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

Elle Macpherson is a record-breaking Sports Illustrated cover model, pioneering entrepreneur, and the ineffable force behind the global wellness empire WelleCo. This conversation explores the intersection of intuition and business acumen, chronicling Elle’s iconoclastic journey from supermodel to mogul. We discuss her audacious choices, from walking away from Ford Models to build her own agency to following her heart’s wisdom in health decisions. Through stories of sobriety, spirituality, and transformation, Elle reveals how inner knowing can triumph over convention. In doing so, she offers profound insights on the philosophical tension between expertise and inner wisdom that exists in all of us. This exchange with Elle is raw, honest, and deeply resonant. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Bon Charge: Get 15% OFF all my favorite wellness products w/ code RICHROLL 👉 boncharge.com On: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉on.com/richroll AG1: Get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Squarespace: Use the code RichRoll to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain 👉Squarespace.com/RichRoll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:06Speaker 01

  My whole life has been really a journey from my head to my heart. I got on a plane and came to America because it just, something moved me inside, and I just thought, I just wanna try this. I knew what I was capable of, I knew what my skill sets were, but I didn't know me.

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  My guest today is Elle McPherson, an Australian-born supermodel and global icon, best known for racing the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue in Amazing Five Times. But beyond the billion-dollar fashion houses that she helped build, Elle's story is one of resilience, it's one of entrepreneurship, and ultimately, transformation. Not one to simply let others profit off of her image, Elle took control of her career in ways that others didn't or weren't at that time. Not only did she create her own apparel line, long before that was actually a thing, she created her own agency to cut out the middlemen, and then she parlayed her celebrity into roles

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  in television and film, and more recently, founded WellCo, her line of beauty and wellness products.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  The modeling itself, you know, was pretty tough. But I loved what I could receive from modeling, which was sort of freedom and financial independence and emotional independence. So I knew that if I wanted to be physically well, I had to do some examination around emotional and spiritual bodies, well-being.

• 2:36Rich Roll?

  It wasn't until she actually faced cancer and addiction that she truly began to understand the difference between, on the one hand, projecting wellness and, on the other hand, actually being well. A story that she elaborates upon beautifully in her recently released memoir, Elle, which we discuss today in a candid, in-depth conversation that really centers on this idea of what happens when you're forced to rewrite your story.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  It's very difficult to make a decision when you're in fear. And if you've got a lot of people telling you you're going to die, there's no greater fear than that. How do you find your truth? What resonates with you in your heart when there is so much noise outside?

• 3:22Rich Roll?

  It's a great conversation. I think you'll find it both surprising and nourishing. So without further ado, this is me and Elle Macpherson.

• 3:33Rich Roll?

  It's delightful to finally meet you.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Finally.

• 3:36Rich Roll?

  I can't believe we kept missing each other. I mean, you've been to my house. You've spent all this time with my wife. And for whatever reason, I was trying to remember, I'm always out of town or something like that. And we kept missing each other.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're in London. We kept, like, you were coming in and I was coming out.

• 3:51Rich Roll?

  And then when we were in Australia around this time last year.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  That's so true. I forgot about that.

• 3:56Rich Roll?

  In Byron. And even, I took Julie up to Mullumbimbi.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:00Rich Roll?

  And I think you had just been there or you went there like the day after. We went to that place where they have the saunas and the cold lundas and stuff like that.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  The bathhouse there, isn't that great?

• 4:08Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:09Rich Roll?

  It's kind of hidden. We didn't even know. We were like, what's this? And we went in there and I was like, I think this is the place that Elle was just at the other day with Doyle.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  And the people there, they're fabulous. They're like really cool and I just, I love the energy there.

• 4:21Rich Roll?

  It's old school, though. It looks like it's been there for a long time.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, the building.

• 4:25Rich Roll?

  It's not like a new, oh, this is the hip thing. Like, it looks like it's been there for decades.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  They're into all that sort of natural. Wellness. I think that's a very Aussie thing.

• 4:35Rich Roll?

  Well, Mullen Bimby has its own unique energy.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:38Rich Roll?

  But I love that part of the world. I mean, Byron has become a very, you know, kind of special place for me. And I've got all these friends there. And I just, I just love all things Australia.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Including me.

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  That's true. Yes. And you're somebody who, even though we're just meeting today, I've known of you. Like, when was the first Sports Illustrated cover?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  I think that was in 1986.

• 5:02Rich Roll?

  Six.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Eighty-five or eighty-six.

• 5:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So ever since then, you made that big splash.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  And it was called The Big Splash.

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  Well, was it?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  I think that was the name of the cover. Yeah.

• 5:12Rich Roll?

  I didn't even know that. So it was, you were on the cover five times?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  Is that still the record?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  It is still the record.

• 5:18Rich Roll?

  That's wild.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:19Rich Roll?

  I want to get into all of that. But the other thing that kind of really struck me that I didn't realize about your life and career is just how entrepreneurial you've been, like, from the very beginning, always like seizing these opportunities and moments to like, take greater control over the trajectory of your path, you know, than most other people in your situation, you know, did or could.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was more like, it wasn't so much control but command because I didn't love actually being in front of the camera. But I loved what modeling could bring. You know, I loved what I could receive from modeling, which was sort of freedom and financial independence and emotional independence and travel and meeting new people. And so I felt that I needed to sort of expand as much as I could to keep creating new opportunities for myself. So I could keep doing it. So I could have the benefits from it. Because the modeling itself was pretty tough.

• 6:20Rich Roll?

  So it was always sort of a means to an end for you, for other things?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And an exploration. I wanted the experiences. And so I just, you know, I did that Aussie thing, which was like, step outside of your comfort zones and give it a go. And so if opportunities came my way, and they resonated with me, even if they didn't make logical sense, I would take steps towards it. And then the doors would open. And one thing led to another. And before I knew it, I'd sort of built a brand and. Had a platform and then started producing things and then started licensing and then finally owning a business with Welco.

• 6:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, there's lots of stuff in there, like, set aside like the television and the film stuff. I also didn't realize like how many like sort of projects you did, you know, in the kind of realm of Hollywood. But was the first kind of entrepreneurial venture when you decided to like do your own calendar?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:19Rich Roll?

  That was the first instance of that.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  That was.

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  Like realizing, well, Sports Illustrated is putting these things out, like I can do this myself and control it.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I realized at the time that I was in more photographs in the calendar than a lot of the other girls. And so it was sort of heavily based on me anyway. And I just sort of thought, well, I'm not really being paid for this.

• 7:41Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Perhaps I can do it myself. But it was a fun project as well. Like, I wanted to be able to choose the photographer and choose the location and apply what I'd learned with Sports Illustrated to my own project. And it was brilliant. I remember, I think it cost like, maybe 60 grand. And I pulled it all together and I found a producer, a printer and a distributor and just did it. It was like a kid that, you know, doesn't know any better when they're going down the mountain and they're skiing. They have no fear. Well, I had no fear at that time. I didn't think, well, what if it fails or what if I can't get it out or what if no one buys it? I just thought, okay, I'll give this a go.

• 8:24Rich Roll?

  Were you like the first person to try something like that at that time?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Maybe. I don't know if Christie Brinkley had done her own things. I mean, she was sort of the generation just before me.

• 8:35Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  And she was already sort of stepping out of the kind of regular model mode. And she had her health and beauty books, she was doing other things. And so she may have done a calendar. I don't know.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And then you had the lingerie company, right? That was like a licensing deal, though, right?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:54Rich Roll?

  But that was also you kind of seizing control and saying like, I can do something outside of the, you know, kind of strictures of this modeling world and create kind of financial independence in a different way. I mean, now, today, with the influencer economy, like, that just seems like an obvious thing. But at that time, it wasn't, right?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  No. And it was really kind of a perfect sort of culmination of events, because this little New Zealand company was brilliant at making underwear. They came to me and said, will you be the face of our brand? I was looking for a project. I didn't know what, because I had already kind of seen licensing in action as a child. I remember playing tennis. And do you remember John Newcombe? He was an Australian tennis player. And I remember getting a little tennis skirt, and it had his logo on it, which was his, like, wink face and his big moustache. And I was like, man, here's a tennis player, and he's making clothes. Like, I think that's so genius, that he's able to do two things.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  And so that sort of was in the back of my mind. And I had this concept that I had a platform through Sports Illustrated. How could I use that platform into creating a business that didn't require me going to the studio every day, like, showing up as a model? How could I kind of find some sort of something, and at that time, I thought it might have been swimsuits, that I could put my name on and have the swimsuits be the stars? So the sale of the swimsuits be my income, rather than me just showing up at the studio. So making money while you sleep, really. And this New Zealand company had come to me and said, will you be the face of our brand? And I just said,

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Why don't we do a licensing agreement where I'll help you design because I love lingerie? I was living in Paris at the time. I can't find anything that fits. I have a particular type of thing that I want to do for myself. And if it sells, great, we all make money. If it doesn't sell, we don't, you know, it's a wash. And so that was my first truly entrepreneurial, I think, decision.

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  And it's a better one than swimsuits because swimsuits are seasonal, right?

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and it's really hard.

• 11:10Rich Roll?

  Lingerie is a perennial seller.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  I don't know if it is.

• 11:14Rich Roll?

  This is pre-Victoria's Secret and all of that.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Exactly, and skims, which is now like doing so well. Yeah, and swimsuits are really hard to make because they like, you know, they have issues with salt and, you know, it wasn't a good business model, that one.

• 11:28Rich Roll?

  It still feels like you should have done a swimwear line, though. Because you were sort of so self-identified with swimwear.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I was looking also to enhance women's femininity. And lingerie does that really well. It's sort of that inside beauty that has become a theme unwittingly throughout my career is this sort of inner beauty and the power of that. And so lingerie was really for the women, you know, under the clothes, how she felt under the clothes, how she felt about her, you know, making her feel the most beautiful that she can. And it was sort of an intimate thing. That's why I called it Intimates, Al Macosser Intimates.

• 12:09Rich Roll?

  And was that successful?

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Very.

• 12:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  It was a 25-year license.

• 12:13Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  It was one of the longest licenses ever.

• 12:15Rich Roll?

  I didn't realize it was that long, wow.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  And it was such a joy to kind of grow with the business, you know, to start off with some design ideas and then it was marketing and then it was advertising and then it was working with the CEOs, all the different CEOs. So I grew so much through it. Apart from the longevity of the license and the, you know, financial value of it, but my personal growth.

• 12:38Rich Roll?

  And those experiences giving you confidence as a businessperson along the way, right? Like, the fact that you later on walked away from Ford Models and started your own agency so that you could control even further your career is like, I mean, has anybody done that? Like, that was a wild move.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  It's funny that you say that now. I didn't, at the time, I just sort of thought, this agency situation isn't really working. I think I'll just take a manager. And that's what I did. I just sort of took one person that was going to help make real, realize the dreams that I had. And I couldn't do it alone. You know, corporation and collaboration is really where it's at in business, and finding a team of people that have like-minded vision and working with people is the way to go. And I just felt sort of isolated in the agency. And, and they couldn't understand the licensing thing. Like, they wanted a percentage of the license. And I was like, you can't take a percentage of that because, you know, this is something that I pulled together myself. And so it was just one thing led

• 13:42Speaker 01

  to the other. But it was a pretty courageous move at the time.

• 13:46Rich Roll?

  The way that your book is laid out, it's not like strictly a memoir. It's sort of like life lessons, you know, told through stories and anecdotes throughout your life. So on the entrepreneurial kind of side of things, like what are the biggest lessons that you've learned through your, you know, kind of journey with all of these businesses that you've created and overseen?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, good question. I would think the biggest one is, give it a go. You know, have the courage to step towards anything that moves your heart. If any kind of inkling that you have of something that you'd like to do, put it into action. Take a step towards it. And when you do, magical things happen, doors are open. But that, you know, mindset of, oh, let me explore this, rather than going, oh, no, I don't know how to do it. So. I think focusing on the why you're doing things as opposed to the how you're going to get it done is the first step. And that's always been very valuable for me in business.

• 14:50Rich Roll?

