Retreat: How the Counterculture invented Wellness

(Paperback, New edition)

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What have the hippies ever done for us Matthew Ingram explores the relationship between the summer of love and wellness, medicine, and health. What have the hippies ever done for us Matthew Ingram explores the relationship between the summer of love and wellness, medicine, and health. The counterculture of the Sixties and the Seventies is remembered chiefly for music, fashion, art, feminism, computing, black power, cultural revolt and the New Left. But an until-now unexplored, yet no less important aspect -- both in its core identity and in terms of its ongoing significance and impact -- is its relationship with health. In this popular and illuminating cultural history of the relationship between health and the counterculture, Matthew Ingram connects the dots between the beats, yoga, meditation, psychedelics, psychoanalysis, Eastern philosophy, sex, and veganism, showing how the hippies still have a lot to teach us about our wellbeing.

Reviews

"This richly researched archaeology of the counterculture places health at its core, showing how ideas of healing and therapy were inextricably bound up with the eras spiritual cravings and erotic politics. Every chapter scintillates with unexpected connections and startling insights.
A rich tapestry of mind-altering influences of the counterculture that shaped our aspirations. Enjoy the ride. I did."
"A huge range of interviews, intelligent analysis and concise, sympathetic observation make this a compulsively readable but also impressively erudite account of this endlessly fascinating subject.
A riot of a read. Ingrams exploration of how psychoanalysis and psychedelics fused with meditation, mysticism and spiritual awakening to oil the cogs of the contemporary wellness economy is both forensic and radically irreverent.
"An eerily pertinent exploration of wellness and the counterculture."

Author Bio

Matthew Ingram is famous in his own head for throwing raves in West Africa in 1993, writing for Teletubbies, fleetingly being in The Black Dog, his cult music blog Woebot, writing for the Wire and FACT magazines, setting up the Dissensus forum and putting out a series of LPs. His "Vitamin C" animated documentary was shown at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival.