Introducing: The Corporate Wellness Bro

It’s a Wednesday night and you’re at home on the couch half-watching the latest Netflix true crime documentary and idly browsing the dating apps. This time, maybe, you will find Mr. Right. You swipe past 14 men with photos taken from below the chin, whose eyes seem to be trying to communicate they have been taken hostage; two average-looking couples looking for a third; a nondescript man in a beanie you wouldn’t be able to pick out of a police line-up if he murdered you… And then you see him. 

Shirtless and toned, somehow tanned even though he lives in Shoreditch, and captured in a perfect chaturanga while showing off a tribal sleeve that ends in an Om symbol and an Apple Watch. A citrine crystal (for financial luck) hangs from a black string around his neck – he’s hoping it will help him manifest a Tesla. Namaste, ladies: It’s the corporate wellness bro. 

He used to have a job at Deutsche Bank and a cocaine addiction, but “hit rock bottom” (read: woke up naked and covered in vomit in Amersham after the office Christmas party) and has since ditched the packet and the corporate ladder for kombucha and a job at a start-up with themed conference rooms, a journey he is documenting in painstaking detail on TikTok. There’s no paid mental health leave – or unpaid, for that matter – but they have free Headspace subscriptions and a data-driven snack bar. Plus, he believes that most mental illnesses can be treated with mindfulness and positive thinking. 

He can’t help noticing every time the “fat girl” at work – an unforgivable size 10 – goes to the office kitchen, and he doesn’t let the fact that she is usually filling up her water bottle rather than eating any of the colour-coded snacks get in the way of his quietly sanctimonious disgust. He’s given up caffeine himself; at 3PM, he usually cracks open a sugar-free probiotic soda with added electrolytes for an afternoon boost. He doesn’t mind that company policy means that he is expected to be checking his email at all times, choosing instead to see the long hours as a “24/7 opportunity”. 

On Instagram, he makes Reels of his morning routine (warm water with lemon to start the day, an hour of mindful meditation rounded off with a 15 minute yoga session from one of the male yogi influencers he follows and a homemade nootropic green smoothie). He sometimes uploads videos of his own workouts to his story and tags sustainable eco brands because he sees himself as something of an aspiring wellness blogger. So far he’s managed to bag a few referral codes (code: urbanyogi10), and is certain the gift boxes and event invites are going to start coming in thick and fast. He’s got a good feeling his nootropic green smoothie is going to go viral soon. 

Maybe he doesn’t work in tech, choosing instead to use the lessons he learned during a stint as a digital nomad in Bali for a career as a mindful real estate developer who is “passionate about developing properties circled around wellness, development, and expression”.

This means he forces out poor people from their homes and businesses so that he can create “communal housing” AKA soulless new builds that cost £2,200PCM for 20 square meters of room and access to a rooftop pool that is too cold to use for 75 percent of the year. He makes sure to sage all the buildings before he demolishes them, to get rid of all the toxic energy and negative vibes left behind by the previous tenants. (Have they ever heard of palo santo?) 

His girlfriend is largely happy to be with a man who looks after himself and eats well, although she would quite like it if they didn’t have to add supplements to every beverage – he’s adamant they’re flavourless but she swears she can taste them – and sometimes sneaks a couple glasses of wine when he isn’t home, even though he keeps gently reminding her that an alcohol-free lifestyle is better for her yoni health, and also for his brand. 

She’s recently been a bit worried after finding an alarming amount of research on his laptop about something called “semen retention” and a “modern male rebellion” that seems to not involve wearing underwear, but she doesn’t want to accidentally un-align his chakras by bringing it up – he had to go on a silent retreat for two weeks to regain equilibrium last time she upset his mood by asking him to stop DMing 22-year-olds in Alo yoga pants on Raya. He is listed as “here just for friends”, but he identifies as ethically non-monogamous. His girlfriend doesn’t technically know but he figures that if she did, she’d understand.

He won’t stop telling people about the wild night he spent tripping on acid under the stars in Joshua Tree on a trip to LA last year, and daydreams about moving to San Francisco to work at a start-up, where there is more chance of him making it big as a holistic content creator with a vegan protein powder sponsorship and a hot Californian girlfriend. Maybe he could find someone with her own following too; a woman who also goes to Burning Man and understands the pressures of social media engagement, unlike his current girlfriend whom he caught smoking a fucking cigarette – a cigarette! – on his Amazon Ring doorbell app. 

While the wellness bro’s hippy forefathers were critical of capitalism, made pilgrimages to India that often ended up in joining a cult and took psychedelics with the intention of hallucinating so hard they forgot there was a war on, the corporate wellness bro has been experimenting with microdosing shrooms to increase productivity at his job so he can send emails faster. He watched Wild Wild Country on Netflix and couldn’t understand how those people could have been so gullible and naive, but listens religiously to the Joe Rogan podcast. 

He doesn’t worry too much about the impact his Amazon Prime habit has on the world, believing that recycling and being vegan means that he is in the black with karma. And anyway, Jeff Bezos is an absolute legend – did you see when he dunked on Leonardo DiCaprio on Twitter? Every month, the corporate wellness bro has a bioenergy healing session to connect himself to his “ancestral spirit guides and light beings”, despite the fact that he is a white man whose family has lived in Bournemouth for the last four generations.

The corporate wellness bro might seem like a sick and twisted bastardisation of the 20th century hippy, but those guys grew up to be boomers anyway. Just don’t tell his girlfriend that he lost their house deposit money in the Bitcoin crash. 

@niluthedamaja