  You're a curious person, though, because on the one hand, you're somebody who has the audacity to like, you know, chase big dreams and like, go for it and give it a go and all of that. But you're also very kind of open and frank about your insecurities and your fears and sensibilities around feeling out of place in this, you know, very fast-paced world in which you are, you know, kind of this bright shining star with all this attention on you and kind of what was happening, you know, inside your mind at all those times. So it's not a case of you just being like this super confident person who was fearless and just going for it.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Not at all. Confidence comes with experience, you know, and trusting yourself. So you, you know, it compounds over time. And in the beginning, I was not confident. I was courageous, perhaps. Getting on a plane when I was 18 and coming to America when I was supposed to be going to law school, which was so like, who does that? You know, law is so sort of stable and reliable and, you know, I was going to marry the banker around the corner and I was going to have two kids and a white picket fence. And I got on a plane and came to America because it just, something moved me inside and I just thought, I just want to try this. So I was courageous but not particularly confident.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Confidence came as I started trusting that inner voice, listening to myself, listening to my heart's urges, and then taking those steps towards it and seeing the results. And then the results were, wow, I learned this and I can apply that to the next situation. So it comes over time.

• 16:32Rich Roll?

  So let's dig into the backstory a little bit. You grew up in North Sydney, right?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  I grew up actually in Cronulla, Caringba, which was south.

• 16:41Rich Roll?

  Oh, Cronulla, that's south. Because your dad was, he was like president of the Cronulla Sharks rugby team.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  He was. Oh, wow. You know that. That's a good one.

• 16:50Rich Roll?

  Well, I have friends who are from Cronulla. So did you actually live in Cronulla?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  How can you have friends from Cronulla?

• 16:55Rich Roll?

  Because that's where all the triathletes come from.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Oh, there you go.

• 16:59Rich Roll?

  In fact, one of them has the last name Macpherson.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Really?

• 17:03Rich Roll?

  Do you know Dan Macpherson?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 17:04Rich Roll?

  Actor from that part of the world. He's a friend of mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  I probably should know him.

• 17:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, spelled the same way as yours.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  I'll check him out.

• 17:12Rich Roll?

  I think, oh, no, it's MC. I think he's MC.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  My dad's name was Peter Gao, and he was an entrepreneur. And we grew up in Caringba, which is south, until I was 10, and then I moved north. Yeah, when my mother remarried.

• 17:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  And my mother's remarried name is Macpherson.

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  I think there's like at least two, maybe three, Ironman World Champions, who all came up in Cronulla with a local triathlon team there. Chris McCormack, Greg Welch.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  All those sporty Aussies.

• 17:46Rich Roll?

  I'm familiar with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  So we have a connection.

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so, I mean, but I love the Australian culture, the beach culture, you know, the kind of Bondi sensibility. And you really exuded that. Like, that was the, you know, the Sports Illustrated campaign. Like, you were kind of representing that culture.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  That's sort of sporty, natural, kind of ballsy, strong Aussie thing, you know, which is no nonsense. And a good dose of sense of humour. I think that's really important, you know. A sense of humour opens up the heart. And Aussies are very, they have that lightness about them.

• 18:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So you're, in your first year of law school, is that true?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  I didn't actually go.

• 18:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, you were, that was the plan?

• 18:34Speaker 01

  That was the plan.

• 18:35Rich Roll?

  So how does the modeling thing kind of enter your world?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  So I was going through high school.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  I think on the last year of high school, I was modeling a little bit, right? For pocket money. But I really wanted to go to law school. My stepfather was a lawyer and I had worked really diligently academically. Having not been particularly good at school, I sort of developed the skills that I needed in order to get into university because I wanted to be taken seriously. And I also wanted to follow my stepfather's steps in some way. I was always a good arguer. And then I had a phone call from Ford at the time and asked me to go into the Ford Face of the Eighties competition.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  And when that phone call came in, I had such a sense of excitement. And I thought, oh, I'd love to do this. But my logical mind was like, that's not what smart girls choose to do. And so I said, no. And as you read in the book, I had an immediate visceral, physical reaction, which was I went and threw up. And that was the first sense that I had, that I'd really gone against myself and chosen to do something that wasn't particularly in my best interest. And I vowed to myself at that point, I'd never do that again. And then fortunately, thank you, universe, I had another opportunity. Agency called and said, you know, a few months later, we'd love you to come to New York.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  And I said, yes, and the rest is history.

• 20:11Rich Roll?

  So you go to New York. What are you like 18 or something like that at this time?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Eighteen, yeah.

• 20:15Rich Roll?

  Had never been outside of Australia.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  No, never taken a plane, long distance plane.

• 20:20Rich Roll?

  And your family kind of came to Los Angeles, right? And then you went to New York by yourself?

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, we went on a ski trip to Vail and Aspen for, it was one of those packaged ski deals. And then we went to LA, we went to Disneyland, and then they went home and I took the red eye into New York.

• 20:36Rich Roll?

  Right. And that's like 81, 82, something like that?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Something like that, yeah.

• 20:40Rich Roll?

  And what happens when, you know, the starry eyed, young L arrives in Manhattan?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  She freaks out.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was so scared when I first got to New York because, you know, I'd heard stories about New York and it was dangerous.

• 20:58Rich Roll?

  It was at that time.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. And it was a very different New York to the New York, you know, it was sort of dirty and a lot of, when I say dirty, it was sort of rundown to some extent.

• 21:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  I went and I stayed with my agent there. She had like a little one bedroom apartment. I stayed with her and I hit the streets. I went and go sees and I got jobs or didn't get jobs and met people and just sort of did my best to make ends meet. I didn't have any money at the time. And so I was sort of working to pay for life. And that's what I did.

• 21:34Rich Roll?

  And how long did that go on before the Sports Illustrated thing? So that was like four, five years?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  No, two years because, um, let's say I arrived in 81 or 82. I had that year, the following year I was asked to do Sports Illustrated, but it came out the following year. So I was friends with Paulina Poroskova at the time and she had already been on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

• 21:59Rich Roll?

  You guys were roommates?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  We did. We roomed for a while. And, um, you know, she would walk down the street and people would stop her. And she had this sort of aura and she had this recognition that opened doors. And I wanted what she had. I wanted that ease and flow that she had. I didn't have it within me, but I wanted what Sports Illustrated had given her to some extent.

