Musings
The Rise of “Woo”, and Why It’s a Good Thing
Something interesting is happening on social media.
People are talking about chakras. About energy. About nervous system regulation and somatic practices and the felt sense of being in your body. And they’re doing it with a particular word tucked in, sometimes apologetically, sometimes proudly, in quotation marks.
Woo.
“A bit woo, I know, but…” “Full woo warning before you scroll…” “Posting my woo era, don’t judge.”
And I find myself thinking: this is not a small thing.
The word “woo” has an interesting history. It’s been used, mostly dismissively, to describe anything that smells of the spiritual, crystals, energy healing, chakras, meditation, anything that couldn’t be put in a randomised controlled trial and come out the other side with a p-value. It was the language of sceptics. A way of marking the boundary between the rational and the mystical.
What’s happened, quietly, and then very suddenly, is that the people who actually practise these things have started using the word themselves. And in doing so, they’ve done something clever. They’ve disarmed it.
When someone posts their morning meditation with the caption “full woo hours,” they are not embarrassed. They are inviting you in. They are saying: I know this looks a certain way. I know it doesn’t fit the culture we were handed. Come and look anyway.
This is an entry point. And entry points matter.
Here’s what I’m watching alongside the rise of “woo”: a quiet but unmistakable migration.
People who spent years in high-intensity fitness, running, HIIT, lifting, cycling, are slowing down. Not because they’ve given up. Because something in them is asking for a different kind of attention. The body is asking to be listened to rather than driven.
Yoga is part of this. But so is breathwork. Cold water. Walking without headphones. Qigong. Anything that brings you back into contact with your body as something to inhabit rather than something to perform with.
The nervous system is having its cultural moment. Phrases like “dysregulation” and “vagal tone” and “co-regulation” are appearing in the captions of people who would once have posted their 5k times. And whether or not someone knows exactly what the vagus nerve does, they know this: slowing down makes them feel better. Being in their body, really in it, not just using it, makes them feel better.
This is not a trend. This is a homecoming.
What the chakra system offers, what it has always offered, is a map of that homecoming. A way of understanding where in the body you feel most alive, most contracted, most free, most stuck. A language for experiences that have no other words.
And “woo” is how some people are learning to hold that lightly. To come to the edge of something unfamiliar and say: I’m not sure about all of this. But I’m curious. But something here feels true.
That’s enough. That’s exactly enough.
The door doesn’t have to be wide open to let the light in. A crack will do it.
So if you’re in your woo era, tentatively, ironically, or with your whole heart, welcome. You’re in good company. The body has been waiting for this conversation for a very long time.