Live Through Your Heart: Supermodel Elle Macpherson On Building Confidence, 20+ Years of Sobriety, Natural Wellness, & Learning to Trust Yourself

26:38I don't think I've ever been on the cover of American Vogue. Yeah, I was just doing other things. I don't, and I was sort of saved from a lot of that because I was married young and I was busy co-creating with my then husband, Gilles Benzimon, who was a photographer at Elle magazine. And I would work with him on the magazine. You know, I was also the model, but I would sit on the floor and do the layouts for the magazine with he and Regis Paneas, who was the chief of Elle at the time. And I think I was just interested in other things. And I was protected somewhat because I had a secure relationship and I had a kind of day-to-day job.

27:20And I was building my own things. And Gilles, like he was like the creative director of Elle, right? Right, Elle and I. And you had this, he was your partner, but also this collaborative relationship where you weren't just sort of being paid to be a model, like you were involved in the editorial process of how you were being portrayed and how the magazine was being laid out. So that's another kind of like entrepreneurial aspect of your career that is unique in that world. Yeah, it wasn't like I was thinking, oh, this is entrepreneurial. It was just, that was the environment I was in and I was enjoying it.

27:52And they gave me the freedom. I mean, how incredible to have that education with two brilliant creators that took me under their wing and said, hey, what do you think about this? How should we do this? Like they valued my opinion. So it wasn't sort of like I had a vision, I'm just gonna be entrepreneurial. I just found myself in situations that allowed me to explore whatever I was doing at the time to the best of my ability. And you're all of like 24, 25 or something, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I heard you say like, I don't really like fashion. You're not like a runway model, high fashion, sitting in the front row kind of person.

28:34I've become that to some extent, like I have more reverence for fashion today, but I was interested in personal style. So, and that's what Elle magazine. What's the difference? So the difference between fashion and personal style is Elle would always say Elle magazine, which I'm not named after and isn't my magazine because a lot of people say to me, it's Elle magazine, your magazine. So that you could be on the cover every month. Elle's philosophy was to share with women or to encourage women or to show how to dress. not what to wear, how to inject your personal style into what you have, how to mix and match.

29:15So it would be like a Chanel jacket and a pair of sneakers. And that was really what Elle was about. Whereas other magazines were really telling you what to wear. Okay, you wear this look by Gucci or this. So Elle was really about bringing the individual into the equation as opposed to the clothes wearing the person. It was the person wearing the clothes with L. And that was a philosophy that I've sort of retained all my life, is how to inject your personal loves into how you express yourself in whatever you do. That's something that also is difficult to teach, right? Like that's more of an intuition thing.

29:57Yeah, you learn through experience as well. Yeah, and you bring your heart. And that is your heart is your intuition.

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35:26The other thing that has changed quite a bit is the importance of all of these magazines. Like, you know, back in the day when you were really rocking your thing, like Vogue, Elle, like, you know, I don't know all the names of them, but like, you know, they were super thick and like they were must have items. Full of advertising. You would buy it before you get on the plane or like you would get it, you would subscribe and all the like. And they held a certain kind of importance in culture that now in this new media landscape, like it's very difficult to run like a financially viable magazine.

36:01And so they don't really hold the same kind of place and culture that they once did. Yeah, and it was tangible. It was in your hands. You know, you had magazines and you could rip out a page and you'd stick it on your fridge and, you know, that was like your inspiration. But today, you know, everything is on the phone and it's transient. And fashion in itself is transient, but the mode of sharing it today is also transient because it's like, you know, it's an email or it's a flick on an Instagram post. Right, right, right. And so there was something sort of long lasting in that paper quality. Yeah.

36:39Did you have any interesting encounters with Anna Wintour? She seems like quite a character. I mean, she's built an incredible business. You know, she's very driven and purposeful in what she does. And she has really clear perspectives and visions on what she's trying to achieve. And she's done that very, very well. You know, this sense of not being in the cool kids club and like this insecurity, which I think is, I said the same thing to Giselle cause she was sharing like her insecurities and like just in terms of like the audience that's either watching or listening to this, like the idea that someone like you would feel that insecurity inside of yourself with all the success and the glamor and the like can be kind of an inaccessible like, you know, oh please like cry me or whatever kind of thing.

37:29So talk a little bit about that. I think the insecurity just comes from inexperience. So when you're an 18-year-old girl trying to do a job that you've never done before and do it well, no matter what you're doing or man, because I'm sure my children have the same sort of insecurities, like even my son, he's like, but mom, if I go and work at a PE fund, I have no experience and I'm going to be like the dumbest one there. And, you know, I don't want to look like I'm stupid and I have a great education. So it's that inexperience that can feel like we are not good enough. And in fact, over time, as you practice more, whatever your chosen vocation is, you become better at it and you start to find your way around it.

38:15And I think in the beginning, what happened was I was just trying to do a really, really good job doing something that I'd never done before. And I was being paid very well to do it because there is a skill in modeling. You know, it's not just you show up and you look good, but you work with the team and you have to understand the light and you have to understand timing and you have to, there's so much more. It's a collaborative effort and you get better at it as time goes on. You share the lessons that you learned around work ethic, like early on in your career. And And what comes across very clearly is like your dedication to like, oh, this is my profession.

38:51If I want to excel, I have to show up on, you know, I have to do all these things and I have to like attack it. Like you would any, you know, kind of audacious goal that you have for yourself. And that's another, like, there are a lot of similarities in your kind of story and trajectory with Giselle because I came across with her as well. Like she was not letting any opportunity, you know, fall by the wayside. Like she was coming from a foreign land, didn't know anyone and was like, I'm going to make this work. And the way I'm going to make it work is I'm going to outwork everybody. Yeah. Give a thousand percent.

39:21And what Giselle has done is she's retained her heart in everything that she's done as well. You know, she did it her way. You know, she brought her uniqueness into whatever she was doing. And I think that that's super important in any business is to bring your uniqueness. So often we want to be like somebody else. I want to be like that guy over there or that girl over there, they did this so I can do that. But really the magic happens when you bring your vibrance into whatever you're doing and bring it a thousand percent, you know, really commit to it. How did you, I know you were married, but like how did you avoid kind of falling into the sort of fast paced, you know, after party lifestyle of the whole kind of.

40:08Well, I didn't. Well, we're going to get into your sobriety story, but it's pretty tame. It's a pretty tame. The first 10 years, so, you know, in my 20s, I was married and I was just working. And so, you know, when other girls were going out to parties, I was going home to my husband and doing the layouts for Elle magazine or traveling to our next location. So I was saved a lot of that early exploration in my 20s. When I got divorced or separated in my 30s, that's where everything I started to explore a little more. Were you still in New York at that time? Yeah, New York and LA. Yeah. What were the years that you lived in New York?

40:52So I moved in 81, 82. I was between New York and Paris for those 10 years. And then I got my own apartment in New York in the 90s. I was there from like 89 to 94. It's a pretty groovy time to be there. It was pretty good. Yeah, there was a lot happening. Wall Street was... Well, it was sort of the tail end of the dodgy, you know, kind of era. That's such an Aussie word, dodgy. Yeah, me, I'm spending too much time in Australia. But it was before like everything became kind of whitewashed and over-gentrified. Like Soho was still cool and there were still kind of like vacant buildings and young people could live in lofts in Soho, you know, for almost no money.

41:34Tribeca wasn't even a thing yet. Yeah, meatpacking district. I lived uptown. I had that I'm going to live on Madison Avenue where all the girls lived downtown. But I was already sort of moved uptown, investing in art, getting great furniture, living a sort of more European life during that time. And I'd been successful in my career for those 10 years. So I had disposable income. I didn't have children. And I was really interested in exploring life as a grown-up. That's so responsible, you know? Because I just found it wildly over tempting, you know? And just found myself in all kinds of compromised situations.

