A Deep Dive on ‘The Living Clearly Method,’ Hilaria Baldwin’s Wellness Book

Aside from that, standouts included the road: “Being deaf to my body’s wisdom was like driving down a mountain road with a grimy windshield and no GPS,” (page 14), which is a mental image that basically tickled me, and her desire to “whack” a girl with an empty baby stroller who was being argumentative together with her (page 35). All in all? I wish I could take her yoga class. She seems fun! She also said “our not-so-smart phones” on page 75. I like stuff like that from corporate-approved wellness types. That’s what I need.

So, despite some very distracting acrobatics, I don’t have much to say about Hilaria Baldwin. However the genre through which this book is situated—a soft, cooing category of literature exemplified in The Living Clearly Method’s cover, a girl with bangs in a cashmere sweater (implied acai bowl offscreen)—is where the interesting stuff is. This figure—part yoga instructor, part Goop apostle, part CEO—represents a kind of cleric caste in contemporary life, tasked with taming the numerous demons of modernity for her flock, but in addition with rising to the highest of the structure that generates such evils as work emails, corn syrup, long commutes, and not possible beauty standards.

Throughout the pages of those books, life under capitalism for the skilled class is rendered as a kind of soft magic system. Feeling stuck in your job? Frustrated you can’t appear to kick your tendency for tardiness? Cracking under the stress of balancing your loved ones along with your profession? All those problems and their attendant emotions are stored somewhere within the body, where you possibly can goal and challenge them on the mat.

To be clear, I do that! So I’m actually not judging anyone for it. I like overpaying for a yoga class and moving around in a guided practice, and I enjoy it when my instructor tells me to breathe in, breathe out, and let go—even when I’m not an enormous fan of once they get a bit carried away and have me start, I don’t know, asking my sacrum for forgiveness.

Still, I believe this position is an interesting by-product of the type of civilization we’ve built—our attention spans under constant siege by our technology, work life continuing its encroach into private life, and precious spaces for pause becoming scarcer and scarcer. One temporary solution to all this harsh hustle is a soft, gentle industry—soothing colours, incense, stretches, and a relaxing voice reeling your beleaguered brain back into your body so you can get back to the grind. All for a fee, in fact.

It’s also price noting that this book was written in a special world (2015) than it was released in (2016), and the following national calamity really highlighted how ill-equipped the wellness industry was to handle the unrest and tribulations that were yet to come back, issues that proceed to paint our day by day lives. Perhaps this book would have sold higher in the previous world, when celebrity and yoga had much more power, or at the very least a easier influence. It makes me wonder how figures like Hilaria will adapt, or if we’ll proceed to attempt to deep-breathe our way through apocalypse after apocalypse.

As for a broader, higher solution, well, there aren’t any easy answers—unless, in fact, you possibly can manifest an A-list celebrity husband by asking the universe in a restaurant. By which case, that’s the answer. Do this.

Namaste.

Related: