[00:00:01] Luke: Elle Macpherson, so happy to have you here.

[00:00:05] Elle: Luke Storey. It's a joy.

[00:00:06] Luke: It's funny. When I was a kid, obviously your fame goes back to my teenage years, I think we used to pronounce your name McPherson.

[00:00:16] Elle: That's very American. Yeah.

[00:00:17] Luke: Is it? Yeah. And then when I listened to your audio book, I was like, "Oh, I totally have been saying her name wrong." It was like, even after I knew you, I still got it wrong. So got that cleared up out of the gate.

[00:00:28] But yeah, it's so great to see you again, and there's so many things I'm looking forward to talking to you about, one of which of course being your book, which is so incredible. I think we were talking a little bit about this before recording, but one of the things that stood out to me was just how full your life has been.

[00:00:52] There were different chapters in your life and in the book, and I'm just going like, "How does she keep up with this pace of life?" The different countries and cities you've lived in and different husbands and kids. And molding yourself into different microcultures according to--

[00:01:12] Elle: Survival.

[00:01:12] Luke: Yeah. Whatever your professional life and personal life was calling for. I'm just like, "Wow. It's so complex." But of course, out of that comes a lot of wisdom, in that life experience.

[00:01:23] Elle: Yeah. A lot of experience. And wisdom comes from that experience applied in life. And yeah, there was a lot going on and I coped a lot of the time and a lot of the time I didn't really cope, but I always learned. I always learned.

[00:01:40] Luke: And another huge takeaway just about learning more about your life is you have a very dedicated work ethic and attention to detail and drive and a value of excellence. I picked that up just from all of your different endeavors. There's a very strong set of standards that you hold yourself to, maybe to a fault at times.

[00:02:11] Elle: I didn't realize I had a persistence and dedication and commitment until I was in certain experiences. It comes through life. It wasn't like I came to New York and said, ooh, I'm very dedicated person, or I'm a very disciplined person, or persistent. I had experiences and I realized that when I applied myself to whatever I was doing and I saw the results from it, I realized that, wow, staying the course is valuable. Because it was a great facilitator, a great tool to apply to any situation so that I could have the fullest of the experience.

[00:03:07] And I developed a lot of those skills on the fly. And sometimes it's been difficult. It's been difficult. It's always a double-edged sword when you have an attention to detail. On one hand, it's wonderful for business, and on the other hand, it's very difficult to work with somebody who has an attention to detail because it's like going back and doing it again and doing it again, and doing it again, perfecting, polishing.

[00:03:42] Luke: It's like the shadow side of that is maybe control and perfectionism. I look at different qualities that I have that I'm grateful for, and they all have kind of a light side and a dark side.

[00:03:57] Elle: That's so true.

[00:03:59] Luke: It's finding that balance. Because I have that same attention to detail, especially with aesthetics and things like that. I'm very particular about the way things look. I'm very sensitive to beauty or the lack thereof, which is great because I create beautiful environments.

[00:04:18] Elle: And podcasts.

[00:04:19] Luke: Yeah, yeah. Even, yeah, the lighting, the cameras, all of that. Especially now we have our new gear, which I'm so excited about.

[00:04:25] Elle: I'm so happy that I'm getting the value of it.

[00:04:29] Luke: It's 2025 cameras and lenses. But then on the other side, it's like there's, in my experience, a hypervigilance that comes with that too, that I have to be mindful of. And also, if my preferences start to impose on the will of other people, that's no fun for them ultimately too.

[00:04:52] Elle: It's control, and control is the opposite to love really. If love is allowance, control is the opposite. And we want to be in love and consciousness in all that we do. So it's finding that balance between giving 110% and doing it from your heart for the circumstances without trying to impose your perspectives on others. And that's a really fine line. It takes time and experience to master.

[00:05:25] Luke: Yeah. A marriage is a great place to learn that.

[00:05:28] Elle: It's so true. Any relationship. Relationships with children too.

[00:05:32] Luke: Oh, I couldn't imagine. Yeah. That was always one of my fears about having kids, is like, how am I going to let them go and just have their own experience, but still be a guide? How have you navigated that, the sovereignty of your boys versus the mother bear that is rightfully being mindful of possible danger or missteps, etc.?

[00:05:57] Elle: Nothing is like the unconditional love you have for a child. No other love that I've experienced. Or at least prior to having children, I didn't understand what unconditional love was. And then when you have children, you realize that it doesn't really matter what they do. You may not like it, but you will always love them. And it's to apply that in everything that we do in life.

[00:06:24] But with the boys, I have chosen to be a wise guide for them and to allow them their experiences even if I don't agree with them, some of their choices that they may make in life in earlier life or later life. Because that's the only way they're going to learn. They're not going to learn by me telling them what to do. They learn through their own life experiences. And so why would I rob them of that by trying to manipulate their life path?

[00:06:53] And how would I know what their life path is? They have their own higher power, their own source, their own heart, if they use their heart as a compass. That is their journey. And I try not to interfere with that, or I choose not to interfere with that. It takes some discipline on my behalf, on any parent's behalf and a belief system that, as I said, they have their own heart. And that is the divine compass really.

[00:07:31] Luke: You talk a lot in your book about following your heart, and I think it's a vague concept for many of us. We get it. Like, oh, I have a gut feeling about something. And you can tune in to whether something is intuitively feeling like a yes or a no. But I think it's harder in application to have the level of presence that's required to have that fine-tuned discernment. How have you cultivated that to guide yourself?

[00:08:04] Elle: It's a practice. It's like if you have a friend and you don't speak to them very often, are you going to trust what they have to say if you ask their opinion or their support in something, or their guidance in something?

[00:08:23] And so having a relationship with yourself is the first step. And an ongoing relationship, a daily relationship, a daily check-in, not just once a day, but often throughout the day. And then you start to trust that inner knowing that you develop through time and through practice.

[00:08:48] And I use the zing zong method, and I talk a lot about this in the book. If I think of something, any action that I want to do or any decision I'm going to make, or any incoming experience that comes into my life, when I think about it or when I first hear about it, if my heart skips a beat and I go, "That'd be really great." Or I move towards it.

[00:09:20] That is, for me, a zing. Even if it's followed by trepidation, like, "Oh God, I don't know how I'm going to do that. Oh no, I'm scared. It's the unknown." But I go to that first feeling that I have. And in order to hear that, or feel that, or sense that, it requires us to be quite still in a daily practice, whether it's in meditation or whether it's just taking a breath and stopping before every circumstance.

[00:09:51] So it's a practice, and it becomes stronger and stronger over time, and we start to trust it over time. And it has been a wonderful guide for me throughout my life. And I choose to tap into it as much as I can. In fact, I'm the most uncomfortable when I can't hear it. And I can't hear it if I'm in fear. And that happens over time.

[00:10:23] Luke: Because then everything feels like a no.

[00:10:24] Elle: Everything feels like I can't cope.

[00:10:28] Luke: Yeah.

[00:10:29] Elle: Yeah.

[00:10:29] Luke: I think about that sometimes in terms of self-will. In recovery, that's a huge topic and obstacle to sobriety, is running on self-will, which to me, it's the opposite of presence and stillness and mindfulness. It's just a charging forward, unabated, unexamined.

[00:10:51] And it's something that I've struggled with myself a lot over the years because that way of going through life is very insidious at times and hard to see when you're in it. You start to see the collateral damage of it because other people will inform you or your decisions don't pan out in the ways that you hope they would. And you go, "Oh shit. I need to slow down and check myself."

[00:11:18] I recently had one of these myself, which was brought to my attention by my lovely wife, and she didn't have words for it. She's like, "It's just this thing. You're just going and going. You don't slow down." And I picked up my big book for the first time in a very long time. You know how it is. You flip to a page. And I was like, "Our problem is that we're on self will run riot." And that word "run riot", I was like, "That's the thing." Oh my God. I learned that 28 years ago, I thought.

[00:11:47] Elle: Yeah. We relearn it as we have experiences. For me, the self will is more like the fear, if I don't do it, I'm going to suffer. Rather than, if I do this, it will be in the best interest of my life. I've found that I do things because I'm afraid not to do it. So if you look at addiction, it's like, I'm going to feel like shit if I don't do this. And so that is self will run riot, and you do feel like shit actually, as we both know.

[00:12:31] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[00:12:32] Elle: So I think it's just checking, is it coming from a place of fear or is it coming from a place of love? And when we come into that, just ask ourselves that question, often we'll realize that we are doing something because we're afraid not to do it, rather than we truly want to do it.

[00:12:51] Luke: Very true. Or sometimes it's like something I've worked on a lot is boundaries of just choosing to live my life in a way that I see fit and be less dependent on other people's approval. And sometimes that decision to not do something involves other people, some kind of venture partnership, go hang out, whatever.

[00:13:18] And it's been difficult for me to learn, I guess how to just have sovereignty in that way. There's a fear of what are they going to think. And sometimes it's an authentic fear of like not wanting to hurt their feelings. But if I'm really honest and I dig deeper, I often find it's not so much about how they're going to feel. It's how is their perception of me going to change, and is it going to be negative?

[00:13:44] There's still a bit of attachment to that of just, why am I living my life for other people? This is mine. Is that something you've had to face and work on in your life?

[00:13:55] Elle: Absolutely. My whole career was about executing other people's visions of me. Modeling in itself is somebody has a vision of how they think that their clothes are going to look and the photographs are going to look, and you come in to play that role to be that character almost.

[00:14:18] And I was paid to do it. So it was like along the way, the lines between what is you and what is somebody else's vision of you, especially when I was married to a photographer, become very blurred. And there's a strong motivation to keep performing to other people's expectations of you because you're paid to do it.

[00:14:45] And it was my livelihood, and it was my independence card. And there was just a strong motivation to do that until the time where it became so painful and so unfulfilling that I started to take small steps towards reclaiming, making choices that really resonated with me rather than what resonated with the people around me. And it's a process, and I learned the hard way.

[00:15:22] Luke: I bet. I bet. What was New York like when you arrived there in the '80s? Being from California, my perception of New York at that time was always that it was really dirty and dangerous and there was junkies everywhere. It was like that movie Escape from New York, which I think was a '70s movie, but it just seemed like this daunting place. And I didn't end up going there, I think until, I don't know, 2010 or something.

[00:15:49] Elle: Wow. And it had changed a lot by then.

[00:15:50] Luke: Yeah. And I was like, "What's everyone talking about? It's beautiful.

[00:15:52] Elle: I know. It's true. '83 was when I arrived in New York, and remember, I'm a girl from Sydney, Australia. I grew up in the beaches. I was going to go to law school. I'd never really traveled. Certainly hadn't traveled overseas. And I arrived in New York City, and I was so afraid.

[00:16:11] The book starts, in New York City in 1983, and it was dark and dusty and cold and dangerous. And I was constantly afraid. And it wasn't the bustling, center of the universe that New York became, particularly in the '90s and 2000s.

[00:16:33] I'd never seen anything like it. And I didn't know how to dress for the weather. I didn't know how to be. I had no money, no food. A lot of the time I lived on trail mix and yogurt and whatever I could scrounge at the studios when I was working.

[00:16:50] Luke: You were at the craft services table.

[00:16:52] Elle: All day.

[00:16:53] Luke: Eating all the calories you can.

[00:16:55] Elle: And so it was a huge culture shock, but exciting, the energy and the pulse of New York City. And I was free. I was away from my family who I loved, but I was living by myself for myself and in survival mode a lot of the time. And it was exciting. And I got to experience a lot of that craziness in the '80s and '90s, nightclubs and meeting famous people and going to restaurants and travel. It was so invigorating.

[00:17:33] And I was forging my way in a career that was really kinetic and inspiring in many ways. So I was a fish out of water, and I loved it, and I gave it a go. And that's the first chapter of the book, is New York City: Give It a Go. And that's what I did.

[00:17:57] Luke: Some of those stories are great, just trying to put myself there. I think something that stood out too was just at that particular time, there were so many creative icons in New York City, in the art world, and music and fashion.

[00:18:11] It's like as gritty as it seems to have been, it must have just been so inspiring to be around that many people who were the movers and shakers at a time when it was more revolutionary pre-social media. It's like now anyone can be on TikTok and be famous. You know what I mean? It's like back then, you really had to be doing something to get noticed, Basquiats and people like that. It's like there were some standout talent. It must have been so cool.

[00:18:38] Elle: Warhol. Yeah. And at the time I didn't realize the cultural significance of those people that I was meeting along the way. Most of us were just trying to make it in New York. Warhol, he was famous because of his hair, and he was an artist, but it wasn't like he was the Warhol that he is today.

[00:19:05] And Basquiat and all those people that were at the nightclubs that I was going to, that I was afraid of because they seemed like they were famous, more famous than me and I felt like I didn't belong. But it's only over time when I look back and I go, "Man, I spent time with those people who were in their creative genius at that particular time in New York City and forging their way.

[00:19:33] And it was just normal. Everybody just converged, art and music and photography and fashion and acting and film. Everything was converging in New York City in the '80s, and it was an exciting time.

[00:19:55] Luke: Yeah, I bet. I bet. I feel like when I moved to LA in 1989, it was like that, at least my experience of it. It's like, at first it was like really exciting. I'm a small-town kid, and I'm hanging out with-- I was writing about this the other day.

[00:20:12] It's like, one month I'm at my mom's house, living in my room with posters of my favorite musicians on the wall, and a month later I'm in LA and we're hanging out. It was really exciting. But then it becomes normal and then it's not a big deal to you.

[00:20:30] Elle: Yeah. We have all those influences that help form our perspectives on things as well. We see people that are brilliant in what they're doing, and we watch and we learn, and that becomes the ingredients that make us who we are as well.

[00:20:51] Luke: Let's talk about fashion as an art form, which is something that having worked in that industry for a long time myself, there's this superficiality and elitism around that industry. Thinking about going to a fashion show, to me, would be the worst nightmare ever. It's just so phony. I just can't stand it. But at the same time, when you look on the runway, there's art there, depending on the designer, right?

[00:21:26] But there's beauty. There's art. Photography is such a beautiful art form. Filmmaking. There's an authenticity to the art. And you, as someone who's been dressed by the most famous designers in the world of all time, there's something different about a couture piece of clothing than something from Target.

[00:21:46] There's an energetic quality to it. There's substance to it. The craft that went into designing it and creating it, the fabrics, the textiles, there's something so valid about it. But it took me years to appreciate that because of all of the, I don't know, yeah, the superficiality--

[00:22:07] Elle: Perceived superficiality.

[00:22:08] Luke: And an ego that's attached to that particular art form in that industry. What's your take on all of that as you sit here now as an OG veteran of that industry?

[00:22:18] Elle: There's definitely creativity. And I don't think creativity has any allegiance to its material expression in the world. Creativity, it comes from the heart. So the creativity in fashion really comes from the designers. They're expressing their unique perspective and their vision through their craft of making clothes.

[00:22:42] And I've worked with designers who are extraordinary in their capacity to bring their vision to life. And the clothing is one part of it, but then there's photography, and that's another part of it. And then there's lighting, and then there's fashion shows, and then there's a hairdressers and the makeup artists and the stylists.

[00:23:04] And so it's a whole industry that is built around the creativity of the fashion designer really. And we are the ones that are fortunate as models that get to be the personification of that. And I'm much more interested in style than fashion in itself. I think personal style, which is a mix and match, bring your own uniqueness into the world, is way more interesting than wearing head to toe of any one particular designer and being a walking poster for their designs.

[00:23:46] I learned that through our magazine, who was the big style innovator. So they would take like a Chanel jacket and put it with a pair of ripped jeans and a t-shirt and that was cool. And that was your way of expressing--

[00:23:58] Luke: But then they became the high-low later.

[00:23:59] Elle: Yeah, it became high-low at Target. I totally hear you when you talk about this frivolousness and this sort of egoism or perceived superficiality of the fashion industry. And I felt the same. When I first came to New York, I was like, I'm pursuing something completely unstable based on other people's opinion, no skill, weird career or job

[00:24:36] Compared to law, for example, which was reliable, stable, something I could count on, something that smart girls did. Smart girls don't get off on having the picture on the cover of a magazine. I was in two minds too when I first started modeling.

[00:24:55] I was like, "This just seems like such a lightweight job per se." And then as I became more and more involved, I realized the complexities of the business and also how I could use innate skills that I had to use as a springboard to build a life that was more in keeping with what I wanted to do, which was to be entrepreneurial in business, to bring my vision to the world in different ways, to be financially independent.

[00:25:30] And I evolved through my own perception of the fashion industry being just two-dimensional, and it's far from it. If you just talk about the fashion industry in itself, it is a multi-billion-dollar industry that supports many different facets of the economy.

[00:25:56] It's not a lightweight industry per se. And then it's just a question of how you choose to use fashion in your life. How do you choose to express yourself? And I don't think it has anything to do with whether it's an expensive label or not an expensive label. There's always creativity.

[00:26:19] Luke: Yeah, it goes back to the divide between, as you said, style versus fashion, right?

[00:26:27] Elle: Mm.

[00:26:29] Luke: I'll be out in the boonies sometimes here in Texas and I'll see a random person at the gas station of some old cowboy or something. That guy has rad style.

[00:26:38] Elle: Yeah.

[00:26:39] Luke: They're not trying. They just have their own little unique twist to the mustache, feather in their cap, whatever it might be. It's like, oh cool. That person has chosen to express how they're feeling, who they are, what they're about. It's like a communication tool.

[00:26:54] Elle: Absolutely. They're expressing their uniqueness into the world. They're bringing them into the world through the clothes that they wear. And we were talking about fashion. In this case, it's that. It's like, be your unique you with what you have. And that is the beauty of it, that freedom to just be able to express yourself.

[00:27:17] Luke: Have you noticed, I'm sure you have, how different you can feel energetically or emotionally based on what you're wearing? And I asked that because I used to have the experience of I go to work wearing jeans and a t-shirt and feel a certain way, and then one day I'm like, "I'm going to throw on my little Dior blazer and step it up a little bit. Maybe I'm going to be in public or whatever."

[00:27:40] And I go, "I feel different," just because when I look down or look in the mirror or whatever, it's a different energy than just wearing sweats, which I do now, which people give me shit for sometimes on the podcast. Today I wore jeans. I felt like, wow, I have a very prestigious guest--

[00:27:57] Elle: You're looking great.

[00:27:57] Luke: So I'm going to step it up. But yeah, it really can change the way you feel just like if you put intentionality into your body language. Even if you just put your shoulders back and sit up straight, you have a different emotional and energetic feeling inside you. Obviously, it's perceived by other people too.

[00:28:16] But I think what we wear, if we can divorce ourselves from the status of it or that we're dressing for other people, there's a lot to be said. And just how you regulate your experience of the world. Would you share that in your own way, or how do you relate to that?

[00:28:35] Elle: For me, it's really about comfort. I want to feel comfortable in my skin. And if I'm comfortable, people around me will be comfortable. And that's important to me. So whatever I choose to wear today is what's moving me in that moment, and I'm not trying to be something I'm not. So whenever I'm trying to be somebody else, that's where I'm uncomfortable, and other people are uncomfortable around me.

[00:29:10] So whatever it is that makes me feel me for that day-- and I have lots of different flavors of me. There's supermodel me. There's hippie girl. There's surfer girl. There's school mom. Whatever that choice is for the day, as long as I'm comfortable, that's what really matters.

[00:29:31] And I love to play with fashion. I see it as a way of expressing myself as well. So I think I'm more interested in colors. Colors have an effect on me rather than the labels. So I tend to wear light colors a lot because I feel light and I'm interested in light. And so the choices that I make are really more around color than designers.

[00:30:05] Luke: That's very interesting. I was just listening to a podcast with Dr. Jack Kruse, who's controversial to some because he has a pretty aggressive attitude at times. But he's brilliant guy, and I don't know if you've looked into his stuff at all, but he's all about light.

[00:30:26] It's all about sunlight, circadian biology, etc. And he was talking about how the different color spectrum in sunlight obviously affects your biology in profound ways and were really yoked to that light. But then he was talking about even the colors in your home, the way you paint your walls, the clothing you wear, all of that has a direct effect on your biology from a--

[00:30:51] Elle: From a scientific point of point of view.

[00:30:53] Luke: Yeah. And I was just like, "Oh, I like the vibe in here." It's painted yellow, but it really does have an effect on you. And it made me think of your home in Miami. Doyle sent me a photo, I think, of your living room. And it was painted this really beautiful color.

[00:31:09] And he knew the name of the color and everything. He's like, "Oh, yeah. It's whatever." And I was like, "God, I never thought of that." It's a vibe. Go into a room like that, and after he sent me that, I was like, oh my God. I spent two months finding the right white to paint this house. Because there's no such thing as a white color. There's thousands of whites.

[00:31:31] Elle: That's so true.

[00:31:32] Luke: And I went around and around and I found, I think it's called Chantilly Lace, for anyone that wants to know, by Benjamin Moore. And it doesn't have yellow. It doesn't have blue. It's like white, white. But he sent me that picture and I was like, I think we need to paint our house. I was like, "I don't know if I like white"

[00:31:45] Elle: It's like a peacock for you guys listening at home. We did a living room, which is this rich peacock color. All colors have a frequency. We are frequency ourselves, but colors have frequency. And that particular one is really about creativity.

[00:32:11] And it's perfect because that room's a music room. Instead of having a music room out the back where you go and you lock yourself in the music room, we decided to have our main living space as a music room. So it's got pianos and gongs and guitars and handpans, and that is where we live.

[00:32:33] Luke: That's a great idea.

[00:32:34] Elle: And it's functional. It's functional for our life and for what we want to be. We want to be surrounded in music. We want to be in a creative space where we can just not have to go away to be creative, but we are living in that environment easily and thoughtfully. And it was a big thing for me because I've always done white houses as well.

[00:32:57] Luke: Yeah. I don't know. It's like an automatic for some reason. I don't know.

[00:33:01] Elle: It feels clear and bright.

[00:33:05] Luke: Yeah. I think when it's daytime, I want to feel like I'm outside. I want bright light. I think that was probably one of the reflective white light.

[00:33:15] Elle: And the body needs it. The body needs light.

[00:33:19] Luke: Right. But to your point, I didn't really think about it until recently, putting those pieces together. But the color clothing that you wear or the color of your environment is obviously going to have that frequency effect on you.

[00:33:33] Elle: Absolutely. And I'm very sensitive to it. And I focus on different things today. I wouldn't have thought about this when I was 20. I was trying to navigate how to wear a pair of red high-heeled shoes down 57th Street trying to look fashionable.

[00:33:53] But today I'm much more intentional in the choices that I make it what I wear or how I choose to decorate my home or how I choose to do anything in life. It is intentional. And for a long time it was just sort of survival mode. And it's not like that today, thank goodness. Oh, the beauty of age.

[00:34:17] Luke: It's like when you're in survival mode, which I'm very familiar with too, you're using up all the bandwidth to just manage that. So the thought of like, ooh, what color do I want to wear? It's not in the equation because you're just barely hanging on.

[00:34:34] Elle: Survival mode's wonderful too though, because it is the mother of invention. Necessity is the mother of invention. And I find that when I've been in survival mode, it's when I've been my most creative, where I've been able to problem solve on the fly. Because I had to. I had no choice.

[00:34:57] And then I grew confidence within myself because I had the courage and the willingness to take steps forward because I needed to at that particular moment, in those particular circumstances. And then, wow, that turned out really well. Wow, it's not as scary or daunting or I don't have to know beforehand what the result's going to be. I can take that leap of faith and watch how things unfold and learn from it.

[00:35:31] Luke: The fire, aim, ready approach.

[00:35:37] Elle: Yeah.

[00:35:37] Luke: That's one of my favorites. I learned from someone a long time ago. I had this idea for a business and I was going around and around trying to micromanage it and make it just perfect before I launched it. And a friend of mine who was a real estate entrepreneur guy, he's like, "Ah, you're never going to do it."

[00:35:55] I'm like, "Yeah, no, I just got to get this ready." And he goes, "No, you're trying to do the ready, aim, fire, and you're just going to be stuck in ready forever. So just do it and then figure it out". It was so terrifying, but it was a great lesson to that end because then it became a thing I did for a very long time.

[00:36:10] Elle: Yeah. Because you can't solve it in your head.

[00:36:12] Luke: Exactly.

[00:36:12] Elle: The only way we can figure it out is through the experience.

[00:36:16] Luke: Something that you were very courageously forthcoming about in your book was your relationship to alcohol and your sobriety, which of course I related to, and I knew that about you from when we met before.

[00:36:30] But I always find it really inspiring when note-worthy people, famous people, etc., have the wherewithal to share about those things vulnerably because there are going to be people that read that or hear that that are having this very inward experience or struggle. And there's so much shame associated with it that that's one of the things that keeps you trapped in addiction, is just that it's the secrecy around it.

[00:37:01] And it's been a really positive trend over many years now. Much more so than when I first got sober. When I got sober, the only cool people that I knew that were sober were Aerosmith. They were like in the mid-90s or so. They were like, "Hey, we went to Betty Ford and they had a successful new album and a relaunch."

[00:37:21] And I was like, "Wow, if Steven Tyler can be sober, maybe it's not that lame." So anyway, in your book, you talk about how you started to go down that path and then you really covered a lot of your recovery. So there's a number of things I want to know about that experience for you.

[00:37:40] But the first one being, how did you reconcile the tradition of anonymity? That's something that I've always danced around because part of, there's no rules in the 12 step groups, but there is a tradition of anonymity at the level of press radio and films. And I've always struggled with that because if you don't talk about it publicly, if you're a well-known person, if you don't talk about it, then there's going to be people that don't hear that that's an option and that it works and that it's viable.

[00:38:16] If you do talk about it and you happen to relapse and fuck it up, then it transmits a message to the public that it doesn't work. Or if you have a terribly flawed character and you're not a great person morally and getting into trouble and you've been public about being a member of 12-step groups, then it can negatively reflect on that as a whole. So it's a very complex--

[00:38:40] Elle: Yeah. I was in a quandary about it as well.

[00:38:43] Luke: I can imagine. I'm always very vague about it. I just talk about the 12 steps as a teaching and not like being a member of any particular group, but that might not even be necessary at this point because it's such a--

[00:38:56] Elle: Look, I've been sober for 21 years and so it's not like I'm newly sober and I'm just spouting off about, oh, everybody should get sober. I've had a long history of many, many meetings, and there are old-school sponsors and people in AA that always say anonymity is extremely important.

[00:39:22] But then you see people like Eric Clapton who speak and who go to meetings all the time, and he is a very valuable member of AA, and I'm not breaking his anonymity because he speaks about it. And he has been an inspiration for a lot of people.

[00:39:43] My book is a book of tools and wisdoms to help people on their journey. So if I was to not write about that aspect of my life, which it has been so important, a, it would be inauthentic, and b, I'm not using an opportunity where I could be helping people who are struggling.

[00:40:03] And so I felt that it was important for me to be honest about it. And in fact, the whole chapter on getting sober is a direct lift from the share I gave 21 years ago. The whole chapter is just reliving exactly what I said in that meeting, what I was thinking, what I was feeling, and what I said in that meeting.

[00:40:28] And I thought that was the most authentic and honest way to talk about it. And my aim is to help people. And if one person decides that they want to consider getting sober because it feels resonant for them, then the job is done. It only takes one person for it to be a valuable and worthwhile exercise.

[00:40:51] And I felt that it was really important. But I did struggle with that. I struggled with it from all the years of being ingrained from AA saying, you must never talk about it. But in a book like this, how could I leave that chapter out, honestly?

[00:41:12] Luke: Yeah. Or it would be so laborious to maintain some ambiguity. You know what I mean? It's like, hey, here's what happened.

[00:41:23] Elle: And here it is.

[00:41:23] Luke: It's interesting. I think too, where we are now culturally versus where we were in 1935, when AA started, 1939, when the book was written, we're in such a vastly different place that I sense that some of the-- well, I don't throw any of the traditions out wholesale. Things are also much different now.

[00:41:49] And 12-step groups are so interwoven into culture now, at least western culture primarily. But there's not the stigma that there was at that time, which a lot of the anonymity-- why it was called Alcoholics Anonymous was because it was so shameful to be a drunk. And most people that wound up there were such low bottoms. It was basically bums on the corner with a brown paper bag kind of thing.

[00:42:18] Elle: And also, AA, it was just starting out, so they were protecting the community. They wanted to keep it pure and they wanted to protect it, and so they didn't want people going out and talking about it who didn't have long term sobriety, especially.

[00:42:34] Luke: Right.

[00:42:36] Elle: But now it is such a strong community and there's so many different facets of it between Al-Anon and AA.

[00:42:44] Luke: I've been through most of them.

[00:42:46] Elle: Childs of alcoholics. There's all the different flavors, and it's been around for a long time, and it is a beautiful life path or life map for many people that saved many people's lives.

[00:43:01] And I'm not saying that everybody should go to AA. I share my experience getting sober really and why I got sober and how I got sober and the benefits of it. And it's attraction not promotion. And I am not promoting this specifically. I am sharing my experience. And if you want what I have, then go check it out.

[00:43:28] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[00:43:29] Elle: That's really the way I see it.

[00:43:32] Luke: Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. Anytime someone makes it out of that, it's meaningful to me because I know how difficult it is. It's not for the faint at heart.

[00:43:43] Elle: And I'm thankful, like you. You talked about Aerosmith. When I first started going to meetings in London, in the beginning, I would go because I saw a lot of famous people, actors and musicians, and it was way cooler than the people I was hanging out with.

[00:44:00] Going to a 7 o'clock AA meeting, there were more interesting people, wise, connected to their heart, honest, talking about stuff that nobody ever talked about, being real, and glamorous people. And so that kept me going to meetings for a long time. I'm so grateful that they went.

[00:44:26] Luke: Yeah, that's a good point.

[00:44:27] Elle: Until I developed my own sense of strength and reasoning to be in meetings. And today it's a question of service. And I see this chapter as being a service chapter. And in fact, the how chapter, which is the honest, open, and willing, how to stay sober, the publisher originally didn't want to put it in.

[00:44:46] She said, "Oh, it's too boring." I said, "No, no, no, no, no. This is the whole reason for it." This is not to tell a drunk log of what my life was like and all the different things that happened. What I want to share with people is how to stay stopped doing any compulsive behavior.

[00:45:05] And it's not just alcohol. It could be anything. How do we stay focused on what we want and not what we don't want. And addiction today is not reserved just for alcohol. And you're talking about it a lot on your podcast, which I love. And we look at kids addicted to their phones, to--

[00:45:26] Luke: Not just kids.

[00:45:27] Elle: Yeah.

[00:45:30] Elle: It's true.

[00:45:31] Luke: My addiction, I'll be real about it, and it really is an addiction because it qualifies based on my criteria, which is any behavior I'm doing that has deleterious effect on my life or lives of people with whom I'm relating, and I'm aware that it has deleterious effects, and I can't control when and how much I do it.

[00:45:54] Elle: Yeah. Or if you do it or not

[00:45:55] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially that. But I think some of the other addictions also are much harder because they don't have as devastating of consequences as a drug addiction or alcohol addiction. For me, it's what used to be called Twitter and is now called X.

[00:46:16] There's an app called Freedom you can put on your computer and your phone and you can set it to block whatever, like your email, all Internet, different social media. And I have that block, and I'll wake up in the morning and put the block on. And I'm like, "Ah, I'm just going to check real quick."

[00:46:31] And it's that thing. I'm just going to have one drink or whatever. I never fooled myself to think I'll just have one drink, but maybe I'm going to drink tonight, but I'm not going to do hard drugs. That was my self-delusional denial.

[00:46:43] Elle: And of course one led to the other always.

[00:46:44] Luke: Oh my God, yeah. Yeah, insane. But yeah, for me, it's that. And I think that and nicotine are probably the two things in my life now I feel like they have more control over me than I have more control over. But because they're, on their face, not that destructive, they're not going to cause me to lose my career or get a divorce or spend all money.

[00:47:08] Elle: Yeah, but you're not living the life that you want to live.

[00:47:09] Luke: It's more of just a fine-tuned mental health kind of thing. I know I'm much happier when I'm less tied into what's going on out in the world, especially things that I can't control, which are the things that I feed on on Twitter, mostly around what's happening geopolitically and just in culture.

[00:47:27] Elle: And you'd like to stay in touch because you have this podcast, and so you're going be talking to people. You want to know what's going on. So there's a great reasoning for it. And you're right, any behavior that we do that is undermined is unself loving and we're repeatedly doing it can be an addiction.

[00:47:46] There are many people that are addicted to fear and to drama in their lives. And it is so self-damaging, perhaps even more than alcohol because it's so insidious. It's hard to pinpoint, and it undermines everything we do. And so it is a nefarious road, the road of refining, living the life that we truly want to live. Bringing our true essence into the world and living the kind of life that we really want to live without the dissonance or without the-- what do they call it, in the Law of One?

[00:48:34] Luke: I forget.

[00:48:35] Elle: Distortion. Without the distortion.

[00:48:37] Luke: Yeah, yeah. You guys have been reading that?

[00:48:41] Elle: I've been listening to it. Yeah, yeah. I saw your podcast on it. I listened to your podcast.

[00:48:44] Luke: There's some cool stuff, man.

[00:48:46] Elle: Yeah, it's interesting. The concept of concept of service to self and others in equal measures is something I've been mulling upon for quite some time. So it really resonated with me. I haven't listened to the whole thing. It's a long listen.

[00:49:11] Luke: And there are multiple books too. I remember when I first got the audiobook. I was like, "Which one?" I guess I started with the first one. But there's volumes.

[00:49:18] Elle: Yeah.

[00:49:19] Luke: That one to me, I think so many of my friends have recommended it and been into that. I'm always a little bit resistant to channeled stuff just because there's so much margin for--

[00:49:35] Elle: Interpretation too.