42:16I probably did a fair dose of that too though, to be very long the way. Where were like the bars and the clubs that you were going to? I would go, so in the 80s, I was going to sort of Palladium and the Roxy. And I think I went, was at the tail end of Studio 54? Maybe, maybe not. Yeah, it was dwindling. Yeah. Well, I mean, in the early 80s, it was still kind of a thing. Still there, but then Palladium came in pretty quickly because it was the same guys that did it. So Lighthouse. The big dance clubs. They were fun times because I would work during the day and then at night I would sleep for a few hours and then I'd get up and go out.

42:54And that was sort of, I was thinking, okay, well I have eight hours sleep. I sleep sort of four hours before going out and three hours when I get back or whatever. And this was, you know, this was the cocaine era. It was. Silence. Tell me more. Listen, I think everybody was sort of, you know, experimenting and exploring. And we didn't know a lot about drugs then. I mean, you know, I remember people saying, oh, you can do cocaine because it's not addictive. Right. And I was always paranoid of trying any drugs because I didn't like being out of control. And I didn't want to lose what I had worked so hard to gain in life.

43:45And I'd sort of heard stories about people that do cocaine and heroin and they just fall off the tracks and they lose their looks and they can't work anymore. And they're sitting in the corner scratching themselves. And so I just thought I can't go there. But, you know, over time, I guess I checked things out for a while. You got to. A little bit, right? You got to give it a go. Give it a go. When I think of like that era and supermodels, et cetera, it was also the kind of, you know, wafy heroin chic kind of look that was very in at the time. And so there was a lot of pressure on the models to always be like ridiculously thin.

44:25And so they would just smoke cigarettes all day and not eat and, you know, have bulimia, et cetera. But you were kind of the healthy beach girl or something. Was there pressure on you to kind of fit that mold or were you always like, okay, I'm this person and this is my thing? Well, I couldn't fit that mold because I'm six foot four in heels, six foot. And I had these broad shoulders and I was athletic. And so, it didn't matter how much I would want to, I wasn't that girl. I just couldn't be that girl. And the moment that I sort of realized that my strengths were in this sort of Amazonian fitness and health and kind of vibrancy, then I leaned into that because that's where my work was and that's where my creation stream was.

45:15And so even if I'd wanted to be all those things, I couldn't physically be it. But you have all these experiences in New York and Paris and you're young and you're keeping it together though. So, you know, your kind of sobriety journey is very different. Like it doesn't really creep up onto you until much, much later. So, you know, maybe kind of walk us up to where it starts to become problematic. It's hard to kind of discern exactly where, but I know that in the 90s, see, I don't even know. It's like it's so far, I'm 21 years sober. What's your... I had a little lapse a while ago, so it hasn't been contiguous.

46:00But I went to rehab in 98 and I had a little lapse about 10 years in. Yeah, so I went to rehab in 2003 after the birth of my second son. Did you go to Sierra, Tucson? No, I went to the Meadows. Oh, the Meadows. I loved it. The Meadows is great. I chose the Meadows because it had a balance between physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing. And that's what I was looking for. And so, you know, whilst I probably could have done another 10 years drinking because that was my drug of choice, emotionally and spiritually I felt barren. And that's why I chose to go to rehab more than it was like, oh, man, I'm drinking too much.

46:44It was like I don't feel connected. I don't feel connected to myself. I don't feel connected to life. I don't feel connected to God or spirit or the universe. I don't feel connected to nature. And I really wanted to find out why I felt disconnected, which is why I drank, because I felt disconnected. That's a very painful place to be in. And how I could reconnect to myself, really. And so the Meadows offered me that opportunity because they focus so much on that balance of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. Yeah, the Meadows, it's not a strictly substance addiction kind of treatment center.

47:28It's for all kinds of mental health issues. Or an addiction can be addiction to emotions, drama, pain, fear. It's not just substances. When you think back to when it was starting to become problematic, like what have you learned about yourself that led to that kind of escalation? I'll go back to the disconnection. I feel that it was a coping mechanism. You know, it was like, okay, how do I numb the fear that I'm feeling because the fear is debilitating or the anxiety or the just not knowing? And alcohol did a really good job of that for a while until it didn't. And I think I was trying to be something I wasn't.

48:15I was married by that time. Well, not married. I was with the father of my children. I had two young children. I'd moved to London. I was a corporate wife. I'd let go of a lot of the work that I'd been doing where I was able to express myself in that area. And I just felt overwhelmed with the life that I was living. And I felt like I didn't know myself anymore. And drinking helped. And drinking helped with all the social things we had. We were building a big charity. He had a business. I had a high profile. So we were constantly social. And that was sort of my way of getting through it until I realized I was living a life that I didn't wanna live anymore and I needed help.

48:58And that's why I went to the meadows. If somebody doesn't know your story, they would probably presume that this problem originates in kind of the party lifestyle of being a model at a very high level. But you were living like a, you know, kind of a high society, you know. I was. Philanthropy and like wealth and husband And all this sort of, and it's almost like, you know, a mommy's a little helper situation more than it is like, oh, I was at Studio 54. Like you were just sort of drinking at night after you put your kids to the bed and like maybe having a little bit too much, but not getting out in the car and driving or creating all kinds of chaos.

49:35Like it was very quiet, you know, struggle, little war that you were waging with yourself. Which can be the most detrimental at times. Yeah, so I think, you know, when I think of your kind of drunk-a-log and your sobriety story, on the one hand, it's like, well, there's nothing really dramatic about this. It's like the most kind of like middle of the road situation ever. I know, nothing juicy. Like, yeah, I just had some vodka before I went to bed every night and sometimes I wouldn't remember things. Like, you know, like what's the big fucking deal, right? It's so true. This is like millions of people, but I think that's what makes it actually, you know, really relatable and perhaps even more powerful because alcoholism, you know, is a self-diagnosed disease as you and I both know.

50:14and it takes what it takes to get sober and we all have our different kind of pain thresholds. And I think there's probably a lot of people out there who are quietly struggling with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, but it never gets so out of control. So it's easy to just kind of keep doing it and your life either stays the same at best or it slowly degrades. But there isn't that like moment of absolute chaos that like shocks you into reality and snaps you out of your denial to go to Meadows or someplace like that, or go to an AA meeting. And so I think the honesty and the vulnerability that you show in telling your story, you know, takes you as somebody who is kind of fundamentally like, you know, on a surface level, like unrelatable to an average person, very relatable, because I think that your story, you know, the facts of our experience are different, but, you know, We can see ourselves in other people's journeys.

51:13And I think that that's a story that I think a lot of people can probably relate to. And that was the purpose of writing this book. It wasn't to tell my life story like, okay, now I'm 60. It's a good time to write all the brilliant things I've done. It was a moment of recognition, of realization back in 2020. you know, and it's so interesting, 2020 hindsight vision was that I'd had these experiences in life and that they were all there for a purpose. They were all meaningful. They're all valuable. And when I started to write, I was seeing that there was a thread through my stories that were common to everybody, you know, universal life lessons that I had been learning.

52:00And that's what I wanted to do was to write, to share them. And there are so many people that, you know, reach out to me and say, I thought that there would be nothing in common with us. And it's like what we say in AA, you know, it's not the stories, it's the feelings that you have as you navigate your life circumstances that we connect with. And people are connecting with the feelings, with the questions I would have, or the solutions that I found. That's what they're connecting with, not necessarily the actual circumstances themselves. Yeah. So what was the moment where you thought like, all right, I can't do this anymore?

