Struggles with the Wellness Industry

It’s only been a few weeks at Svaram, and already I have the uncomfortable feeling that I don’t quite belong.

From the first few customer interactions, it’s obvious these are a different kind of people. Many seem convinced they are deeply attuned to forces most of us only reference metaphorically. They move with a deliberate calm, like a buoy drifting down a current it trusts completely. There’s a poise to them. Some carry an intensity that borders on intimidation, sharp eyes that seem to scan for coherence. Others lean heavily into empathy, listening in a way that feels practiced, almost ritualised.

They speak the language of wellness fluently. Sound healing, aura cleansing, ancestral work, Reiki, chakra-focused yoga. Each modality overlaps with the next, forming a mesh where definitions blur but conviction remains intact. Their demands are equally specific. An instrument tuned to 489 hertz to “rebalance a wandering mind.” A tubalophone adjusted to an obscure scale meant to unlock something unnamed but important. Precision, yes, but precision toward outcomes that can’t be measured, only felt.

At the same time, many of these same customers buy Svaram’s more conventional instruments without hesitation. Pentatonically tuned xylophones. Five-elements swinging chimes. Products grounded in musical theory, craft, and acoustics. The contrast is striking. The same person who insists on arcane tuning will happily purchase something standard, almost classical in its logic.

And that’s where the discomfort settles in.

I find myself circling this question repeatedly, watching the transactions, the language, the reverence. There is genuine beauty here. There is also a noticeable absence of friction, of falsifiability, of consequence.