[00:49:36] Luke: Interpretation and fraud. Like David Hawkins used to say, "Man, don't get all the channeling stuff." We can't even discern someone's character or truth or falsehood in this realm of reality. You're like, you have no business going off into these other realms of reality and trying to think you can talk to entities and that they're authentic and so on.

[00:49:56] So I've always just like, let me stay grounded. The 12 steps, very grounding, just rooted in just very simple principles. But then something like that comes along and I give it a shot, and I go, "I can't poke any holes in this." There's like nothing I heard so far in the Law of One where I was like, "No, that's bullshit."

[00:50:14] Everything resonated. So wherever it came from is less relevant. It's, does it align with what feels like truth and something that's valuable and applicable to me in my life?

[00:50:25] Elle: And that's really the key, isn't it? Is it aligned with where you are right here, right now? Because you can listen to something now and it doesn't make any sense. And in six months’ time or a year's time, it's like a penny dropped. So I explore, listen, take what resonates, let go of the rest.

[00:50:47] Elle: And it doesn't really matter where it came from, because ultimately, if it's in your energy field now and something resonates with you, it's because it's meant to, to trigger a new behavior or a new way of thinking. There's no mistakes. So if it's come your way, there's good reason for it.

[00:51:12] Luke: On your spiritual path, what teachers or teachings have stood the test of time, where you go back to it and it still carries weight and has resonance?

[00:51:24] Elle: Osho, Ram Dass. I read Be Here Now when I was 18. I talk about that in the book too, I think. I didn't understand it at the time. It sounded good and felt good, but today I think I have a more profound understanding through my own experience, trial and error method.

[00:51:50] It was like, yeah, actually that is true, whatever principal you're talking about. I think one of the greatest teachers in life is our own life experiences, and living our life and learning through it is one of the greatest teachers. There's so many podcasts and enlightened audibles that you can listen to, and you can have all this information, but unless it's applied to your life, it's meaningless.

[00:52:24] So what are you capable of applying to your life today or in this moment? That's where the value lies, not just in the theory or the philosophical understanding of things. How can you apply that, whatever that understanding is, to your life, the application of it?

[00:52:43] Luke: I love it. I love it. That's so pertinent to the 12 steps. Early on, I thought it was just about being physically sober. Abstinence was it.

[00:52:56] Elle: And it is for a while.

[00:52:57] Luke: And you just can be a maniac outside of those confines.

[00:52:59] Elle: And you're.

[00:53:00] Luke: Which I was. But I had a teacher. You just reminded me of, one of my sponsors, and he would always harp on application. He's like, "It's about the application of the principles." And he was a real old-school guy. And he said, "It's like when a woman goes and buys some lipstick. The lipstick isn't going to do anything until she applies it." That that's the one metaphor that stuck.

[00:53:21] Elle: And it's so real and so grounded that we can all relate to.

[00:53:27] Luke: Yeah, yeah. I find it fun to go back to books or just different teachings that were really tough for me to grasp at the time. I was like, "Oh, I know there's something here, but I don't quite get it." But I sense the value. And then through experience, as you said, the teacher of experience, I go back to it and I go, "Oh, yeah. Duh."

[00:53:49] Elle: Yeah, it's so clear.

[00:53:50] Luke: Yeah, I totally get it now. Not that I'm the enlightened master that channeled that information or whatever, but I relate to it in a different way because just time has passed and I've weathered a few storms and taken some licks and integrated what I've learned, and now it's like, "Oh, I see what they were saying."

[00:54:07] Elle: Yeah. I think Michael Singer is like that, isn't he? He wrote The Untethered Soul.

[00:54:12] Luke: Yeah, yeah. And The Surrender Experiment.

[00:54:15] Elle: That was the last book that I read that I was like, man, this is just like--

[00:54:19] Luke: Epic.

[00:54:20] Elle: Epic.

[00:54:20] Luke: He doesn't do many interviews, unfortunately. He's always someone I've wanted to talk to. How has surrender moved through your life experience just as a foundational principle?

[00:54:32] Elle: Mm. What a beautiful question. I choose to express surrender in the word allowance, which is love for me. So I think surrender, often there's a feeling of surrender as like, well, I just have to put up with what is. I'll surrender. I don't have any say in this. I'm sort of powerless in this whole thing.

[00:55:05] In allowance, there's taking a step back and going, okay. It's almost, there's a non-judgment to it, a non-dualistic perspective. And it's like, allow you to be you and I allow myself to be me. I allow the situation to be what it is. I may not like it. It may be to my preference, but it is what it is.

[00:55:39] And if I want things to change, then I can change my response to whatever is going, whatever I'm being faced with. Or I can choose to do things differently. So yeah, I always feel like the word surrender has a bit of a victim conscious tinge to it. Like, I can't do anything about it, so whatever.

[00:56:03] Luke: Yeah. I think in the context of recovery, the ego is one of the main obstacles, as I'm sure you know.

[00:56:12] Elle: Mm.

[00:56:12] Luke: And ego hates that word surrender. You know what I mean?

[00:56:16] Elle: Maybe I'm in my ego right now.

[00:56:18] Luke: No, no, no, no. I don't think so. I think that connotation is inherent to the word, because, of course, there's infinite perspective you can have on a certain truth or principle or word. But I think many of us view that, especially when we're in a place of more resistance as like admitting defeat, in a sense. And that leans into that victim element to it.

[00:56:45] Elle: Yeah. And of course it's never defeat in the sense that there's no right or wrong. Especially there's no right or wrong when you're learning from the experience. And some of my most difficult experiences have been catalysts for exponential growth.

[00:57:06] And I was never defeated by the experience. Most of all, I was amplified by the experience. Uncomfortable, yes. Unhinged at times, yes. Scared shitless, yes. But always, always profound opportunities for growth and freedom. Yeah.

[00:57:37] Luke: I think that key is, that you mentioned, judgment. It's like your perspective of allowing in your experience of surrender is devoid of judgment. There's a curiosity in there. I'm sure you know the parable of the Daoist farmer.

[00:57:56] Elle: Doyle told me this the other day. It is so perfect. Maybe so. Maybe so, whatever the word is.

[00:58:03] Luke: Yeah. I always forget the whole thing. But essentially, any experience in our life can be colored as negative or positive solely based on our limited perspective of it at that given time.

[00:58:17] Elle: At that moment. Yeah.

[00:58:18] Luke: Yeah.

[00:58:18] Elle: And it's only in hindsight that we can really see the value of--

[00:58:22] Luke: I know. That's the bitch about it. Yeah. I have a scar on my nose right here, and sometimes when I'm having a moment of vanity, I'll look myself in the mirror, which thankfully I do a lot less these days than I used to.

[00:58:37] I'm much less concerned with how I look, which is very freeing. But every once in a while, I look in the mirror and go, "Oh God, it looks ugly, that scar." And then I'm reminded that scar is a symbol of my finding God.

[00:58:54] At the time when that scar happened, I was drunk. Many of my scars happened when I was drunk, and I got bit on the face by a Rottweiler. I was at a party and, ah, they just snapped at me and just cut my face all up and went to the hospital. It was a whole thing.

[00:59:15] It's a long story, and it's the Taoist farmer story, which I'm framing that in the book I'm writing and showing how, like, wow, at the time I thought, but that one for me is the best example of that. Because you could ask anyone objectively, "Is this a good or bad event that happened to this guy? He just got bit on the--" 100% of people would say, "That's horrible. Oh my God, how tragic."

[00:59:37] But because I got bit on the face by that Rottweiler, I got a bunch of money. You are like, "Oh, that's great. You got all this money." Well, we shall see, the Taoist farmer. Because I had all that money, I could finally afford all of the heroin I could possibly fit into my freaking veins. Would you say, oh, that's bad? He got a really bad habit, and so on and so on.

[00:59:58] And so the story goes, and ultimately, I got sober because I hit such a bottom and I had such a built up a high tolerance that I couldn't maintain it. So I went to rehab. There's no way I could have afforded it.

[01:00:08] Elle: Yeah. That's beautiful.

[01:00:10] Luke: Epic. So there's so many things I think in all of our lives that are like that, that even at the time-- but if you would've told me five minutes after when I'm in the bathroom covered in blood, like, "Hey, this is going to be the greatest thing that ever happened to you," I would've hit you.

[01:00:24] Elle: Laughed you. Yeah, laughed.

[01:00:25] Luke: Yeah. I would've been so pissed.