• 22:27Rich Roll?

  There's something ineffable about that quality. Like there's something that some people just have, you know, that you can aspire to have, but you know, you can't like fake, right? But that's very different from saying, okay, here's a goal that I have, like I want that gig. I want to be on the cover of this magazine and kind of setting your intention upon that and like making it happen, like manifesting that.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, we manifest it through our imagination and, you know, having a vision, a clear vision. And I wanted to do Sports Illustrated. And I also wanted the cover, but I didn't get it.

• 23:05Rich Roll?

  You did get it, though. You did get it. And that was a major, obviously, a major inflection point in your life, right?

• 23:11Speaker 01

  It was.

• 23:12Rich Roll?

  You talk a little bit in the book about like your first sort of flirtation with fame in the wake of that, like when people started to, you know, because that was like, we're of the same age. And if you're of our age or you're Gen X, like you remember this time, like it was a big deal when the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue came out. It was like a sensational cultural moment, you know, that we don't really experience so much anymore. And it also happened to coincide with a very specific time in fashion in which the supermodel thing was very real. Like, these women were like iconic and just captured the fascination of people all over the world.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a very particular time that we don't have today. It's very different from today because the supermodel era, the more you were distanced from your public.

• 24:02Rich Roll?

  There was mystery.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:03Rich Roll?

  These beautiful women, and there was a lot of intrigue around, you know, who they were, but like you didn't know.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  And we didn't have social media capturing everything. And today, it's the more close you are to your community, the more successful you are. But back then, the more distanced you were, the more successful you were, the more iconic you were, pedestal to some extent. And I think the models that have survived, like Gisele, who you've had on your podcast, but the girls that have survived have been able to ride that wave through adaptability to the new era of being more accessible, being more open, being more relatable.

• 24:43Rich Roll?

  It is very different now. But when I reflect upon that time, you think of, you know, there's Christy Turlington and Tatiana Paties, you know, like these sort of like, you know, women that kind of stood above, Naomi Campbell, right? And when I think of that kind of cadre of supermodel at the time, I think of

• 25:03Rich Roll?

  Sophistication and Manhattan and these are the women who are at the cool clubs and you know, like they're right at the epicenter of where everything's happening. But when I think of you, I think of you differently because you were sort of a more wholesome, you know, kind of hometown girl.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Girl next door.

• 25:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, you know, I know that the body is Time magazine, you know, dubbed you and all of that, but it seems to me that you were on the outside of that like clique, like what they were at the fancy parties, I don't know what you were doing, but.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  I was married.

• 25:36Rich Roll?

  You were like, yeah, I don't associate you with that kind of lifestyle.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I did feel like an outsider. I wasn't that interested in fashion. I was interested in brand building, I guess, to some extent, but I wasn't on the cover of Vogue. I don't think I've ever been on the cover of American Vogue.

• 25:57Rich Roll?

  Is that right?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  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 Benzema, 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 Pagnès, 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 and I was building my own things.

• 26:37Rich Roll?

  And Gilles, like, he was like the creative director of Elle, right?

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:41Rich Roll?

  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.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Unwittingly. Yeah, it wasn't like I was thinking, oh, this is entrepreneurial. It was just, that was the environment I was in and I, I was enjoying it. And 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 going to 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.

• 27:37Rich Roll?

  And you're all of like 24, 25 or something, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I heard you say like, you know, I don't really like fashion. You know, like you're not like a runway model.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 27:46Rich Roll?

  High fashion, sitting in the front row kind of person.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  I'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.

• 27:59Rich Roll?

  What's the difference? What's the difference between fashion and personal style?

• 28:02Speaker 01

  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.

• 28:14Rich Roll?

  So that you could be on the cover every month.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  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. So it'd 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 Elle. And that was a philosophy that I've sort of retained all my life is how to inject your

• 29:01Speaker 01

  personal loves into how you express yourself in whatever you do.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  That's something that also is difficult to teach, right? Like that's more of an intuition thing.

• 29:13Speaker 01

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

• 29:34Rich Roll?

  The 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.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Full of advertising.

• 29:53Rich Roll?

  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. And so, they don't really hold the same kind of place in culture that they once did.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:41Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  And so, there was something sort of long-lasting in that paper quality.

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Did you have any interesting encounters with Anna Wintour? She seems like a quite a character.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 31:08Rich Roll?

  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 Gisele because 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 glamour and the like, can be kind of inaccessible, like, you know, oh, please, like, cry me a river kind of thing. So, talk a little bit about that.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  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 P F and 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.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  And 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, 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.

• 32:48Rich Roll?

  You share the lessons that you learned around work ethic, like early on in your career. And what comes across very clearly is like your dedication to like, oh, this is my profession. If I want to excel, I have to show up, 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 that 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.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, give a thousand percent. And 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.

• 34:04Rich Roll?

  How did you, I know you were married, but like, how did you avoid kind of falling into this sort of fast paced, you know, after party lifestyle of the whole kind of?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't.

• 34:17Rich Roll?

  Well, we're going to get into your sobriety story, but it's pretty tame. It's a pretty tame.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, the first 10 years, so you know, in my twenties, 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 twenties. When I got divorced or separated in my thirties, that's where everything I started to explore a little more.

• 34:54Rich Roll?

  Were you still in New York at that time?

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, New York and LA.

• 34:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What were the years that you lived in New York?

• 35:00Speaker 01

  So 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 nineties.

• 35:09Rich Roll?

  I was there from like 89 to 94.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  So pretty groovy time to be there.

• 35:14Rich Roll?

  It was pretty good.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a lot happening. Wall Street was.

• 35:17Rich Roll?

  Well, it was sort of the tail end of the dodgy, you know, kind of era.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  That's such an Aussie word, dodgy.

• 35:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, me, I was 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. Tribeca wasn't even a thing yet.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:14Rich Roll?

  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.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  I probably did a fair dose of that too, though, to be fair along the way.

• 36:28Rich Roll?

  Where were your spots? Where were like the bars and the clubs that you were going to?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  I would go, so in the eighties, 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.

• 36:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was dwindling.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:42Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, in the early eighties, it was still kind of a thing.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Still there, but then Palladium came in pretty quickly because it was the same guys that did it. So Lighthouse.