52:37Well, I had, my son had just been born, Sai, in 2003. And my therapist had said to me at the time, Al, we're never going to get to the depths of what we're trying to uncover here in your spiritual and emotional well-being while you're drinking. Because it just, it's like a handbrake to getting to that deeper essence of self. And she said, I think you should go to rehab. And I was like, I don't need to go to rehab. If anyone needs to go to rehab, they need to go to rehab. You know, it's not me. I'm not the problem. And she said, no, I really do think that you need to, for us to go deeper, and you want a deeper spiritual connection in life, we can't do it as you are now.

53:25And I said to her, well, I'll just stop drinking. She said, oh, okay, just stop drinking. And I said, anyway, I'm going to Ibiza for three months and I just won't drink. And she said, oh, okay, well, let's see how that goes. So I would call her every Tuesday and Thursday, which were my days. And I would say, see, I'm not drinking. I'm not drinking. It's cool. I'm not drinking. And I did that for about six weeks. And then one day everybody went out and I had that feeling of I'm being left out. And I felt vulnerable and I felt whatever I felt at that time. And then I realized the only thing that was going to take that away was a drink.

54:06And so it was that realization that I couldn't go the three months without drinking, without help. And I just left the next day. I smashed open a bottle of vodka, drank it, and then it was like, I'm out of here. Yeah, you break the bottle of vodka, but you make sure that you get what you need out of it, right? Even if there's shards of glass in it. Yeah, which there was. Yeah. So that's a good indication that maybe something's not totally okay. But it wasn't so much the drinking of the vodka. It was that I couldn't not drink. It didn't matter what, you know, it didn't matter. The shards of glass are always, you know, it makes great clickbait and things like that.

54:43People go, oh, she's really desperate because she drank it with the glass in there. It was more the realization that my therapist was right. I couldn't not drink for that period of time when triggered with an emotional response. So you're in the Meadows for like six weeks, right? Yeah, I actually stayed longer. Oh, you did? Yeah, I asked to stay longer because Meadows for me was a safe ground. I kind of loved it. Art class. I didn't have art class. I did art class. You're like, all we do is sit around and like talk about our stuff. Yeah, and we did. I mean, the meadows was great because it was very holistic.

55:24So we had acupuncture and we had, you know, group therapy and we had, you know, one-on-one therapy and art class. And so it was a safe space for me to just rest my parasympathetic nervous system and to dedicate some time with very skilled practitioners to go deeper into understanding myself. But I was 40. I mean, to be 40 and think, I don't know myself at all. I thought I did. I knew what I was capable of. I knew what my skillsets were, but I didn't know me. And just before that, I had done Hoffman. Have you done Hoffman? No, but it keeps coming out. Oh man, it's so good. Lots of people have sat in that chair and told me how transformative Hoffman was in their life.

56:16So I did Hoffman, then the Meadows. And then I think I went back and did, you know, more work at the Meadows. So you were committed to your emotional, mental health prior to getting sober. Usually it's the other way around. Like you gotta get sober first before you would even entertain like therapy or Hoffman or anything like that. I'd understood that there was a connection between emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing and how that affected the body. So I knew that if I wanted to be physically well, I had to do some examination around emotional and spiritual bodies, wellbeing. When you say like you didn't know yourself, like what does that mean?

56:57Like know thyself is, you know, a question of infinite possibilities. It is the ultimate question. It really is. If you're like on this path, you devote your entire life to try to answering that. And it's, you know, it gets more expansive at every kind of level, but the dawning realization, like, oh, I don't really know myself, even after Hoffman and then being at Meadows and trying to solve that puzzle for yourself, for somebody who's never really kind of entertained that or has never occurred to them to like look inward and answer that question for themselves. Like how do you describe that? It's such a big question.

57:34Like who am I? And I think for me it has been, my whole life has been really a journey from my head to my heart. And when I say know yourself, it is to have a connection, to have a relationship with your heart, not just your head. and that will express itself in a million different ways you know at every circumstance or situation that we approach and it'll be different for me as it is for you but it's to trust you know to trust your heart to take time to get quiet many times in the day before doing anything major at least and just feel what resonates with you it's not like a definition of This is who I am.

58:22It's a beingness of a moment-to-moment practice of responding to life through your heart. And when you do that continually, you start to have a much clearer perspective on who you truly are or how you can be in every circumstance, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the modality of your practice? Meditation? My day is like a walking meditation. But in the beginning, it started quite strict. So I would have guided meditations. I have a spiritual mentor. His name is Paul, and I talk about him in the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have questions about him in that book. Yeah, I would love for you guys to meet by the phone or not.

59:10Adams to Angels? Adams to Angels was the book that changed my life that I read from him. In the beginning, I would do guided meditations and then lots of different types, you know, for whatever I was chasing at that time. And then it moved into more still meditations, but still very structured. So, you know, time in the morning, time in the evening. And then I did the TM thing for a while, tried that. You got the mantra. Yeah, I got my mantra. And today it's really just like, it is a walking meditation, which is that sense of always coming from a heart space, that quiet heart space. Even now, like when I'm really nervous talking with you, it's just to take a deep breath and just to be in my heart.

1:00:01So Paul Daryl Walsh in this book, tell me all about this. So he wrote a book called From Atoms to Angels. and I had just gotten sober, I think. And I was kind of navigating that. Like, how do I be in my life as a sober woman living in a very un-sober world? And how do I sort of bring that into my everyday life? I don't really know how to do it, but I'll go to AA and I'll just put one step in front of the other. But I was looking for a deepening understanding of a spiritual center in my life. And as you know, AA is a spiritual program. But I was looking for a deepening in that. So I go away to the Bahamas and I find this book on the shelf of this place that I'm in.

1:00:53And the woman that was running the house said to me, oh, I know those guys that wrote that book. And I said, I read the book and I said, I want to meet with them. And so in my kind of arrogance, I said, where are they? I'm going to find them. And they were living in India at the moment. And I said to them, I want to do a retreat. I want to do like a week's retreat. I've just gotten sober and I want to kind of solidify this in my life. And I'd never met them before. And I did a whole sort of week or 10-day retreat with them. And we did everything, you know, from talking about the meaning of ascension, which I didn't understand at the time and still is a very kind of nefarious subject for a lot of people.

1:01:37And the concept that life happens through you for you, not to you. So moving out of victim consciousness, moving into your own empowerment and that we are the ultimate creators. I mean, these were all things that I had never heard of or that we are just an energy source. And how do we direct that energy source? We are all capable or powerful. And so there were very new concepts for me because for me, spirituality was about God and religion. And, you know, they came and we worked together and we looked at a lot of different areas from, you know, astrology to numerology to, you know, working with crystals to Reiki.

1:02:20And it was fun and inspiring and enlightening and empowering and eye-opening. And it was the beginning of my kind of journey into realizing that we're not just sort of victims of our lives, just having to deal with whatever came up for us. And what was it specifically in this book, like Atoms to Angels, that like leapt off the page or or spoke to you because there's lots of books in this sort of genre, right? Yeah. But you make a very conscious effort or point to like highlight like this book is being transformational for you. As I said, I think it was that concept of life happens through you for you and that we are energetic beings.

1:03:05And I don't know if there was one specific thing that was said, it was a feeling I had when I read the book, it was just that I need to know more. I want more of what I'm feeling when I read this book. I want to understand, I want that inspiration in my life and that strength of being and lack of fear. Yeah, not as a replacement to AA, but as a - Conjunction. Yeah, a supplement. I think there's this sort of notion in Alcoholics Anonymous or within the sobriety community, like, oh, you're an A, this is what we do. Like things that are outside of that are kind of a distraction from the step work and service, et cetera.