[01:00:27] Elle: I think that that's what my book is a lot about, is to recognize that all life experiences are valuable, meaningful, and purposeful if we choose to learn from them. And we'll all have different experiences that will bring us to whatever the learning is that we are ready to learn at that particular moment.

[01:00:53] I feel there is such a human dilemma that we ask ourselves, what are we even doing here? Why? Why me? What's the purpose of all this? And our life will teach us our purpose. And in everything, when you look at it from a higher perspective, we will see. And our purpose is to be our unique selves and to shine our light into everything that we do.

[01:01:31] And however we get there, whether it be a bite on the nose from a Rottweiler, here you are doing a podcast, many podcasts, talking about the value of sobriety in your life and the struggles that you've been through. In so doing that, you're helping other people. You're bringing your light into the world to help others. And I think that's what we're here to do.

[01:01:53] Luke: Have you noticed that over time you get more expedient in the gap between having an experience that could be perceived to be negative and seeing that, based on you viewing it a certain way, could end up being a positive? Like say bad thing happens. Do you find the gap of time between when you're able to see it as either neutral or for your highest good get shorter?

[01:02:28] Elle: Yeah. My default mechanism is that life is always conspiring for my highest good. So that's just my default place. And now as an adult child of an alcoholic, my childhood way of looking at things was jump to the worst conclusion.

[01:02:48] If I can jump to the worst conclusion, the most terrible thing that can happen, because my life was so chaotic as a child, then it was a survival mode thing. Let me figure it out before it happens or stop it from happening. So I have to think about the worst possible thing that could happen so I can mitigate it along the way.

[01:03:11] Luke: Right. It's like the negativity bias thing.

[01:03:13] Elle: Yes, exactly. And that was a survival mechanism as a childhood, and it worked really well. But when I bought that into my adulthood, it became the thorn in my side because I was always focusing on the worst. And so I was creating the worst through my life experiences.

[01:03:36] When my default mechanism came to-- or my default way of thinking is that everything is turning out for my highest good, that's when I saw the tables turn in my life. Everything, sure enough, turned out for my highest good. And it takes time to see that. So I think that that was the biggest switch. And the other thing that I've noticed is that I'm less inclined to do things that are self-harming because it hurts more and more and more each time.

[01:04:11] So it took me many years of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And in the end it just gets so painful. It's like, I think I'm just going to shortcut that and I'm going to go directly to what's in my highest good here. What's the decision that I can make that is the most self-loving at this moment? How many times do I need to learn through pain? I'd rather learn through joy.

[01:04:34] Luke: 100%.

[01:04:35] Elle: Through bliss.

[01:04:36] Luke: I get that sense from you. Yeah. You're a great teacher, great model for me in that way. In your childhood, having an alcoholic parent and having the inherent chaos that comes with that, do you think that imprinted you to recreate those chaotic experiences in the way you built your life as an adult?

[01:05:02] Elle: Yeah. And just to clarify, I think alcoholism ran through the family, so it's ancestral. Not pinpointing any one particular parent or just because my parent was, therefore I am. I think I became very comfortable.

[01:05:19] I feel I recognized I became very comfortable in chaotic situations and so I often manifested them in my life because it was what I knew. It was my comfort zone. I know how to deal with chaos. I don't know how to deal with bliss, and joy, and flow. I've never experienced it.

[01:05:38] And so being in any state of flow was so painful in many ways because it was so unfamiliar and scary that I just go back to, let's just create a bit more drama and chaos and pain. Until I realized that it doesn't have to be like that. That I can choose differently.

[01:05:59] And in fact, when I do choose differently or when I behave differently or slowly, make steps towards a more peaceful way of living, it actually feels quite good. And now I am so comfortable in that bliss and flow that anything that is dissonant really stands out.

[01:06:23] Luke: Mm-hmm. It's like you create a new template.

[01:06:27] Elle: Exactly. That's beautifully said.

[01:06:29] Luke: Yeah. I was thinking about that because at different points-- I'm reading your book. You've just had such a fascinating life. And I know when we're younger, traveling a lot and just being busy and just moving around and all of those things, I think, are easier.

[01:06:44] So I'm viewing it from a-- what am I? 54, I think, now. I'm viewing it from now, and it's like just to take one flight somewhere, I'm just smoked. You know what I mean? Whereas when I was young, I'm going on tour with bands and I like to just be out and about and moving and it had such a dynamic life.

[01:07:00] But when I was reading your book, especially around the time you got sober, when you were living in London, and then when you were trying to move to Miami and your kids are still there, they have their dad and their life, and your career, and you're starting businesses, I'm just like, "It's dizzying to just think about just how dynamic your life was and how so much was going on and just all of that travel in different homes. And I'm just going, "This is exhausting."

[01:07:27] Elle: Yeah. Which is why I drank through a lot of it.

[01:07:29] Luke: I can understand why.

[01:07:31] Elle: It was trying to cope with this the enormousness and craziness of my life. I wanted relief. And I didn't know how to deal with my feelings. I love that saying in AA. They say, "What's the best thing about getting sober? You get your feelings back. What's the worst thing about getting sober? You get your feelings back."

[01:07:55] And I didn't know how to cope with what I was feeling a lot of the time. So that was one of the reasons I found that I wanted to drink. But during that time, I know it was a period of my life, which was between my, call it 35 and 45 and 50. That, for anybody, is a peak in a lot of people's careers and lives.

[01:08:22] They've had kids. They're getting married. They've become more successful in what they're doing. They've been doing it for a longer period of time. And so it's quite an explosive time anyway, and I was at the top of my career during that period business wise. Two kids, a corporate wife, and building charity with the father of my children, which was a very social time and high-octane period.

[01:08:57] Luke: Yeah. I think that was the part that sounded so exhausting to me, was the social element. Just all the--

[01:09:02] Elle: I was so bad at it too.

[01:09:04] Luke: Dinner parties and skeet shooting. I was just like, "Oh my God, I can't imagine having to be that social."

[01:09:10] Elle: And I played a lot of characters. When I was younger, I was married to a Frenchman when I was 18, 19, 20. I think I got married when I was 21. And so I was like French girl for a while. So that London period was a really illustrious period of life. And I found it really difficult.

[01:09:39] And that's when I decided to get sober, when I realized how difficult and how many plates in the air I was trying to juggle and do it all perfectly at the same time. And I wasn't present. And I really wanted to be present for my boys and live my true self and not just be running after every activity that was presented to me at the time.

[01:10:10] Luke: What was your process of hitting bottom like? How many different times did you scrape against the bottom? Or was it something that happened gradually, suddenly? And I'm asking because I find sometimes it's more difficult for people who have a successful infrastructure of life. And you have people around you that are excusing your behavior and you're not financially strapped and living on the street. I imagine it would be more difficult to hit a bottom when you have some cushion.

[01:10:47] Elle: Yeah, some cush. First of all, I was a very functioning alcoholic, so I didn't think I had a problem with alcohol. And in fact, nobody around me thought I did either. When I would say to people, "I'm thinking about going to rehab," they would laugh. They were like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, you're fine. You're the most together person I know."

[01:11:08] And the hardest part about getting sober in that situation was that I didn't hit a rock bottom. And so I didn't feel like I even deserved-- it wasn't like I was in jail and I'd lost everything. It was like, okay, I better get sober.

[01:11:26] It was like, well, everything's perfect. So it was a spiritual choice, an emotional and spiritual choice, which was in a way more elusive than a physical need. And I just got to the point where I didn't know myself anymore and I wasn't being how I thought I wanted to be in my life, and it was very painful.

[01:11:52] So it was difficult to actually identify that and to decide to go to rehab and to decide to go to meetings and things like that because I hadn't reached rock bottom. But somebody said to me, "You don't have to get off on the ground floor. You can get off on the fourth floor.

[01:12:10] Luke: Yeah.

[01:12:11] Elle: And that was such a helpful--

[01:12:13] Luke: Very fortunate. I think, what you described, I interpret as more of a internal emotional, spiritual bottom than the outside of your life falling apart. It's more like the inside falls apart. And either one work.

[01:12:30] Elle: Yeah, it's true. And they're both painful.

[01:12:33] Luke: So yeah, hitting bottom as more of a feeling than an event.

[01:12:43] Elle: Yeah. There were events that led up to it, but it was just like, man, I don't want to live like this anymore. And it wasn't the drinking that was the problem, really. It was just that my energy was being used in ways that were not-- I'd rather put my energy into creating something rather than just dealing with whatever I was dealing with that drinking was a crutch for.

[01:13:10] Luke: Did you have to make any drastic changes in terms of your social life and things like that?

[01:13:17] Elle: Yeah, I did. I didn't have to. I chose to.