• 36:54Rich Roll?

  The big dance clubs.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  They were fun times because I would work during the day and then at night I would, I'd sleep for a few hours and then I'd get up and go out. And 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.

• 37:12Rich Roll?

  And this was, you know, this was the cocaine era.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  It was.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Silence.

• 37:19Rich Roll?

  Tell me more.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Listen, everybody, 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.

• 37:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  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. And 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, I can't go there. But, you know, over time, I guess I checked things out for a while.

• 38:12Rich Roll?

  You got to.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 38:15Rich Roll?

  You got to give it a go.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Give it a go.

• 38:18Rich Roll?

  When I think of like that era and supermodels, et cetera, it was also the kind of, you know, waify heroin chic kind of look that was

• 38:27Speaker 01

  In the 90s, yeah.

• 38:28Rich Roll?

  And so there was a lot of pressure on the models to always be like ridiculously thin. And so they would just smoke cigarettes all day and not eat and, you know, have, you know, bulimia, et cetera. But you were kind of the healthy beach girl or something like, was there pressure on you to kind of fit that mold? Or were you always like, okay, I'm this person and this is, this is my thing?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  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, you know, it didn't matter how much I would want to, I wasn't that girl, you know, 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. And so even if I'd wanted to be all those things, I couldn't physically be it.

• 39:30Rich Roll?

  But you, 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.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  It's hard to kind of discern exactly where, but I know that in the 90s, see, I don't even, it's like, it's so far, I'm 21 years sober. You, how, how, what's your?

• 40:04Rich Roll?

  I had a little lapse a while ago, so it hasn't been contiguous. But I went to rehab in 98 and I had a little lapse about 10 years in.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I went to rehab in 2003, after the birth of my second son.

• 40:19Rich Roll?

  Did you go to CR Tucson?

• 40:21Speaker 01

  No, I went to The Meadows.

• 40:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, The Meadows.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 40:24Rich Roll?

  The Meadows is great.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  I chose The Meadows because it had a balance between

• 40:31Speaker 01

  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. It 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.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  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.

• 41:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the Meadows, it's not a strictly substance addiction kind of treatment center. It's for all kinds of, you know, mental health issues.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Or, you know, an addiction can be an addiction to emotions, you know, drama, pain, fear. It's not just substances.

• 41:49Rich Roll?

  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?

• 41:59Speaker 01

  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. I 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.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  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, you know, 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 want to live anymore and I needed help and that's why I went to the Meadows.

• 43:09Rich Roll?

  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.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Chick.

• 43:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  I was.

• 43:23Rich Roll?

  You know, philanthropy and like wealth and husband and all those sorts of, and it's almost like, you know, a mommy's 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 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.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 43:43Rich Roll?

  Like it was a very quiet, you know, struggle, little war that you were waging with yourself.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Which can be the most detrimental at times.

• 43:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So I think, you know, when I think of your kind of drunk 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.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  I know.

• 44:02Rich Roll?

  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? 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. And, you know, it takes what it takes to get sober and we all have our different kind of pain thresholds.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:30Rich Roll?

  And I think there's probably a lot of people out there who are, you know, 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.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  And your life either stays the same at best or it slowly degrades, but there isn't that like moment of absolute chaos.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:51Rich Roll?

  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, it 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, you know, other people's journeys. And I think that that's, that's a story that I think a lot of people can probably relate to.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  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 were 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. And that's what I wanted to do is to write, to share them.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  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, the solutions that I found. That's what they're connecting with, not necessarily the actual circumstances themselves.

• 46:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So what was the moment where you thought like, all right, I can't do this anymore?

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Well, I had, uh, my son had just been born, Si, uh, in 2003. And my therapist had said to me at the time, Elle, 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.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  For us to go deeper and you want a deeper spiritual connection in life. We can't do it as you are now. And 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, you know, 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.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  And then I realized the only thing that was going to take that away was a drink. And 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 up in a bottle of vodka, drank it and then it was like, I'm out of here.

• 48:29Rich Roll?

  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.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Which there was.

• 48:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so that's a good indication that maybe something's not totally okay.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  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. People 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.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  With an emotional response.

• 49:06Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. So you're in the Meadows for like six weeks, right?

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually stayed longer.

• 49:13Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I asked to stay longer because Meadows for me was a safe ground.

• 49:18Rich Roll?

  I kind of loved it.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Art class?

• 49:22Rich Roll?

  I didn't do, I didn't have art class.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  I, I did art class and.

• 49:25Rich Roll?

  You're like, all we do is sit around and like, talk about our stuff?

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we did, I mean, the Meadows was great because it was very holistic. So we had acupuncture and we had, you know, group therapy and we had, you know, one-on-one therapy and art class and then, 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 skill sets were, but I didn't know me.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  And just before that, I had done Hoffman. Have you done Hoffman?

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  No, but it keeps coming up.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Oh, man, it's so good.

• 50:19Rich Roll?

  Lots of people have sat in that chair and told me how transformative Hoffman was in their life.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  So I did Hoffman, then the Meadows. And then I think I went back and did, you know, more work at the Meadows.

• 50:30Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. So you were committed to your emotional, mental health prior to getting sober. Usually it's the other way around. Like, you got to get sober first before you would even entertain like therapy or Hoffman or anything like that.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  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, well-being.

• 51:02Rich Roll?

  When you say like you didn't know yourself, like what does that mean? Like know thyself is, you know, a question of infinite possibilities. It is the ultimate question.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  It really is.

• 51:12Rich Roll?

  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, 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?

• 51:41Speaker 01

  It's such a big question, like 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.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  And just feel what resonates with you. It's not like a definition of this is who I am. It'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.

• 52:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the, the modality of your practice? Meditation?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 53:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have questions about him in that book.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would love for you guys to meet by the phone or not.

• 53:18Rich Roll?

  Adams to Angels?

• 53:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 53:49Rich Roll?

  You got the mantra.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  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, is just to take a deep breath and just to be in my heart.

• 54:10Rich Roll?