1:03:56And my experience has been quite different. Like I love AA, it saved my life. It continues to save my life. I'm very devoted to that community. And I think it's profound. Yes. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't continue to explore spiritual growth in other areas that speak to you. Yeah, if it moves you. Sometimes it's just keeping it as simple as possible with the steps in AA is where people find their groove. I still go to AA and I still believe that it's one of the best programs for anybody, even if you're not struggling with alcoholism, but you might be struggling with other things in your life.

1:04:36I think it's such a brilliant roadmap for life. You don't have to be suffering from an addiction to benefit from like going through the steps. Absolutely. Or even Al-Anon or any of the other affiliated programs.

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1:06:35As somebody who's lived all over the world and travels constantly, where have you found like the best AA communities? Oh, that's a goodie. Oz, you know, like there's a meeting on Bondi Beach, which is really cool and sort of authentic and simple. The one in the, what is it called? In the pavilion, yeah. I love that one. But, you know, there are great meetings everywhere. And I think it depends on where you're at. It's not the meeting itself. It's where you're at. I remember when I was first like three months sober, I was in Yorkshire in England, big drinking shooting party with the father of my children, you know, typical English sort of, you know, wake up, have a bull shot at 11 o 'clock.

1:07:23Then there's 11 days. A lot of like tweed and hounds and like Land Rovers. And having to keep warm. and I remember driving for about an hour and a half to go to a meeting at seven o 'clock at night when I was supposed to be at dinner with everybody and I got there and it was the most down and out meeting and it saved my life it was just so rich and raw and needed and you know the fact that I'd made the effort to do it it gave me confidence with myself with my own resolve and discipline and making the effort to go was as much as the meeting itself. So it's not really about the meeting per se. It's about the willingness to check it out wherever you are.

1:08:07Do you know John Pearson? Yeah, that brings a bell. Because he's from Yorkshire. Like when you said Yorkshire, it reminded me. Yeah, that brings a bell. I mean, he lives here now. He was sort of the male supermodel. Yeah, somebody spoke to me about him just recently. He's the best. Yeah. He's such a great guy. He's been on the podcast. you would know him from the George Michael video with all the models. Right. The faith video. Yeah, that was such a great video, wasn't it? I wish I did that. Anyway, you talk about like doing your first four step inventory. Can you share a little bit about that?

1:08:43Well, I had this feeling that if I didn't do it perfectly, I was not gonna stay sober, you know, because there's all this, you have to do the fourth step and the fifth step. And if you don't do that, And so I didn't even know where to begin. And I was one of those kids at school that would start a new notebook in class for the new year. And if my writing wasn't perfect, I'd riff out the page and do it again because I wanted it to be perfect. And that was the same for my fourth step. I wanted it to be perfectly laid out, every single thing I could think of. and I worked on it for months and months and months trying to get this sort of spreadsheet.

1:09:24It was very cathartic at the very least, but of course it wasn't necessary. And that's a powerful step. It's a hard one. That's the step where everyone sort of gets hung up. And for people that don't know, the fourth step in the 12 steps is where you kind of take inventory of your past behaviors. And it's recommended that it's something you do fearlessly and thoroughly. Yes. And you basically tabulate all of your resentments and your fears and you have to do a sexual inventory where you were, you know, kind of misbehaving sexually. Like it's sort of a gut-wrenching thing. You have to go back into your past and like revisit, you know, all of these experiences that, yeah, either you can't remember.

1:10:08And I just remember when I did my first, I was like, I couldn't think of anyone that I didn't resent. So I literally listed out every single person I'd ever met my whole life. that's a very common thing in in especially when you're newly sober because you know again it's this thought of i'm a victim of my life and so it wasn't really my fault it was their fault and if they didn't do that to me then i wouldn't be you know so it's trying to discern what's truly going on you know where are the character traits that we want to heal that we want to rebalance without taking the blame for everything, but just to have a stock and understanding of it.

1:10:49Yeah, the point of it isn't simply to have this cathartic experience where you put it all on paper, but to identify your part in all of these, you know, emotional experiences. And then when you have it all out, you can see these patterns emerge, like, oh, every time this happens, this is how I behave, et cetera. I go into fear, yeah. So when you did that for the first time, what were the revelations around like the character defects that were contributing to your... Oh, you're testing my memory. Well, what are the main... There's the seven deadly sins really that we look through, but mine I think was probably fear.

1:11:25Okay, so reacting out of fear. And so assuming the worst and responding to the worst of whatever the situation was. I think that was my main thing was fear. Catastrophizing. Yeah. And that's an adult child of an alcoholic type of symptom. You know, you have to look around corners as a child who is living in a sort of chaotic life. And if I can anticipate the worst thing that can happen, then I'll be able to map out what I can do to mitigate it or to control it or to deal with it. And it was a survival mechanism as a child. And then often we take that on as an adult and we continue to catastrophize or continue to think of the worst case scenario to test to see if we can deal with it.

1:12:12And then we create new neuron pathways and we start to live that way. And we manifest what we imagine. It's rather astonishing the extent to which our perception of our own consciousness dictates life outcomes. And I think, you know, and I'm speaking for myself, like the vast majority of people, we spend the vast majority of our time thinking about something that happened in the past and fantasizing about something that hasn't happened yet. We're very rarely actually in the present, the only thing that actually exists, which is the present moment. And it doesn't matter how many times I say that or remind myself of that, it remains such a difficult thing to continue to anchor yourself in the present and understand like all of those mental strategies were designed to protect us and keep us alive.

1:13:09Right. And yet, for the most part, kind of don't serve us in an optimal way. Absolutely. How we are in the present dictates the future. So it's to be putting your energy into what you love to what really resonates with you in the here and now. You know, life flows where your energy goes. And so if we're constantly in this moment of appreciation, of gratitude, of wonder, of curiosity, of beingness in this moment, that is the life that we will have, which is very fulfilling and enjoyable. I think there's something specific about America that creates an even greater degree of difficulty with what you just shared, because there's such an emphasis in this culture around like individual liberty and it's like manifest destiny and the American dream and it's up to me and I'm gonna make it happen.

1:14:10And so the focus is really on the individual, on the self, which kind of overemphasizes or overly celebrates like the ego. And so it's very difficult, maybe more difficult here than in other cultures to kind of disabuse yourself of that idea of the self, which is basically an illusion if you believe in non-dualism as I do. But to kind of really own or understand that all these ideas that you have about who you are are pure illusion is a very difficult leap. It's a tough one to communicate, to teach and to embody. And that is really my journey. That's the book's journey. And life is that journey of recognizing the value of connection to all things and not the individuality of me, myself, I as being the only facilitator of the future or of my life.

1:15:08It's not just me. You know, it's a co-creation, a collaboration, a co-creation between life experiences, the people that you have around, nature, energy source. And that's a hard one for people to kind of understand in their heads. They have to live it and they live it through experience. What are some of the other guides or books or individuals who have kind of helped shape your spiritual perspective and growth? The biggest shaping of my spiritual perspective has been my own experience. And I don't mean it in a self-centered way like I'm my own spiritual guru in any way. But I have learned more through my life experiences than reading other people's life experiences or philosophers' visions on things.