[01:13:21] Luke: Okay. That's a good frame.

[01:13:23] Elle: First of all, I went to rehab, which I had a six-- not even six-month-old son, and I left to-- I was living in London. I went to Arizona. I was there for 40 days or more. I wanted to stay longer because I had such a good time. It was fabulous. And then when I came back it was, okay, how do I integrate this new perception or way of being into an old structure?

[01:13:54] And how do I not go on automatic pilot of the things that I always do that I really don't love to do, but I was just doing them because that's what I do. How do I break those habits? And a lot of it was around social things. We had a very, very addict social life. And so withdrawing from a lot of the events and things that were going on was really painful because, on the one hand, I felt like I was missing out. On the other hand, I felt that I was left out even though it was me who was choosing not to go.

[01:14:33] And then I suddenly didn't feel connected to people. And so I was back into that wormhole of feeling isolated. And in order to manage that, I chose to create new circle of friends, doing new things, different things. And so it wasn't one or the other. It was just transpose that social life for this social life.

[01:14:59] So instead of going to have a drink with a girlfriend at 7 o'clock, I'd go to a meeting at 7 o'clock and have a cup of tea with a bunch of other people.

[01:15:11] Luke: The chain smoking [Inaudible].

[01:15:11] Elle: Yeah, alkies.

[01:15:15] Luke: My favorite people unequivocally. I love alcoholics and addicts that are sober. They could be problematic if they haven't arrived there yet, but I don't know.

[01:15:25] Elle: Deep souls.

[01:15:25] Luke: Yeah. I don't know. It's like if you've been to another planet and you came back. You relate much more so to people that have been to that planet, especially if it was a torturous planet experience.

[01:15:41] Elle: Yeah.

[01:15:41] Luke: There's certain connection there. You get each other on a certain level without having to say anything.

[01:15:46] Elle: And there's an honesty and expression too. You learn through sharing from the heart. You learn how to do that. And we don't do that in social situations very often, or we hadn't. Perhaps we hadn't. I certainly didn't ever share what I was thinking and feeling to people in social situations.

[01:16:10] I always thought I was too. Every time I tried it, people just minced off. It's like, oh, she's too heavy. She's so not fun to be around. And that is where the beauty lies, in sharing your soul, sharing your spirit with another being. But we're not really taught that that's valuable in regular life.

[01:16:36] Luke: There's something very magnetic and bonding about vulnerability. There's a certain comfort in the discomfort. Say we are interfacing having this conversation and the more revelatory and vulnerable we are, the closer we feel. And it's true of all dynamics, but I think, I'm pretty sure that's the way it works in the case of creating media like this too. That there's a resonance with the people that are watching or listening because it's the language of the heart.

[01:17:14] Elle: Yeah. And the authenticity of it. I don't really see it as vulnerability because-- I know that's common lexicon, but we are not in harm's way, so I share with you my heart. I'm not in harm's way.

[01:17:27] Luke: I think I use vulnerability because when I am being really authentic, it feels vulnerable, even though that might not be the reality. But it's like, ooh, I just said that thing. Shit. Should I have said that?

[01:17:40] Elle: Yeah. I opened my kimono.

[01:17:42] Luke: Yeah, exactly.

[01:17:43] Elle: And I feel naked. And there's beauty in that. There's so much beauty in that. And that's how we connect through the heart and not through our minds, because the connection of the heart, that's where the longevity is. That's where the juice is. That's where the bliss is. That's where the joy is, is in that heart connection. And that's the connection that I choose to have with people today. And it's so fulfilling.

[01:18:09] Luke: It is, and you just created the perfect segue for me because I want to talk to you about relationships. And again, I'm referring to your book a lot because that's how I know the most about you. And it's a great book. We'll put it in the show notes, by the way, guys. You should all get the book at--

[01:18:25] Elle: Or the audio book.

[01:18:27] Luke: Yeah. lukestorey.com/elle, E-L-L-E. So you're in a relationship with one of my best friends now, which is how we met. And in reading your book, you've had some very diverse relationship experiences. The men you've been involved with were enigmatic and interesting and completely different as far as I can tell. So what have you learned? That's a five-hour podcast in and of itself.

[01:18:56] Elle: That is in itself. Learn on the fly. I've had incredibly profound relationships and long term, long relationships. Every relationship has been those-- the profound ones have been 10 years.

[01:19:13] Relationships have had a cycle. And I've loved every one to the best of my ability at that time. I think today is very different. Being in a relationship with somebody who I don't need him and he doesn't need me and I don't need to be needed and he doesn't need to be needed--

[01:19:46] We are not in a relationship to build a family. We are not in a relationship to build a business. We're not in a relationship to please our parents or for social status. It's a relationship based on love allowance, and has deep doses of compassion and care and authenticity and freedom.

[01:20:14] Elle: It's so liberating to have a relationship that is built on just purely being in each other's life because we choose to be. And when we met, it wasn't like either of us were looking for a relationship. We were focusing on the relationship with ourselves and source and raising our frequency and being the most autonomous, sovereign, fulfilled, blissful being that we could be.

[01:20:47] And we were both doing that independently. And so when we met, it was like you meet the person where you're at. And so it's been very flow full, and that hasn't always been the case in my life. Perhaps it's because I'm 60 now, I'm 61, and I'm just in that phase of my life, which is very different from when I was 35 and having kids or 40 and having children with the father of my children.

[01:21:20] We had a very different dynamic, which was co-parenting. And we still co-parent even though we are not together, haven't been together for 20 years. But I think we were just in a different phase in our lives and we had different objectives and different imprints of what is love. So I've learned a lot, and it's in the book.

[01:21:42] Luke: I am fascinated by your relationship with Doyle because Doyle is such a free spirit. If there ever was one, he is the epitome of that. His musical career, he has a very gypsy-like existence. You know what I mean? Lots of travel and just different experiences and different people, and he's a dynamo of a person.

[01:22:13] Elle: He has a rich interior life too. He is been through, as you know, his own cycles of getting to know himself on the highest, most exhilarating ways and the lowest depth of depression and depravity in ways. And so he has that deep inner wealth that he's traveled so deeply within himself.

[01:22:40] And yes, he's been to lots of different places and he has that gypsy quality, but really, he is this wild explorer spiritually.

[01:22:54] Luke: Yeah, he is an ancient soul.

[01:22:57] Elle: Yeah.

[01:22:57] Luke: For sure. Yeah. But I loved when you guys got together. It's just funny, Doyle and I being this around the same age and the same generation. I remember he first texted me. He is like, "Yeah, I'm going on a date with Elle Macpherson." And I was like, what? How did that happen?

[01:23:17] It's just funny. You never know where life is going to take you. It's so interesting in that way. But I've just been so happy for him as a friend and just to be with such a great woman who's done so much work on herself. There's such a richness.

[01:23:32] And as you said, when two people arrive at a point in life where they are whole within themselves, then there's something really magical that happens in that third entity of the relationship.

[01:23:44] Elle: The amplification.

[01:23:45] Luke: Yeah. It's the opposite of that, you complete me.

[01:23:50] Elle: That line, that's the Tom Cruise or Renee Zellweger.

[01:23:55] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[01:23:56] Elle: You complete me. And I think there was a time in humanity where the concept of being a divine masculine, divine feminine come together and they complete the yin yang. And we look towards that as being spiritual evolution as you meet your match. I'm good at this. You're good at that. And together we make a whole.

[01:24:25] And today, we're learning through human experience that it's no longer really about meeting your match. It's about being complete within yourself, being the yin and yang within you, and the divine masculine and the divine feminine embodied within you. And that's a different philosophy than what we had been taught when we were younger. We're hearing more about that today and the importance of that autonomy and that sovereignty within self rather than seeking it outside ourselves to be whole.

[01:25:12] Luke: That's so interesting. I never thought about it in the historical context. When child rearing and survival was based on the masculine and feminine polarity and each person bringing in what I now see as a lopsided expression of that and you really did need one another to create a complete whole.

[01:25:34] That's so interesting. I never thought about it like that. I have thought about in the context of my relationship that I learn about my feminine side from Alyson, things like intuition. There's a certain type of discernment she has that I'm like, "How do you do that? I need to get better at that."

[01:25:52] And then there's a certain stoic neutrality, I think, in the way that I hold masculine space that informs her. And there's a lot to learn from one another in that way, but that's a really interesting perspective. I'm going to contemplate that, just the cultural significance of how things were 50 years ago, 100 years ago, versus how they are now. We're in a totally different place. Women don't need men to go make money, is a huge change.

