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Annelie Geissler
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BEYOND WELLNESS

Liz Bucar

How Restoring the Religious Roots of Spiritual Practices Can Heal Us

Go deeper than superficial self-care with the religious secret sauce you didn't know you were missing
In the chaos of today's world, we're all searching for meaning. The wellness industry has sold us a promise that we can find it if we just buy the right products, attend the right retreats, and follow the right celebrity gurus. But is this true? Or are we picking and choosing from a self-care salad bar in ways that satisfy our hunger but don't truly nourish us?

When we approach practices like yoga and ayahuasca as fitness routines and life hacks, we miss out on the sacred wisdom they have to offer us. But by digging into the real and often ancient religious traditions behind these practices, from Buddhism to Christianity and beyond, we can make them more meaningful, ethical, and effectivewithout the often unpleasant baggage of joining an organized religion.

In this engaging and deeply personal book, award-winning scholar and writer Liz Bucar embarks on a quest to get to the heart of "spiritual but not religious" activities from detox diets to sound baths. As she tries out each practice for herself, she asks how we can get more out of it by tuning out the hype and taking the religious meaning behind it seriously with emotionally profound and often surprising results. Whether it's as simple as setting an intention for a yoga asana or as complex as reevaluating what a "higher power" is, it's time to understand, experience, and simply get more out of our spiritual practices. It's time to dig deeper with Beyond Wellness.

Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist and professor of religion at Northeastern University, as well as a certified intenSati and Kripalu yoga instructor. Her popular writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal, and she is the author of four books, including the award-winning Stealing My Religion and Pious Fashion. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. For more about how religion shapes us all, even if we don't believe, subscribe to Liz's newsletter at LizBucar.com.
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Published 2026-04-28 by Tarcher

Comments

The 'spiritual but not religious' movement is everywhere, often tied to promises of not just happiness but inner and outer well-being. Bucar moves through the claims of these ubiquitous movements not as a cynic but as one who cares enough to critique. This is a book that deserves the widest readership.

Thoughtfully breaking down the slippery realm of 'spirituality,' Bucar illuminates how all of these secular products and practices are historically rooted in religion, how they have been stripped of this context, and why that deracination serves no one. Rigorous and funjust like Bucar's dispatches on TikTokBeyond Wellness is a book we sorely need.

There is such a need for this book, and Liz Bucar is the perfect person to write it. A leading scholar of popular religious practices and one of the most prominent practitioners and proponents of bringing scholarly expertise into public spaces, Bucar is ideally situated for this task. More than that, Bucar has a way of bringing herself into the narrative in a way that is at once incisive and inviting.

I'm fond of saying religion is always in the room, and this book proves my point. We are living through a crisis that centers 'me' over 'we.' Mass market mystics capitalize on this polarizing way of living to our detriment. Bucar gets at the heart of this with her accessible scholarship and engaging analysis. This book reminds us that as humans we will never be able to be fully divorced from our need for meaning making systems.

This book is bound to become an essential read for anyone taking their spirituality, health, and wellness seriously.

Consider this the next time you hear someone describe themselves as 'spiritual but not religious.' As Liz Bucar reminds us in Beyond Wellness, nearly every new meditation technique or holistic practice sold in today's spiritual marketplace is actually borrowed from one of those stodgy old religions these seekers think they left behind. Stripping those spiritual practices from their religious context, she argues, may even be hazardous to their own well-being.

If the spiritual salad bar has started to feel like quick dopamine with thin nutrition, this book offers substance. Read it if you want your spiritual practice to do more than lower your stress. Bucar has absolutely changed the way that I approach spiritual traditions.

Beyond Wellness provides an emotionally and intellectually honest alternative for people who are seeking meaning beyond generic spirituality. As a religious scholar and certified yoga instructor, Liz Bucar is the perfect person to provide insight into the deeper meaning and purpose of popular wellness practices.