1:15:57Because we've both been around people that can talk the talk, but can't walk the walk themselves, live it themselves. I remember reading Ram Dass' Be Here Now. And that sounded great. And it sounded like what I wanted. But I didn't know how to live that at that moment. I mean, I didn't truly know what it meant. Osho, you know, it was like it resonated with me. It touched my heart. It was like, yeah. But living that spiritual way of being or philosophy is a completely different thing from just reading it and thinking that sounds nice. And even Paul's book, it is so much more meaningful. I'm living that more today than when I first read it, when it really changed my world.

1:16:43And so life is experiential. You know, it is the experience that we have in the moments that we have and not the philosophies that we try to adopt. There is something about being our age where you do become more self-reflective and kind of open to these ideas. And you've accumulated enough life experience where suddenly they have a resonance. Like if I read Be Here Now today, I'm going to have a very different experience with that book than I would have, you know, when I first read it when I was like 31 or whatever. You know what I mean? because you've accumulated enough life where it just has a grit to it that doesn't when you haven't had that many experiences.

1:17:22So when you speak to younger people or you're trying to kind of, you have two sons, like how do you spare them some of the pain that you've experienced? Or how do you connect those lessons to somebody who hasn't kind of lived as much life as you have to help them kind of see it more clearly sooner? That's a beautiful question. Like, I think you have to live your life. I think everybody has to have their experiences and earn that kind of perspective. Yeah, I think our kids learn through observation. So they watch. You can say all you want, but really, they will watch how you are in your life. In my case, with my kids, it's an ongoing thing where I don't give them books to read, except mine.

1:18:13have they read your book of course they have read my book and were moved by it but not by the stories that I tell about my life or not only by the stories I tell about my life that they may not have known but because I have so carefully curated and consciously chosen the language the words they were able to read it and join the dots of things that I've been saying in conversation. But when it's on a page like that, they can actually join the dots. Oh, that's what she means when she said this and this and this, or that's why she does things this way. I understand now. So I think for them, it was a greater insight into me, but more importantly, a greater insight into themselves.

1:18:58And that was my purpose of the book is that when people read it, they have a a greater insight or a greater understanding or a greater acknowledgement of them, not so much me. And with the boys, I take the time to point out when I see them. So, for example, with Sai, he's very, my youngest, he's extremely intelligent, academically brilliant in many ways, and he relies heavily on his academia. He's also very intuitive. And in a world where having an intuition is kind of seen as not that valuable, you know, especially in a young man, you know, you're bright, you're this, you're go-getter. He's incredibly intuitive.

1:19:42And I talked to him about the battle that he has between his logical mind, his common sense, and his inner sense, and that they're both valuable. And to trust his inner sense, because that will guide him in his decision-making and his brain, his brilliant brain will help him execute what his heart desires. And so when those opportunities come up, I talk to them about that, but it's not like I hand them, you know, a book and say, read this. I think it'll be really helpful. Yeah. That's a dilemma. If you're a bright, young, intellectual mind, you will be rewarded and validated for that. Yeah. And the more that that happens, the more the heart mind gets muted, right?

1:20:28And deprioritize. I mean, I've experienced this and I'm in a process of trying to, you know, reconnect with my intuition and my heart song. Because we all have it. Yeah, and you know, it's sort of a masculine thing too. I think it's like, you know, it's a feminine energy, but it has its own wisdom and that wisdom is valuable. and you know I would fully admit that I've been quick to like kind of repress it or keep it at bay to my own peril. Because ultimately what we're here to do is to embody the both divine masculine and divine feminine which is heart and head not just one or the other and traditionally speaking it was always like the masculine energy was all about the head and the feminine energy was all about the heart but today I think we are combining both the masculine and the feminine in the individual.

1:21:20And that is a big thing in relationships. You know, before we, or there has been times where we looked for a relationship where there was a you complete me type of scenario, the yin yang, you know, I'm this and you're that and together we make this. But today, I think we're really looking at balancing that masculine and feminine within each of us individually, women and men, and teaching young men, because I have two boys, the value of that is where I see myself as their wise guide. But it can't be heavy handed and you can't preach and they don't listen to me half the time anyway. So it's a nice idea.

1:22:03But you've been in a few relationships, right? I have long-term relationships. I've had a series of very long... You know, you've had an interesting, you know, journey with partnerships over the years. And you seem to have a really beautiful, healthy one now with Doyle. But what have you learned through all of those experiences about like relationships that you think is worthy of sharing? Don't fall in love with someone's potential.

1:22:33I was really good at that. I was like, I can see it. Are you a fixer? A box ticker. Box ticker? Or what does that mean? Well, I think I would look at a relationship, and I have done this, and going, well, it looks good on paper. It's like, okay, kid's the same age, tick, you know, loves his children, tick, successful in business, tick. You know, it's sort of those kind of ideas that we have about who we think could be great for us in a relationship. And they're all the doing things. They're not necessarily the being things. You know, so it looks great. And then it doesn't, there's no resonance.

1:23:11And so I think that sometimes we go through attraction. You know, it's really about connection more than attraction. And I was looking at, you know, what was attractive. And I don't mean just physically. I mean from the exterior, what, you know, what was I attracted to instead of where was my true connection? And that's what I have in my relationship today, which is attraction and connection. But the entry point into the relationship was connection. Heart connection, spirit connection, soul connection. Yeah. and resonance, frequency, the frequency that we both function in in our daily life. You attract the frequency of who you are.

1:23:48And I think it's often about, be the love you wanna receive, be that energy and you will receive it. Right. It's not about like chasing what you want. It's about becoming the person who would attract that person. Exactly. You have to be the person that that person would wanna be with. Yes, exactly. That's really the ultimate kind of Jedi move. And we were talking about this the other day is that, you know, we always say, you know, I fell in love with this person. And in fact, I think we rise in love because love is such a high frequency, you know, experience. But I feel that we rise in love with the person that we are when we are with that person.

1:24:34So you rise in love with yourself and they're the witness of it. in the purest sense, but all relationships begin with both parties, you know, projecting an idealized version of that person onto them. Like, they're not actually seeing you, they're seeing kind of like what they want to see. Yeah, but if I love somebody and I'm, you know, I'm with somebody and I'm thinking, you know, for example, with Doyle, it wasn't so much I was attracted and connected to him, but I loved who I was when I was with him. Oh, I still love who I am when I'm with him. I'm my best version of myself when I'm in this relationship.

1:25:15And so it's like falling in love with yourself in many ways. Do you have a relationship with regret? What does regret look like to you? I mean, in AA, it's sort of like, we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. But regret has a way of lingering. And we've all done things that we wish we hadn't. Regret is a sort of futile emotion to some extent because there's nothing really truly that I regret as long as I've learned from it. And I have learned. And sometimes I had to go through the cycle again. But I've learned through my experiences. And so they were valuable. They were purposeful.

1:25:54They were meaningful. They were worthwhile. Even if they were uncomfortable. Even if they were hard. Even if they were messy. Even if they were painful. They were worthwhile. and I can say that about every relationship. I've had long relationships, 10-year relationships with people and I don't regret any of them and that's why I'm able to write with such grace about them in the book because I can see the value of those experiences with those people and they all brought beautiful gifts with them, not without a good dose of pain though. Yeah. And uncomfortable. All that pain is happening for you and through you, right?

1:26:34For your growth and evolution. For your growth and evolution. It's a mirror of your own behavior because it takes two to contribute to whatever pain moment you're experiencing in a relationship. Suffering is optional though. You don't have to hang onto it. I know, but we live in the world, we're not meditating in caves. You know what I mean? It's true. As they say in a, if you really wanna know your character defects, like get into a relationship, right? Like it's easy when you're on your own and you think everything's cool. That's why I love relationships is because you learn so much through the relationship.

