Over the last few decades, wellness has been framed as a personal project that we should optimize, achieve, and perfect on our own. We’ve been taught to track our sleep in isolation, manage stress through solo routines, and “heal” our discomfort by purchasing the right supplement stack, morning protocol, or app. Can you picture a single person meditating at sunrise, a lone green smoothie on a pristine marble countertop, and see how we might have been duped into thinking self-care is an individual responsibility?
While many of these practices can be supportive, they also reinforce the false belief that our health is something we earn alone, rather than something we share as a greater collective with one another and with all living beings on Earth. What’s worse is that this framing is even historically incomplete (read our brief history of self-love for more on this).
Throughout countless Indigenous and traditional medicine systems, wellness was never separated from relationship. Healing has always happened in circles, remedies are prepared and taken together, and illness is understood not only as a biological imbalance, but as a disruption in social, ecological, or spiritual connection. Throughout much of the world, entire villages still gather for births, deaths, grief, seasonal transitions, and rites of passage because regulation and resilience are achieved through collective processes.
From a scientific perspective, psychoneuroimmunology research shows that social connection directly influences cortisol levels, inflammatory markers, immune function, and even gene expression related to stress resilience. [1], [2] In recent years, loneliness has been rightfully identified as an epidemic of our time. It has also been shown to increase the risk of chronic disease on par with smoking, while safe, attuned relationships measurably improve heart health, digestion, hormonal balance, and mental well-being. [3], [4], [5], [6]
The body does not regulate itself in isolation. Through cues of safety, belonging, and co-regulation with others, we return to our spiritual center and biological homeostasis. As we move into 2026, it becomes clear that the next evolution of wellness won’t be about adding more tools, protocols, or productivity to our lives. To reframe well-being as a living, relational ecosystem, we must first restore what has been missing as technology threatens to separate us further. Here’s to bringing back shared rituals, herbal companionship, slow conversations, and embodied presence as foundational forms of care. 2026 is our year to find our path back to a more biologically intelligent way forward through the medicine of connection.
WHAT’S OUT FOR 2026: Patterns That Fragment, Isolate + Deplete
1. Performative Connection - Sharing memes instead of presence
Digital engagement is not the same as relational nourishment. Performative connection offers dopamine without regulation and mimics intimacy without delivering safety. In 2026, we choose fewer interactions… and deeper ones. If you find yourself near one of our apothecaries in New York or California, please join us for an upcoming event to make meaningful connections in a community of plant-loving people ready to bring new experiences and discoveries your way.
2. Hyper-Independence - “I don’t need anyone.”
Radical self-reliance is often a trauma response. Humans are biologically wired for co-regulation. Refusing support keeps the nervous system locked in survival. Strength in 2026 looks like interdependence. In practice, this means reaching out to a trusted companion instead of spiraling alone, letting someone hold your child so you can rest, scheduling bodywork or therapy before symptoms escalate, and saying “I can’t do this by myself” without apology.
3. Constant Digital Contact - Endless texting + Parasocial closeness
Always-on communication overwhelms the nervous system. Parasocial relationships simulate intimacy without reciprocity, leaving the body overstimulated and undernourished. Boundaries become our emotional immunity armor. Here’s how to protect yourself from the harms of EMFs.
4. Productivity Over Presence - Doing more instead of being together
Optimization culture treats rest and connection as inefficiencies. But presence is where integration happens. In 2026, our stillness becomes strategic. We can only serve others when we are grounded and rested. Try one of these winter self-care rituals to hit the reset button.
5. Spiritual Bypassing - “Light and love” over honest repair
Avoiding discomfort delays healing. Genuine connections include rupture and repair, not constant positivity. Emotional honesty supports nervous system resilience. Wholeness includes our shadows. Our guide to Ayurvedic approaches to shadow work offers a helpful starting point.
6. Transactional Relationships - Only connecting when useful or convenient
Relationships built on utility lack safety. Healing requires trust, continuity, and mutual care. In 2026, our relationships return to reciprocity. Ask yourself whether there is a mutual benefit, and audit the relationships you’re carrying into the new year. Allow yourself and others to adjust if either side feels burdened by “carrying” the relationship, and if you can’t come to a consensus about how you both give and receive love, it may be time to let go.
7. Isolation as Normal - Loneliness framed as self-sufficiency
Loneliness increases stress markers and emotional fatigue. Isolation is a physiological state, and connection is protective. After 85 years, the Harvard Study of Adult Development shared some groundbreaking findings on this topic: it found that strong, quality relationships are the single most important predictor of long-term happiness… and health. Good relationships proved more significant to a long, fulfilling life than wealth, fame, social class, IQ, or even genes!
8. Disconnected Healing - Protocols without relationship
Supplements without ritual, and healing without context or container, miss the body’s deeper language. Plants are most effective when they’re relational. Do you take your herbs while rushing out the door instead of pausing to breathe them in? Cycling through remedies without building a relationship with any one plant, practitioner, or community is not only isolating but generally ineffective. Transformation unfolds when herbs are prepared with intention, taken consistently, and woven into daily rhythms that include rest, reflection, and human connection.
