing" concept bloggers have emerged, many of them disappear quickly. "If you just want to make quick money, you can't harvest more than three crops."

(Note: Liu Qian, Chen Chen, Wang Tian, ​​and Zhang Yue are all pseudonyms.)

Author: Lin Jing WeChat public account: Tech Planet