1:27:08It's very hard to do it by yourself. You don't have any mirror of where your triggers are, where there's nuggets of density that needs healing. You only really see it when you exchange with somebody else. Can we talk about the breast cancer stuff? Sure can. So you're taking it on the chin with this book, right? Like you've been doing press, you tell this whole story around breast cancer and the choices that you made around your own kind of healing process. And I'm sure you knew when you wrote it in the book that when the book came out, you were gonna have to kind of answer for that, right? Like people have sort of come after you for these choices that you've made and you're kind of this exercise of your own sovereignty.

1:27:56That was surprising, to tell you the truth. I mean, I wrote, I talked about it in the book. There's a very specific reason that I, first of all, it's an authentic book. So, like, you know, to cut that part out would not be true. I mean, you know, authentic to me because it was such a huge turning point in my life. I didn't anticipate that there would be so much blowback on the choice I made because the chapter is really not about the choice I made. The chapter is about how to make a decision. When you're gripped with fear or when you're faced with a life and death situation, like how do you figure out what to do when you have no idea of the outcome of your decision either way?

1:28:40So I didn't expect as much blowback. Thank goodness, because I think if I'd anticipated it, I might have written it very differently. I wrote it from the heart and carefully in the sense that it is not a protocol of how to address illness in a natural way. That's not what this is. You're sharing your experience. I'm sharing my experience and I'm not enough. And the challenge of making that choice that you made. But maybe explain to people who don't know what we're talking about. Yeah, okay. So in 2017, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It came as a huge shock because like you, you know, healthy lifestyle, 10 years sober, into wellness.

1:29:25I've started my own wellness business with Wellco a few years earlier after I'd seen how important nutrition is. It was a crossroad in my own wellness journey that birthed Wellco. And so I have this - Which is like an amazing name, by the way. Just add a W to your name. It seems appropriate. Yeah. No, it's like, it's perfect. Anyway, keep going. Thank you. So I was diagnosed and I just couldn't believe it. I was like me, of all people. And what do I do with this information? And how do I address it? And so I went on a journey of research and I just researched and researched and researched and I went to see all the best doctors.

1:30:13I spoke to people in Paris, in Israel, in Australia, and, you know, everywhere that specialized in oncology. And I asked them what I should do. And everybody, most of them had very different responses as to what to do. Okay, you should do radiation, you should do chemotherapy, you should do a mastectomy, a double mastectomy. You don't need to do a mastectomy. You can just do radiation. And, you know, at the end of it, I was just lost. I didn't, I had no idea of truly what to do. And so I had seen some integrative medicine doctors who said, you can do partly this, you can do partly that. And there was no guarantees.

1:30:51You know, no matter what everybody suggested either way, whether it was to take a completely natural route, an integrative approach, or a completely pharmaceutical approach, nobody had a guarantee that this is going to heal 100 % and you're going to come out of this fine. And so I just went into deep meditation, gathered all the information, and then decided that the clearest path for me for the diagnosis that I had for my specific case was to approach it from the least invasive point of view for a period of time and see if that worked. and I was really fortunate because I did that and it did work.

1:31:38And so I continued with that process because I was seeing the results that I wanted, which was absolute wellness. And it was a rigorous process and it wasn't overnight. It was pretty prolonged, right? What exactly were you doing? It was such an intricate protocol, Rich. I mean, it wasn't like, so a lot of people think if you take a natural approach to healing any disease, disease, dis-ease in the sense of it's an imbalance in your body, that you just sort of like drink green juice and pray for the best. And I remember going and seeing the doctor that I had chosen to walk this journey with, and he gave me the list of protocols.

1:32:19And I just burst into tears. I said, I can never do this. It's too much. Like, how am I going to do all this? And how am I going to do it alone? Because I'm not going to a clinic and, you know, somebody just, you walk along the production line and now you're going to do this and now you're going to do that. I had to find the doctors. I had to be my own master of ceremonies in many ways with all the tools that I had. And I remember he's saying to me, because I felt like if I didn't do this 120%, I was going to die and everyone was going to make fun of me because I didn't do the more traditional, and I say traditional, let's say pharmaceutical route.

1:32:58And he said to me, he said, listen, did I ask you to do it 100%. I said, but I have to do it 100 % because I'm going to die if I don't. And he said, just give it your best shot. You give it your best shot. And of course, given the personality that I have, I just worked at it day in, day out for many, many months. And then that went on to many years. And it was intricate. I mean, we don't have enough time on this podcast to talk about all the different things I did, but it was a combination of emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental exercises and approaches, put it that way. A lot of detox, a lot of nutrition, you know, fasting, juicing.

1:33:44I mean, the list went on and on and on. Right. Basically a full-time job though. It was. Yeah. And so the diagnosis is in 2017 and how long before you were in remission? I don't like to say remission so much because remission sort of implies that there's dormant cancer waiting to come out. And for me, it was like eight months in, I had completely clear markers. Actually, before that. But I continued on that protocol for two years, just to more than that three years. And you continued to test and make sure? Well, I was testing more than most people because I didn't have that security of just, we'll wipe it out and you'll be fine.

1:34:24I was testing every three months. So you go in for a lumpectomy to remove a growth and that's when you get the diagnosis, right? And the diagnosis that you get is for a very specific form of breast cancer called HER2 positive estrogen receptive breast cancer. Is that right? Yes. And, you know, I took a look at some of the article, like, you know, it's, listen, it's not surprising that you were taken aback by, you know, kind of the response to this aspect of your story, but it's also kind of predictable. It's like the press needs a salacious story. This is like the hottest take, right? So they're gonna go for this.

1:35:04And I watched the 60 Minutes Australia piece on you. Yeah, that was pretty grueling. And, you know, but they have to do their job. I thought that she handled it responsibly, but also with some grace. I mean, she was not without her compassion. I was expecting her to really go after you. Yeah. And I felt like it was balanced in the way that it needed to be for it to be 60 minutes, I guess I would say. And I knew that when I was going into it. But there is this set, like, of course, so like all these, you know, I'm not a medical doctor, hardly an oncologist, right? So it's like, I have no expertise in this, but I know that, you know, because there's been so much press around this, oncologists have weighed in and those opinions vary but they tend to kind of align with like, she should have done this.

1:35:47I think there's a fear that because of who you are and kind of your platform that you command, et cetera, that this will set in motion like a domino effect as if you were kind of recommending that people opt out of a traditional protocol and do it your way. When I know that your intention was like, I'm trying to explain to you how I make decisions in my own life and I'm not telling you what to do or not to do. but not all breast cancers are the same. Right, true. Is that fair? Well, I mean, herein lies the dilemma if, and I'm not an authority on cancer. So I'm an authority on my experience and I share with you my experience.

1:36:29So, you know, weighing in on sort of what doctors think is specific for this specific type of cancer or how your body responds to it isn't really my skillset. what I do know is that if that is the case, if it's non-invasive and if it is not dangerous, then perhaps the best way of dealing with it isn't wiping out your immune system with chemotherapy. And if it is, and there is a combination of ways to manage it, then And that's also an option. For me, I did two lumpectomies. So I went down that road and then I just felt that the rest of the process, I would give it a go. Aussie, my Aussie thing.

1:37:22But I think everybody's bodies respond to any kind of cancer is, you know, there's no fixed, There's no fixed way of dealing with things. You know, in my case, there didn't seem to be a invasive solution that felt right for me. The traditional fear or kind of reaction to this is, well, by doing that, are you not putting yourself in a position where the likelihood, like you said, you didn't like the word remission, but the likelihood of it returning is perhaps increased because you didn't go that traditional route? Well, I guess I'm living proof to some extent because it's been seven years or eight years now.