  So Paul Daryl Walsh in this book, tell me all about this.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  So he wrote a book called From Adams 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 unsober 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 A A A and I'll, 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, A A is a spiritual program. But I was looking for a deepening in that.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  So I go away to the Bahamas and I find this book on the shelf of this place that I'm in. And 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,

• 55:39Speaker 01

  which I didn't understand at the time and still is a very kind of nefarious subject for a lot of people. And 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, all 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

• 56:20Speaker 01

  from, you know, astrology to numerology to, you know, working with crystals to Reiki. And 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.

• 56:46Rich Roll?

  And what was it specifically in this book, like Adams to Angels, that like leapt off the page or spoke to you? Because there's lots of books in this sort of genre, right?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:56Rich Roll?

  But you make a very conscious, you know, effort or point to like, you know, highlight like this book is being transformational for you.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  As I said, I think it was that concept of life happens through you, for you, and that we are energetic beings. And 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 to, I want that inspiration in my life and that.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Strength of being and lack of fear.

• 57:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, not as a replacement to AA, but as a

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Conjunction.

• 57:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a supplement. I think there's this sort of notion in Alcoholics Anonymous or within the sobriety community, like, oh, you're an AA. This is what we do.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  Things that are outside of that are kind of a distraction from the step work

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:03Rich Roll?

  service, et cetera. And 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, I think it's profound.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:15Rich Roll?

  But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't continue to explore, you know, spiritual growth in other areas that

• 58:23Speaker 01

  If it moves 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, you know, alcoholism, but you might be struggling with other things in your life. I think it's such a brilliant roadmap for life.

• 58:47Rich Roll?

  You don't have to be suffering from an addiction to benefit from like going through the steps.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Or even, you know, Al-Anon or any of the other affiliated programs.

• 59:11Rich Roll?

  As somebody who's lived all over the world and travels constantly, where have you found like the best AA communities?

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a goodie. Oz.

• 59:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah?

• 59:23Speaker 01

  You know, like, there's a meeting on Bondi Beach, which is really cool and sort of authentic and simple.

• 59:31Rich Roll?

  The one in the, what is it called?

• 59:33Speaker 01

  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.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  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.

• 59:59Rich Roll?

  A lot of like tweed and hounds.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  And, and, and cold weather.

• 1:00:03Rich Roll?

  Land rovers.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  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. You know, 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.

• 1:00:44Rich Roll?

  Do you know John Pearson?

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that rings a bell.

• 1:00:47Rich Roll?

  Cause he's from Yorkshire, like when you said Yorkshire.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that rings a bell.

• 1:00:50Rich Roll?

  He lives here now, he was, he was sort of the male supermodel.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, somebody spoke to me about him just recently.

• 1:00:56Rich Roll?

  He's the best. 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.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:05Rich Roll?

  The faith video.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was such a great video, wasn't it? I wish I did that.

• 1:01:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Anyway,

• 1:01:12Rich Roll?

  you talk about like doing your first four step inventory. Can you share a little bit about that?

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Well, I had this feeling that if I didn't do it perfectly, I was not going to say sober. You know, because there's always this, you have to do the fourth step and the fifth step. And if you don't do that, la la la. And so I didn't even know where to begin. And I was one of those kids at school that would

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  start a new, you know, 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. It was very cathartic at the very least, but of course it wasn't necessary. And, um,

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  That's a powerful step. You know, it's a hard one.

• 1:02:10Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:27Rich Roll?

  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. And 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.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  That's a very common thing 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.

• 1:03:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 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, etc.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  I go into fear, yeah.

• 1:03:43Rich Roll?

  So when you did that for the first time, what were the revelations around, like, the character defects that, you know, were contributing to your?

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Oh, you're testing my memory.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Well, what are the main, there's seven deadly sins, really, that we look through. But mine, I think, was probably fear. Okay, 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, my main thing was fear.

• 1:04:15Rich Roll?

  Catastrophizing.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's an adult child of an alcoholic type of symptom. You know, you have to look around corners as a, as a child who is living in a sort of chaotic life. And if I could 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. And then we create new neuron pathways and we start to live that way. And then we manifest what we imagine.

• 1:04:57Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:05:23Rich Roll?

  And we're very rarely actually

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  In the present.

• 1:05:25Rich Roll?

  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, in the present and to understand, like, all of those mental strategies were designed to protect us and keep us alive.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:45Rich Roll?

  And yet, you know, for the most part, uh, you know, kind of don't serve us in an optimal way.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  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 being-ness in this moment, that is the life that we will have, which is very fulfilling and enjoyable.

• 1:06:23Rich Roll?

  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. And so the focus is really on the individual, on the self, which you know, kind of overemphasizes or overly celebrates like the ego.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:06:57Rich Roll?

  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, you know, basically an illusion. If you believe in nondualism, 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.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  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, 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. It'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.

• 1:08:04Rich Roll?

  What are some of the other guides or books or individuals who have kind of helped shape your spiritual perspective and growth?

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  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. Because 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's 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 didn't truly know what it meant. Osho, you know, it was like it resonated with me. It touched my heart.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  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. And 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.

• 1:09:29Rich Roll?

  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 gonna 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. So, when you speak to younger people or you're trying to kind of, you know, you have two sons. Like, how do you spare them some of the pain, you know, that you've experienced? Or how do you connect those lessons to, you know, somebody who hasn't, you know,

• 1:10:14Rich Roll?

  kind of lived as much life as you have to help them kind of see it more clearly sooner?

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  That's a beautiful question.

• 1:10:22Rich Roll?

  Like, I think you have to live your life. I think everybody has to have their experiences and earn, you know, that kind of perspective.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:10:49Rich Roll?

  Have they read your book? Of course they have, right?

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  And that was my purpose of the book, is that when people read it, they have 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 Si, 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.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  And I talk 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.

• 1:12:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's a dilemma. If you're a bright, young, intellectual mind, you will be rewarded and validated for that.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Rich Roll?

  And the more that that happens, the more the heart mind gets muted.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Rich Roll?

  And deprioritized. I mean, I've experienced this. And I'm in a process of trying to reconnect with my intuition and my heart's song.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Because we all have it.

• 1:13:15Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  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. And 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

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:14:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  So it's a nice idea.

• 1:14:40Rich Roll?

  But you've been in a few relationships, right?

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  I have, long-term relationships. I've had a series of very long.