9. Algorithmic Belonging - Substitute social attunement systems
Letting apps, feeds, and parasocial relationships replace genuine reciprocity. Feeling “seen” by content is not the same as being known by another nervous system. While digital spaces can inspire, they cannot mirror, attune, or repair rupture. Over-reliance on algorithmic validation and “likes” fragments attention and reinforces loneliness under the illusion of community.
10. Self-Care as Escape - Avoidant coping disguised as healing
Using wellness practices to avoid relationships, responsibility, or repair. Retreating into baths, supplements, or solo rituals instead of having hard conversations or tending bonds keeps the nervous system stuck in avoidance. Proper care includes relational accountability, including repairing trust, naming needs, and staying present through discomfort. Healing that excludes relationship eventually collapses back into survival mode.
WHAT’S IN FOR 2026: Healing That Happens Between Us
1. Shared Rituals - Tea ceremonies · Shared meals · Altar-building
Ritual is the language of the nervous system. Shared rituals create predictable rhythms that signal safety to the body. Moments of synchronized presence, such as drinking herbal tea together, lighting candles before a meal, or building a simple altar, slow breathing, soften vigilance, and anchor us in time. Ritual also deepens our relationships with plants. Medicine taken in community is remembered in the body as care. In 2026, healing returns to the circle.
2. Relational Nourishment- Listening without fixing · Eye contact · Loving touch with consent
Not all nourishment is edible. Being witnessed without interruption, held without agenda, or touched with consent activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the state in which repair and restoration occur. Studies in psychophysiology show that attuned presence can reduce stress markers and support emotional regulation. Relational nourishment doesn’t require advice. It requires attention. In a world that rushes to solutions, presence is radical medicine.
3. Herbal Companionship - Cacao circles · Rose tea with friends · Bitters before meals
Plants have always been communal allies. Across cultures, herbs were prepared and consumed together to strengthen bonds and bodies. Cacao ceremonies, rose-infused gatherings, and digestive bitters shared before meals all create moments of shared intention. When herbs are taken together, they often land deeper, offering profound warmth, safety, and connection.
4. Slow Communication - Voice notes · Handwritten letters · Intentional conversation
Fast communication fragments our attention. Slow communication restores it. Hearing someone’s voice, receiving a handwritten note, or sitting in an unhurried conversation allows emotional nuance to be felt rather than interpreted. This depth supports emotional regulation and reduces misattunement. In 2026, depth replaces speed.
5. Community Care - Mutual aid · Skill-sharing · Tending elders and children
Healing was never meant to be outsourced. Community care creates resilience that no supplement can replace. Traditional societies thrived because care was distributed rather than centralized. When responsibility is shared, burnout decreases and belonging increases. Community is preventative medicine. In 2026, we’re intentionally sharing our food, knowledge, skills, time, and support.
6. Embodied Gatherings - Somatic movement · Breathwork · Song · Prayer · Grief circles
The body heals through expression. Embodied gatherings allow emotion to move, breath to deepen, and tension to release. Group movement and sound regulate the vagus nerve, synchronize heart rhythms, and foster collective coherence. Grief held together metabolizes faster than grief held alone. In 2026, embodiment becomes a shared practice. Learn more.
7. Nature-Based Connection - Walking together · Gardening · Harvesting herbs
Humans regulate best in nature… and even better together in nature! Walking side by side, tending soil, and harvesting plants reconnect us to seasonal time and ecological belonging. Nature offers cues of safety, rhythm, and continuity that help calm the nervous system. Land is not a backdrop. It is a participant in human healing, too.
8. Heart-Centered Herbs - Rose · Hawthorn · Cacao · Blue Lotus
Some plants work gently on the emotional body. Heart-centered herbs have traditionally long been used to soften defenses, encourage emotional openness, and support relational trust. Their effects are subtle, cumulative, and best experienced in safe, relational contexts. These plants remind us that the heart is central to all healing, and an open heart is a magnet for miracles.
9. Ancestral Repair - Intergenerational trauma integration
Healing moves backward in time to move forward in progress. Practices like ancestor altars, family meals prepared from old recipes, or naming what was never spoken help repair inherited stress patterns stored in the nervous system. Honor lineage wounds through shared storytelling, remembrance rituals, and intergenerational dialogue. Research on epigenetics suggests trauma and resilience are both transmissible; conscious relational repair helps interrupt these cycles of isolation and silence.
10. Co-Regulation Over Self-Regulation - Dyadic autonomic regulation
Learn to calm your nervous system with others, not simply alone. While self-regulation tools matter, humans evolved primarily through co-regulation. From time immemorial, we soothed one another through voice, rhythm, touch, and shared presence. From singing together to synchronized breathing or just sitting in silence with someone safe, co-regulation restores physiological balance faster than isolated practices. In 2026, coming together matters most.