1:38:07And for me, that is the affirmation that the choice I made for me, for my body, was the one that was right for me at this moment. Now, if something, you know, if my body chemistry changes and things change, I'll make a decision based on that. but making a preemptive decision on the future, perhaps maybe if whatever, now it doesn't seem to make sense to me. Yeah. To me, this really isn't about like the choice you made around your own healing. Right. The more interesting aspect of this to me is kind of a meta question, which is the tension between, as we were talking about earlier, like the mind and the heart, right?

1:38:54And when do you trust your intuition? And as somebody who was gonna go to law school and prided herself on her intellectual capabilities and has had to learn over time how to trust her heart and has been on this journey of know thyself, right? Like there's this yin and yang, like how do you balance these two when they are at loggerheads with each other, right? Because obviously it's sort of like God delivers you this test case to like see where you're at, And it's like, you don't wanna venture down the rabbit hole of pseudoscience and misinformation. Which I definitely didn't do. Especially when your life is on the line, right?

1:39:32And yet, as somebody who is committed to their spiritual journey, it is important to weigh like the valence of like your trust in things that you can't control and your level of kind of surrender to that, right? Like, and this is a war we're all waging on some level, right? Like you're doing it on a kind of conscious level and you're telling this story. And I believe that your motivation and intention for sharing the breast cancer story is a way of like elucidating this theme, right? This tension that we all have within ourselves about like what's in our best interest? How do we make these decisions?

1:40:07How do I trust my heart when my head is telling me something different? Or how do I exempt myself from the pressures of like external validation? Well, all these experts are saying I should do this. And I want them to think that I'm a good patient or a good student, but my heart is telling me this, or maybe my heart is telling me I should trust these doctors or how do I weigh all of that? Like, I'm confused. How do I make sense of this? And how do I figure out what's right for me and make that decision, not from a place of being reactive, but being informed and like understanding the risks and kind of weighing that tension between like, like trust in self and trust in experts and all the like.

1:40:50And I think this is all heightened because the very issue that you're getting at is sort of a culture war issue, right? Like don't trust experts, trust it, you know, like we need experts all, you know, like this is like the discourse that's happening on like the whole meta level with respect to everything. And all of it is distilled down into this one story that you tell, which I think makes it dynamite. And why, you know, that's part of why I think the press is fixated on it. Yeah, you've articulated that so beautifully. And that was my experience. And it's really that situation of when the outside world becomes so noisy, that it's really difficult to wade through what is the right course of action in any given moment, because we get so distracted and driven by fear, you know, so that's a great, it's sort of like fire when, you know, when you're in fear, it's very difficult to make a decision when you're in fear.

1:41:52And if you've got a lot of people telling you you're going to die, there's no greater fear than that. This was not a flippant decision. It wasn't like, oh, I'm just going to make an ideological decision that this is what feels right for me, you know, and I'm really into health and well-being naturally. And so... I'm just going to hold my crystal and put it on my yoni and hope for the best. It wasn't that at all. I took into account everything that everybody was saying. And if there was a unanimous decision that was if you follow these steps, you will heal, then I'm pretty sure I would have gone down that road no matter what it was.

1:42:32And I had considered. I had considered all my options very, very carefully. As you say, that was the catalyst for the biggest change in my life, for the really coming into self in my life. Explain that a little bit more. Well, I'd had these opportunities leading up to it. So getting sober, having children, building a wellness business where there was sort of a lot of noise outside about what I should do. and then finding my own path through those sort of baby steps. And then when it comes to this big, you know, experience that is an analogy for the world, really, it's like how do you find your truth, what resonates with you in your heart when there is so much noise outside?

1:43:26And that's what it is really about. And there was no bigger noise than the pressure from all these experts. and they are experts by the way. And there are people that have gone down that road and done really, really well. So I don't think it's an either or situation, but how do you find your, what you know, believe is right for you at that given moment, despite all that noise? Owning your truth and your space and being able to withstand that when, you know, all these articles are getting written, and stuff's happening. That's one thing, but that's sort of, those are strangers, right? But you have loved ones and family and two boys, who were concerned about you and having to kind of stay true to what you felt was right for you amidst the pressures and the challenges and the fears of the people that care about you the most.

1:44:26Well, we all wanted the same thing in the family is that we wanted me to get well. So like, what was the route to getting well? And there was a difference of opinion along the way. And, you know, that happens in life. People will have different opinions on what is the best route. And, you know, the kids wanted me to be well and so did I. And I wanted to make a decision that would be the closest aligned to what I thought would work for me being well. And they trusted my decision in the end. Is there anything more that you want to say about that, that maybe you wish, you know, 60 minutes had asked you or that you want to correct the record on or clarify where there might be some confusion out there?

1:45:06I want to give you that opportunity. Thank you. I think there's a couple of things to be said. You know, often when we talk about a holistic approach as being sort of just a woo-woo natural approach to things when it comes to medical situations. But for me, a holistic approach is to look at things from an emotional, physical, mental, and a spiritual point of view. I know that they're connected. If the body is showing being unwell or dissonant in illness physically, then it stands to reason that we would also have to look at, okay, where is the dissonance emotionally and spiritually? Because the manifestation is in the body.

1:45:54But the beginning of the dissonance comes from the emotional and spiritual well-being. And so I wanted to look at all the aspects, not just the physical symptom, but all the other stuff. And all the guilt that I hadn't processed, all the shame that I hadn't processed. And not only that, but, you know, belief systems that I had, fears that I had, that could contribute to me being unwell. In my case, it manifested in cancer, but in other people's case, it could be a myriad of other things. So I really wanted to look at it from a holistic point of view in that sense. And I think there's some misinformation that holistic just means, oh, I'm just going to take natural products.

1:46:37Right. That you're being very cavalier in the public square and that has, you know, ramifications, right? But I think... And that certainly wasn't the case at all. I think what can get misinterpreted about what you just shared is this idea that, oh, if you have cancer, it's your fault, it's your behavior. Like you brought it upon yourself because you didn't heal your emotional wounds or something like that. I think what you're attempting to say or where your heart is at is that disease is disease, right? It is a byproduct of something in your system that is out of balance, right? And that can be profoundly out of balance or it can be subtly out of balance.

1:47:19And nobody is in perfect balance all the time. We're not living in a harmonious state, right? And the choices that we make impact the caliber of that balance. And when those scales are tipped too far in one direction for too long in a chronic context, you are creating an environment where you're vulnerable to some type of, kind of disorder, I guess I would say. And that can be emotionally, mentally, physically, if you're compromised in some way and as a result, your immune system is compromised, then you create an environment that's more receptive to something going sideways. Absolutely. And that's why I chose to look at it from that perspective.

1:48:06And where are you in that process? Like what still comes up? What's challenging you? What's the next evolution of the spiritual progression and growth, the challenge that is intractable that keeps sort of tripping you up when you know it shouldn't? I think it's that thing of being in the present every now, taking stock of what's truly going on now and not projecting into the future or living the cellular memory of the past. And I find myself triggered by the past at times. You know, oh, that happened before, so I want to mitigate that, or I don't want that to happen again, so, you know, I have to watch out because I need to, that kind of thing.

1:48:50And really, when I'm sitting in the present, in the now, everything is perfect. Everything is exactly the way it's meant to be. There is no, I'll probably go home from this podcast and have that moment that was like, man, I don't know if I did a good job with Rich today. You know, that will come up, I'm pretty sure, at some point. And then I have to immediately readdress that within myself, go, I know that whatever transpired between us was perfect for the listener, for Rich, and for me in that given moment. I know that in my heart of hearts. So don't jump into my automatic thing, conditioning, which is I fucked up.