• 1:14:46Rich Roll?

  You know, you've had an interesting, you know, journey with, you know, 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?

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Don't fall in love with someone's potential.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  Because I was really good at that.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  I was like, I can see it.

• 1:15:13Rich Roll?

  Are you a fixer?

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  A box ticker.

• 1:15:17Rich Roll?

  Box ticker?

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:18Rich Roll?

  What does that mean?

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  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, kids 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. And so I think that sometimes we go through attraction, you know, it's, 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

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:16:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  And resonance, frequency, the frequency that we both function in in our daily life, you know, you attract the frequency of who you are. And, and I think it's often about, you know, be the love you want to receive, you know, be that energy and you will receive it.

• 1:16:33Rich Roll?

  Right. It's not about like chasing what you want, it's about becoming the person who would attract that person. You have to be the person that that person would want to be with, right?

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  That's, that's really the ultimate kind of Jedi move.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  And we were talking about this the other day, is that, you know, we always say, we, 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. So you rise in love with yourself and they're the witness of it.

• 1:17:15Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:17:42Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Oh, I still love who I am when I'm with him. You know, it's I'm my best version of myself when I'm in this relationship. And so it's like falling in love with yourself in many ways.

• 1:17:54Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Rich Roll?

  But regret has a way of lingering and, you know, we've all done things that we wish we hadn't.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Regret is a sort of futile emotion to some extent because there is 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, they 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,

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:19:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  And comfortability.

• 1:19:07Rich Roll?

  And all that pain is happening for you and through you, right? For your, for your growth and evolution.

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  For your growth and evolution.

• 1:19:14Rich Roll?

  It's a mirror of your own behavior, because, you know, it takes two to contribute to whatever pain moment you're experiencing in a relationship.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Suffering is optional, though, you don't have to hang on to it.

• 1:19:25Rich Roll?

  I know, but we live in the world not, we're not meditating in caves, you know what I mean?

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:19:30Rich Roll?

  As they say in AA, if you really want to 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.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  That's why I love relationships, is because you, you know, you learn so much through the relationship. It's very hard to do it by yourself. You don't have any mirror of where your triggers are, where the, you know, those nuggets of density that needs healing. You only really see it when you exchange with somebody else.

• 1:19:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:59Rich Roll?

  Can we talk about the breast cancer stuff?

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  Sure can.

• 1:20:02Rich Roll?

  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 going to 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, you know, kind of this exercise of your own sovereignty.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  That 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's 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?

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  So 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.

• 1:21:40Rich Roll?

  You're sharing your experience.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  I'm sharing my experience and I'm not an author.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  And the challenge of making that choice that you made. But maybe explain to people who don't know what we're talking about.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  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. I'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.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Wellness journey that birthed WellCo. And so I have this

• 1:22:16Rich Roll?

  Which is like an amazing name, by the way. You just add a W to your name.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  It seemed appropriate.

• 1:22:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. No, it's like, it's perfect. Anyway, keep going.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Thank you. So I was diagnosed and I 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. I 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. You could

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  And there was no guarantees. You know, no matter what everybody suggested either way, whether it were 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

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  went into deep meditation, gathered all the information, and then

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  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, I did that and it did work. And so I continued with that process because I was seeing the results that I wanted, which was absolute wellness.

• 1:24:20Rich Roll?

  And it was a, it was a rigorous process and it wasn't overnight. It was

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:26Rich Roll?

  Pretty prolonged, right? What exactly were you doing?

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  It was such an intricate protocol, Rich. I mean, it wasn't like, so a lot of people think if you, if you take a natural approach to healing any dis-ease, 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 and I just burst into tears. I said, I can never do this. It's too much. Like, how am I gonna do all this? And how am I gonna 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 gonna do this and now you're gonna do that. I had to find the doctors.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  I had to be my own master of ceremonies in many ways with all the tools that I had. And I remember he saying to me, because I felt like if I didn't do this 120%, I was gonna die and everyone was gonna make fun of me because I didn't do the more traditional, and I say traditional, let's say pharmaceutical route. And 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 gonna die if I don't. And he said, just give it your best shot. You give it your best shot. And of course, I, given the personality that I have, I just worked at it day in, day

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  out for many, many months and then that went on to many years. So, 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, I mean, the list went on and on and on.

• 1:26:22Rich Roll?

  Right, basically a full-time job, though.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:26:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, and so the diagnosis is in 2017. And how long before you were in remission?

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:26:51Rich Roll?

  And you continued to test and make sure?

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  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. I was testing every three months.

• 1:27:02Rich Roll?

  So you go in for a lumbarectomy 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.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Rich Roll?

  Is that right?

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:27:21Rich Roll?

  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. And I watched the 60 Minutes Australia piece on you.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was pretty grueling.

• 1:27:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's like, 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.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:56Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  And I knew that when I was going into it.

• 1:28:04Rich Roll?

  But there is this set, like, of course, so like, all these, you know, I'm not a medical doctor, hardly, you know.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  And no, I'm a by the way.

• 1:28:10Rich Roll?

  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. I think there's a fear that because, you know, 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, you know, 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.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Right. True.

• 1:28:51Rich Roll?

  Is that, is that fair?

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  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. So, 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 skill set. 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.

• 1:29:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  And if it is, and there is a combination of ways to manage it, then 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.

• 1:29:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  But 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.

• 1:30:16Rich Roll?

  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?

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  Well, I guess I'm living proof to some extent because it's been seven years or eight years now and.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:31:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. To me, this really isn't about, like, the choice you made around your own healing.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:19Rich Roll?

  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? And 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, you know? And it's like, you don't wanna venture down the rabbit hole of pseudoscience and misinformation.

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  Which I definitely didn't do.

• 1:32:05Rich Roll?

  Especially when your life is on the line, right? And 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? How do I trust my heart when my head is telling me something different? Or how do I exempt myself from the pressures of...

• 1:32:53Rich Roll?

  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, you know, trust in self and trust in experts and all the like. And I think this is all heightened because the very issue that you're getting at is sort of a culture war issue.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:32Rich Roll?

