NewsBite

New data shows a surprising trend when it comes to AI and life coaching

As spiritual seekers shift from shrinks to shamans, priests to social media gurus, soul support in the new age of digital enlightenment is still a question of connection.

Will AI bots become our new life coaches? Picture: iStock
Will AI bots become our new life coaches? Picture: iStock

A few weeks ago I found myself flat on a massage table, covered in crystals and trying to relax as a woman I’d met 30 minutes earlier placed a palm on my chest and told me, “Let the earth hold you”. Outside, it was drizzling. Inside, I was somewhere between emotional breakthrough and pondering the tickle in my windpipe. Was it my blocked throat chakra? Or the incense?

If the Gen Z zeitgeist is to be believed, our collective journey to self-actualisation has ascended from “hustle” to “healing”. We used to seek support through friends, family and religion. Then we paid therapists. Now? We have shamanic journeys, TikTok tarot readers and luxury ayahuasca retreats.

Seeking guidance has always been part of the human condition. In ancient Greece, an animal sacrifice afforded you some one-on-one time with the local oracle, while less existential advice could be gleaned from leaders or fellow citizens at one of the regular public assemblies. In Australia, until the 1970s the local priest was the go-to counsel for everything from family conflict to education. These days, guidance is less likely to involve sermons and instead be served digitally, immediately and with a side of binaural beats.

Midlife women in particular are seeking guidance to tackle their next chapter in a way that is emotionally and energetically aligned. Picture: Supplied
Midlife women in particular are seeking guidance to tackle their next chapter in a way that is emotionally and energetically aligned. Picture: Supplied

According to 2021 ABS data, 38.9 per cent of Australians identified as having no religion – up from 30.1 per cent in 2016. Nearly half of Australians aged 25 to 34 reported no religious affiliation. The consequence? The slow disappearance of the community-driven, freely accessible support once offered by religious leaders.

As Pastor Jon Owen from Sydney’s Wayside Chapel tells me, “Young people aren’t just spiritually homeless. They’re also lacking mentors, role models, and a sense of purpose”. Boomers and their parents had religion, the RSL and a good chat with the family doctor if things were dire. Gen X, with their emotionally repressed parents and Cold War-era anxiety, ushered in the golden era of the “shrink”. Therapy became socially acceptable, even cool (see: The Sopranos) and suddenly it was fine to admit you had “stuff to work through”.

Then came Millennials, the hustle generation, born into economic uncertainty and raised on a diet of TED Talks and productivity porn. Therapy was too slow. They wanted results. Enter: the coach. Life coach, wellness coach, fertility coach, birth coach, breakup coach. If there was a human experience to be had, there was a coach who could optimise it. Guidance became a subscription service.

But something curious is happening among Gen Z and the growing cohort of exhausted women either in or approaching midlife.

Guidance is no longer about peak performance. It’s about emotional triage. About surviving the group chat. About finding a quiet corner of the universe where you can ask, in peace, “What the hell am I doing with my life? And why can’t I get my chakras to align?”.

The answer, increasingly, lies in spirituality and with practitioners such as Polly Staniford, a Sydney producer, writer and director turned energetic healer. Staniford is part of a rising class of “modern wise women” who’ve survived their own midnights of the soul and now gently coax others through theirs.

“There’s definitely a generational shift happening,” she tells me over a deck of tarot cards. “So many women, and yes, mostly women, are turning inward, asking bigger questions and searching for guidance that honours both the emotional and the energetic.”

Owen has seen first hand what happens when people have nowhere to turn. “We used to be part of communities where guidance just happened through relationships – neighbours, elders, people who’d known you since you were five,” he says. “Now we outsource it. Guidance is something you schedule.” And often, something you pay for. While our great-grandmothers might have wept in the confessional for free, spiritual support now comes with a often hefty price tag. Psychologists average $311 per session. Coaches can clock in at $500 an hour. Energy healing? A bargain by comparison at about $170, though conspicuously absent from the Medicare Benefits Schedule.

Polly tells me I need nature. Solitude. “There’s a calling; a walk, a path,” she says, as I draw an oracle card depicting a winding path and the words. “Going Forward”. I reveal I’ve been quietly planning a solo 450-kilometre pilgrimage through Italy. “You’ll meet people along the way who are part of the journey,” she adds. “It’s like Dorothy and the Yellow Brick Road.” The catch? Adding spiritual-guru sessions or healing retreats to our bloated schedules doesn’t come cheap. And as Owen asks, “Why does real presence cost money now? We used to have it in our families, our churches, our streets. Now it’s a service”.

For those yet to learn the secrets to manifesting money on demand, spiritual and self development books have become the next best thing. “We see so many midlife women reaching for books by authors and thought leaders such as Gabby Bernstein or Rebecca Campbell,” says Jacinta Tynan, founder of The Spiritual Book Club. “They’re often at a crossroads, post-divorce, kids leaving home, or just looking for more meaning.”

WISH Magazine features August cover star Tamara Ralph. Picture: Nick Shaw
WISH Magazine features August cover star Tamara Ralph. Picture: Nick Shaw

But books, as comforting and packed with wisdom as they are, are still a one-way conversation. Unless, that is, you can dissect their messages with like-minded answer-seekers, or as Tynan’s book club facilitates, talk directly with the enlightened minds that wrote them. “Often we will stick around [on Zoom] after the author has ‘left the building’ and chat amongst ourselves,” Tynan says. She recalls a recent breakthrough one member had after an intimate Q&A with Bernstein, the bestselling US author and manifestation guru touted by Oprah herself as one of the spiritual thought leaders of her generation. “There was a member of the book club who shared a really vulnerable realisation about the lens through which she had been living her life ... If you join a book club like this, you are clearly a seeker, someone who is committed to evolve as a person and level-up your life. In that sense it’s a captive audience of like-minded souls.”

A growing number have discovered another alternative to costly connection; a therapist, spiritual seer, recipe curator and Tinder profile editor in one, available 24/7 for the bargain price of two iced matchas at their North Bondi local: generative artificial intelligence.

One friend confessed to naming hers, because “If I refer to it as Brian, it doesn’t feel as weird discussing my childhood traumas and attachment style with a bot”.

AI may be able to generate advice instantly, but it can’t hold space, or intuitively pick up on the subtle inconsistencies between your words and body language. And while it might tell you what card you pulled, it can’t whisper, “Trust the flow” and mean it. That’s the real appeal of in-person, real-life support. They’re not telling us what to do from the un-feeling pages of a bestseller or preaching through a pair of AirPods. As Brenè Brown said in her viral TED Talk on the power of vulnerability, “Connection is why we’re here; it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives”.

And for what it’s worth, that oracle card? Going Forward. I’m still not sure what that means. But I did book the ticket.


This story is from the August issue of WISH.

Add your comment to this story

To join the conversation, please Don't have an account? Register

Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/wish/new-data-shows-a-surprising-trend-when-it-comes-to-ai-and-life-coaching/news-story/8b83bf0598db9209e7193e2ebfd32aff