1:49:30I didn't do a good job. I let myself down. I let Rich down. I let the readers down. I didn't explain myself well. I wish I could have done that again. And it's that conversation that I have with myself often. And the more I do that, the more I reframe those fears or those insecurities or those doubts within myself, the more I do that, I'm creating new pathways where I don't go to that place so much anymore. And that's where the joy is and that's where the fulfillment is and that's where the love is in life that we're not second guessing everything that we do or doubt ourselves. Yeah. Well, you know, congratulations.

1:50:09You're still a human being. You're not, you haven't transcended the mortal coil yet. I'm clearly, I haven't transcended. That's why I'm still here. I'm gonna go home and read Be Here Now again. Yeah, this is the dilemma of being in a human body. Yeah. Like if you can transcend like everything that you just shared, like call me and let me know how you did it. Cause I would like to see how. Well, if we did, if we have transcended, we wouldn't be here in the human form because that's what we are all here doing. I know, right? Yes, in this illusion of the self, how can we just enjoy our life and, you know, be joyful and serve others with love?

1:50:47I love that word, enjoy, because I think it should be written in joy, you know, enjoy, to be in joy. Like I-N-J-O-Y? Yeah. I'm going to rewrite the language here. Yes, well, I grant you that power. Well, you can rewrite the language. Well, let's end up with talking a little bit about Wellco. So, back where we started, we're doing a circle here. So we started with your entrepreneurial journey and now we're gonna end with that. So you have this wellness company and obviously wellness is, this is like the most important thing to you. You live it, you breathe it. And you've taken all of this business acumen and experience and entrepreneurship and put it into this wellness company, which is pretty cool.

1:51:31So what was the idea behind it? and what do you want people to know about it? It's such a blessing to be able to put your heart into something that really rocks your world. And wellbeing and wellness has been such a theme in my life through my career and through motherhood. When I turned 50, all the things that I'd been doing, like just the nutritional programs and the exercise program and everything wasn't working, you know, my body wasn't responding to it. and I was feeling really run down, depleted, coffee addicted, sugar addicted, sleep deprived. My skin changed, my hair changed, I was putting on weight and I went to the doctor and I said to him, listen, I don't even know myself anymore.

1:52:19I don't feel myself anymore. I've got no sense of vitality. I've lost my libido. I don't have my mojo going. What's going on? And he said, oh, you know, you're just turning 50 and that's normal. That's a, you know, hormonal change you're going through and it's just normal. And I thought to myself, how can I support myself through these changes? And I know that I can't rely on genetics the way I've been able to in the past. So I found a fantastic naturopath and I started working with her and I said, look, I'm taking all these vitamins, nothing's working. And she said, well, the vitamins you're taking are synthetic, so they're not bioavailable, your body's not recognizing them.

1:52:58To some extent, you're suffering from malnutrition, which is like a bizarre concept in this modern age that you can be malnourished. But, you know, we're not letting the soils rest like we used to. So you're not getting vitamins and minerals from your vegetables like you were. You need supplementation. And she put me on a program of greens, which I'd never taken greens before. And within about six weeks, I saw such a turnaround in my health and well-being. And it compounded over six weeks, 12 weeks. And I felt like, you know, my skin got better, my hair got better and everything, just life improved.

1:53:36And I thought to myself, if I'm feeling like this, there must be other people. And so I wanted to bring this to other people. And that was the foundation. It was a result of my own wellness journey and the willingness and the desire to help people on their journey. And fortunately, I had the business acumen to actually put it into action. But the purpose was to help people find optimum well-being so that they can live their life to the fullest, so that they can bring their unique self into the world with feeling great and looking great and being fulfilled in life. That's cool. And so what are the primary kind of products?

1:54:16We have a Super Greens, which is called the Super Elixir, which is 50 ingredients, vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics, adaptogens. And that was the hero product that I created with the nutritionist and the group of scientists that we worked with. And that was the foundation of my kind of wellness program, lowered inflammation, because I'd never heard about, I didn't know about inflammation and cortisol, for example. And so, lowering the inflammation in the body, that's the super greens. And then we have a protein powder and a sleep elixir. We have 17 products, but the foundation was a three-step well program.

1:54:53So greens, protein, and evening elixir for sleep. And that was like this foundation of wellbeing. And it was simple, it was portable, it was effective, it was quality ingredients, quality combination of ingredients. It is, I don't like to talk about it in past tense. And that's the foundation of the business. And can you purchase it anywhere in the world? Like, do you ship worldwide or? So we started as an online business. We have 70 % online and 30 % bricks and mortar. We're an Australian-based company. We ship globally, wellco.com. And you can go on the site and you can see all the different things we have from, you know, hair caps, skin caps, hormonal balancing caps, protein powders, sleep powders.

1:55:41But I really wanted something that was going to be bioavailable. And I loved the idea of powders because I feel that we are, and we still have some caps, but we come from a society where if you're unwell, you take a pill. And I wanted to break that cycle to some extent, that we were offering a nutritional powder that you mix with water that is also hydration, and that we're taking it consciously as a supplement that is to enhance our life rather than taking a pill to deal with symptoms. And that was the foundation of the purpose. And here we are 10 years later doing, you know, wonderfully well.

1:56:21But when I say wonderfully well, not just from a financial point of view, but from the support that we have from our community that take the products and say, I feel so much better. I look so much better. I'm making better decisions for myself because I feel better in my life. I feel a more present parent, capable, energized, happy. and so if people are saying that then i feel that we're doing a good job i think uh that probably is a good feeling right i think that's what we're all chasing on this journey of trying to find meaning and purpose and fulfillment in life to be able to serve people in that way service is the most underrated thing you know we all think serving or the concept of being helpful or supporting others is a moral obligation.

1:57:13But in fact, we are the ones that benefit from it. And we know that from our experience in AA. It's like, it's what we get from serving others. Service is the ultimate selfishness. True. It's true. That's a good one. I'm going to use that. This was great. Thank you for doing it. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I appreciate you coming and sharing openly and vulnerably. I put you on the spot a few times. You kind of met me admirably in some challenging moments. And I think your message is powerful. I know you've been kind of touring the world with the book and this is gonna continue. And I just encourage you to keep sharing these stories because I think that they're resonant and important.

1:57:55So thank you for doing that. Everybody can go and pick up the book, Elle. All you have to do is remember the first name or the audio book, anywhere you get your books and wellcode.com, yeah. Yeah. You're kind of sort of semi on tour with Doyle, right? Like kind of going traveling around. Yeah. Elle's partner plays guitar for Eric Clapton. So that's very exciting. That's a whole other podcast in and of itself. That is a whole other podcast. And that's why also the audio book so interesting because he scored the audio book. Oh, I didn't know that. So it's quite magical. and also it's, you know, he's, it's very lyrical at the beginning and end of each chapters musically, but he's infused it with gongs, all healing frequencies.

1:58:40So gongs, soundbills, Native American flute, didgeridoo, all the earth instruments. He could play the didgeridoo or he found a didgeridoo player. He found a didgeridoo player. He does the tube and throat singing. He gives you the circular breathing. And it's extraordinary. I'd like to be able to play the ditch. Can you? It's pretty cool. No, I don't know. It's such a skill. I can't play anything. Play no answer to that. Hey, you're playing the world stage with all the beautiful podcasts that you bring. I have no musical skill. Everyone else in my family is musician, except for me. You music through your words.

1:59:14This was great, thank you. Thank you. Best of luck to you. And this was just a delight. I appreciate it. Cheers. Yeah. Thank you.

1:59:26Thank you.

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2:00:49Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiello. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

2:01:35No!