  Like, don't trust experts. Especially, you know, like, we need experts. All, you know, like, this is like, the discourse that's happening on like, a, 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.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've articulated that so beautifully in, 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. And if you've got a lot of people telling you you're gonna die, there's no greater fear than that. This was not a flippant decision.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  It wasn't like, oh, I'm just gonna make an ideological decision that this is what feels right for me, you know? And I'm really into health and wellbeing naturally, and so...

• 1:34:46Rich Roll?

  Right, I'm just gonna, you know, hold my crystal and put it on my yoni, and like, everything's gonna be great.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  And hope for the best. It wasn't that at all. You know, I took into account everything that everybody was saying. And if, 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. You know, no matter what it was. And, and 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.

• 1:35:24Rich Roll?

  Explain that a little bit more.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  Well, I'd had these opportunities leading up to it.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  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? And 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.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:36:30Rich Roll?

  Owning your truth and your space and being able to withstand that when, you know, all these articles are getting written, you know, 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, you know, who were concerned about you. And having to kind of stay true to what you felt was right for you amidst, you know, the pressures and the challenges and the fears of the people that care about you the most.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  Well, 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.

• 1:37:31Rich Roll?

  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? I want to give you that opportunity.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  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 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. But the beginning of the dissonance

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  comes from the emotional and spiritual wellbeing. 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.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  And I think there's some misinformation that holistic just means, oh, I'm just going to take natural products.

• 1:39:14Rich Roll?

  Right, that you're being very cavalier in the public square. And that has ramifications, right? But I think-

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  And that certainly wasn't the case at all.

• 1:39:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think what can get misinterpreted about what you just shared is this idea that, oh, you know, if you have cancer, it's your fault. It's your behavior, you know? 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, you know, 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. And 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.

• 1:40:06Rich Roll?

  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 disorder, I guess I would say.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:23Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that's why I chose to look at it from that perspective.

• 1:40:42Rich Roll?

  And 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?

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  I think it's that thing of being in the present, every now. You know, 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. And 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.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  And then I have to immediately readdress that within myself, go, I know that whatever transpired between us.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  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, I 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

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  we do, or doubt ourselves.

• 1:42:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, you know, congratulations, you're still a human being. You haven't transcended the mortal coil yet.

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  Clearly, I haven't transcended, that's why I'm still here.

• 1:42:53Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna go home and read Be Here Now again. Yeah, this is the dilemma of being in a human body, you know? Like, if you can transcend, like, everything that you just shared, like, call me and let me know how you did it, because I would like to.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:43:10Rich Roll?

  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?

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  I love that word, enjoy, because I think it should be written enjoy, you know? Enjoyed, to be enjoy.

• 1:43:31Rich Roll?

  Like I N J O Y?

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm gonna rewrite the language here.

• 1:43:36Rich Roll?

  Yes, well, I grant you that power. You can rewrite the language. Well, let's end up with talking a little bit about Wellco. So, you know, back where we started, we're doing a circle here. So, we started with your entrepreneurial journey, and now we're gonna, we're gonna end with that. So, you have this wellness company, and, you know, 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. So, what was the idea behind it, and what do you want people to know about it?

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  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. I don't feel myself anymore.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  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, 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, you know, 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 you're, they're not bioavailable, your body's not recognizing them. To some extent, you're suffering from malnutrition, which is like a bizarre concept in this modern age that you can be malnourished.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  But, you know, we're not letting the soils rest like we used to, so you're not getting vitamins and minerals from your, 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 wellbeing and over, 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. And 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.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  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, you know, feeling great and looking great and being fulfilled in life.

• 1:46:48Rich Roll?

  That's cool. And so what are the primary kind of products?

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  We 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. Low with 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 then sleep elixir. We have 17 products, but the foundation was a three-step well program. So greens, protein, and evening elixir for sleep. And that was like this foundation of well-being.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:47:51Rich Roll?

  And can you purchase it anywhere in the world? Like, do you ship worldwide or?

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  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, welco.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. But 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,

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  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. But 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.

• 1:49:23Rich Roll?

  I think that probably is a good feeling, right?

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  I think that's what we're all chasing.

• 1:49:29Rich Roll?

  On this journey of trying to find meaning and purpose and fulfillment in life, to be able to serve people in that way.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  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. But 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.

• 1:49:57Rich Roll?

  Service is the ultimate selfishness.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  True. It's true. That's a good one. I'm going to use that.

• 1:50:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. This was great. Thank you for doing it.

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 1:50:08Rich Roll?

  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 going to continue. And I just encourage you to keep sharing, you know, these stories because I think that they're resonant and important. So, thank you for doing that. Everybody can go and pick up the book, Elle.

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  Or the audiobook.

• 1:50:38Rich Roll?

  Or the audiobook. Anywhere you get your books and welco.com. Yeah.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:44Rich Roll?

  You're kind of sort of semi on tour with Doyle, right? Like, kind of going, traveling around.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:50Rich Roll?

  Elle's partner plays guitar for Eric Clapton. So, that's very exciting. That's a whole other podcast.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  That is a whole other podcast. And that's why also the audiobook's so interesting because he scored the audiobook.

• 1:51:01Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  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. So, gongs, sound balls, Native American flute, didgeridoo, all the earth instruments.

• 1:51:21Rich Roll?

  He could play the didgeridoo? Or he found a didgeridoo player?

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  He found a didgeridoo player. He does the tune and throat singing in it. But yeah, so it's-

• 1:51:29Rich Roll?

  He gives you the circular breathing.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  Hmm. And it's extraordinary. I'd like to be able to play the didgeridoo. Can you?

• 1:51:34Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool. No. I don't know. I can't play anything.

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  It's such a skill.

• 1:51:38Rich Roll?

  Play no instrument.

• 1:51:38Speaker 01

  Hey, you're, you're playing the world stage with all the beautiful podcasts that you bring.

• 1:51:43Rich Roll?

  I have no musical skill. Everyone else in my family is musician except for me.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  You music through your words.

• 1:51:51Rich Roll?

  This was great. Thank you.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:51:53Rich Roll?

  Best of luck to you. And this was just a delight. I appreciate it. Cheers.

• 1:51:57Speaker 01

  Amen.

• 1:51:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:52:15Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment.

• 1:52:54Rich Roll?

  This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors, who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel

• 1:53:40Rich Roll?

  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.