The market for meditation and mindfulness has emerged as one of the fastest-growing segments of the wellness industry. The Global Wellness Institute (GWI), a US non-profit research organisation, said in its 2025 Global Wellness Economy Monitor, published on 19 November 2025, that the global wellness economy was worth $6.8tn in 2024.
Economy set to approach $10tn within five years
The institute forecasts that the market will reach $9.8tn by 2029. It grew at an average annual rate of 6.2% between 2019 and 2024, and that rate is expected to accelerate to 7.6% between 2024 and 2029. Compared with 2013, the economy will have doubled in size.
Catherine Johnston, a senior researcher at GWI, said the wellness economy had fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels, demonstrating clearly how strong the trend has become as a consumer force.
Mental wellness ranks among fastest-growing sectors
Of the 11 sectors identified in the report, the fastest-growing between 2019 and 2024 were wellness real estate, at an annual rate of 19.5%, spas at 14.6%, wellness tourism at 13.8%, mental wellness at 12.4%, and thermal and mineral springs at 11.1%. The fact that mental wellness, which includes meditation and mindfulness, ranks among the leaders stands out.
The trend is expected to continue. Mental wellness is forecast to grow by 10.1% a year through 2029, behind wellness real estate at 15.8% and traditional and complementary medicine at 10.8%.
The United States has the world's largest mental wellness market, followed by China. Meditation apps and sleep-related services are considered the sector's main pillars.
Workplace wellness the only sector to shrink
Not every sector grew. Workplace wellness contracted by 1.5% between 2023 and 2024, making it the only one of the 11 sectors to go into reverse. The figures suggest that in a period when companies were tightening their welfare budgets, in-house wellness programmes were the first to be scaled back.
The numbers show a clear divide: areas where individuals pay out of their own pockets are expanding, while those previously paid for by employers are shrinking.
Asia's per-person spending one-thirteenth of North America's
Regional disparities remain wide. Annual wellness spending per person was highest in North America at $6,029, followed by Europe at $1,876, Latin America and the Caribbean at $607, Asia at $471, and the Middle East and North Africa at $339. Asia's figure is one-thirteenth of North America's.
Over the same period, regional growth rates were 7.9% in North America, 7.2% in the Middle East and North Africa, and 6.3% in Europe.
What South Korea should take from the figures
The direction indicated by the figures is clear. North America and Europe command the biggest markets, but Asia has the greatest room for growth. Opportunities lie where domestic meditation and mindfulness services meet wellness tourism resources linking temple stays with healing forests.
The press release did not include figures for South Korea separately. Assessing the size of the domestic market will require a separate review of the country-by-country data in the full report. But South Korea's market, which is awakening rapidly to wellness, is clearly set to see that momentum spread faster than in any other country. Wellness is already spreading among people in their 20s and 30s as a form of leisure culture. It is expected to become an established pillar of the lifestyle within two to three years, but it still faces many hurdles before it can move beyond leisure culture and become a genuine pillar supporting South Korea's mental health.
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