[01:26:24] Elle: That's true. And also, I think the thing is that we really understand, if we look at the-- I think we've defined a masculine and feminine roles as being, this is what guys do and this is what girls do. We look at it as a gender thing.

[01:26:43] But if you look at the actual qualities of the divine feminine, it is inspiration, intuition, nurturing, creativity. And when you look at the masculine qualities, they are the doingness. And so you don't want to be all doing. You need the inspiration from the heart that is your feminine side coming in and saying, "Okay, this inspires me."

[01:27:09] And now my masculine elements are the ones that apply it to life. This is how I execute it. And I think we've often looked at this masculine, feminine as being gender as opposed to qualities. And combining those qualities within ourselves is really where it's at. So Doyle is a perfect example.

[01:27:34] Why is he so charismatic when he plays guitar on stage or off? It's because he's in his perfect divine feminine and masculine integration and balance because the divine inspiration comes from what he's going to play. The masculine then kicks in on the techniques of how he's going to play it.

[01:28:01] Luke: Yeah. The structure of it.

[01:28:02] Elle: The structure of it. And it's awe-inspiring when you see that perfect balance. And we all have that capacity within ourselves to be in balance, the being and the doing, the inspiration, the heart and the head.

[01:28:19] Luke: The being and the doing. I like that. Yeah. I think as we progress and evolve as individuals, you can develop an ability to calibrate. So I can kind of sense if I am getting too rigid and too controlling and too much masculine energy. I'm holding good space, say in my relationship, but I'm not able to cultivate empathy or something like that. Because I'm just thinking more than feeling.

[01:28:55] But I think it's such a beautiful dance within ourselves in and out of relationship to just have an understanding of where that spectrum lies and where we are in it in any given moment and what the situation calls for. Because I know in relationships in the past, if I leaned too much into my feminine energy, it would spring my partner into too much masculine energy.

[01:29:18] Elle: Yeah, that's true.

[01:29:19] Luke: Because I wasn't holding it down. And they're like, "Okay, someone has to hold it down, so I'm going to step in and have to sway too much to the masculine energy side." And then you have a weird inverted polarity, which for me just is not enjoyable long term.

[01:29:38] Elle: But it's self-awareness, isn't it? And that's the whole dance. Is there a dance of self-awareness? And that therein lies the beauty as well, getting to know self, being aware of self, and things overwhelm.

[01:29:51] Luke: How do you and your relationship now navigate crunchy times, conflict?

[01:29:58] Elle: Hmm. We don't have much conflict, to be fair. Because we allow each other the space to go through whatever it is they're going through. And it's about being an observer, not a judger. So, oh, isn't it interesting? He's having a moment right now. And usually, it's the other way around.

[01:30:23] . I don't feel that I have to get his approval. I allow myself to be all the different flavors of myself, of my being, even if it's unattractive at times. And I have the freedom because I don't feel judged. I don't fear rejection because of it.

[01:30:51] Luke: Mm. Or abandonment.

[01:30:52] Elle: Yeah. Or abandonment. And my biggest concern is that I don't want to hurt. I don't want to hurt him or hurt myself. And sometimes inadvertently I do that. And so we don't really have a lot of conflict between us. We are aligned anyway. We came together aligned, as aligned. We met in a very aligned space within ourselves individually. Some of the things that we do that really help is the amount of serotonin that can be released, or oxytocin that can be released from a 25-second hug is exponential.

[01:31:37] Luke: 100%

[01:31:38] Elle: A six-second kiss.

[01:31:40] Luke: Very underrated. Yeah.

[01:31:42] Elle: Yeah. We will often do breath together, heart to heart, or ohm together. So crunchy time, misunderstanding, I think I hurt you, and you think you hurt me, or whatever it is, we will come together heart to heart, and we will just ohm together, and that breaks up whatever it was.

[01:32:08] Luke: Smooths out the crunches.

[01:32:08] Elle: Yeah. So there are actual things that you can do as a couple that can help just-- taking someone's hand when you really feel like walking off in a huff into your own room and having a hissy fit. Just take someone's hand. You don't even need to say anything. And it's such a wonderful connect-- because what do we fear?

[01:32:32] We fear being abandoned. And really the only person we abandoned is ourselves. That's been my experience. And I know that sounds like a cliche, but I abandon myself, and that has been my patterning for a long time. And when I'm in pain, that's what I tend to do, and then I blame somebody else.

[01:32:57] Luke: I love that sense of responsibility and self-honesty. I think that's one of the most profound things about the way that the 12 steps transform one's character, is shifting out of that victim identity and taking responsibility for the way you think, the way you see things, your perception, the way you feel.

[01:33:20] It's like this thing you hear people say, and I'm sure I did it most of my life until I started to figure this out. You say, well, you made me mad when you-- I don't know where I first heard it. It's like, no one can make you feel anything. No matter how much intent I muster up right here, I cannot force you to have the experience of anger in your body. I literally can't do it.

[01:33:43] Elle: It is a choice.

[01:33:44] Luke: But if we got in a tussle, it might feel like that to you. I think that's such a beautiful gift, is to be able, as you said earlier, the observer, the witness. To be able to see, wow. Not even to say I am angry, but to say, "Wow, man, if I'm really honest, through this interaction right now, I'm feeling a lot of what I would perceive to be anger in my body.

[01:34:06] Elle: Yeah. I'm having feelings.

[01:34:11] Luke: Yeah. But it's so freeing and also lets the other person, whether it's romantic or not, off the hook and again, it's, to me, a vulnerable thing to say, wow, I'm going to resist the temptation of blaming you for what I'm experiencing within me. I'm just going to share with you honestly, hey, I just want to be honest. Whatever's happening right now is accompanied by a certain felt sense of being within me.

[01:34:37] Elle: I've got a cortisol spike. My mouth is dry. I can't think right.

[01:34:42] Luke: Exactly. I'm starting to get sweaty palms.

[01:34:43] Elle: I think that's where the gene keys are really amazing.

[01:34:46] Luke: I've not looked into that. What can you tell us about the gene keys?

[01:34:52] Elle: I am going to refrain from being too articulate about it because I'm not articulate, but it does talk a lot about how there's a unraveling of how an emotional remembrance or experience can have a physical reaction in the body. And how the amount of oxygen that goes through the brain when you do blah, blah, blah. Look into it.

[01:35:2]1 It's a very holistic view of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing and how they all interplay in our lives and how they manifest in our body. And I'm a big believer in this-- I believe for the longest time that I had a spiritual life and then I had a physical life and I had a mental life and emotional life, and they were compartmentalized.

[01:35:48] I didn't realize that they all connected to each other and one thing had a knock-on effect on the others. And I need to find balance within each. And it sounds like a really difficult juggling act, but once you realize that everything is connected, you understand yourself better and you go, "I can fix this by changing this." And I learned that through cancer.

[01:36:15] Luke: Ah, see, you're so great at these intuitive segues because that was the next area I wanted to go into. Yeah, I was wondering as you were talking, I bet she arrived at some of that understanding when you had a physical manifestation.

[01:36:27] Elle: Yeah.

[01:36:28] Luke: So speaking about this idea of having an awareness of your whole being and not compartmentalizing, and you, of course, publicly shared about it in your book, at least to some degree. I don't know what the details were, but you went through a breast cancer journey and have emerged being healed, which is always what we want to see happen. Take me back to the moment you were diagnosed if you can--

[01:36:57] Elle: Gosh. Yeah, I can remember. So diagnosis with cancer in my case comes in phases. So first of all, you might go for a mammogram. In my case, I went for a checkup and the doctor noticed that I had a lump in my breast, and I had said to the person who was doing the-- what's it called? It's not a sonogram.

[01:37:27] Luke: Ultrasound?

[01:36:28] Elle: Ultrasound, yeah. Oh, don't worry about that. I had had a cystic fibroadenoma cyst 10 years ago, and they put a little clip in there. And so what you're seeing is that irregularity is probably just that. But as it happened, a breast oncologist surgeon, who was a friend of mine passed by to have a look at the scan.

[01:37:48] And so she looked at that scan. She was like, "Oh, you have to have this looked at." And so that was the first hint. And I'm like, "Ah, no, it'd be fine. We'll just do a biopsy. It'll be great." Did a biopsy. The biopsy came back and I thought she'd say, "Oh, it's nothing. It's the same as what you've had before."

[01:38:08] And the biopsy came back, no, this is cancerous. And then I was like, "Oh, okay. We'll just do a lumpectomy. And so I've seen the lump, then you do a biopsy, and then you do a lumpectomy. And then they did a lumpectomy, and then they couldn't get clean margins of the lumpectomy, and then they had a second lumpectomy.

[01:38:32] So there was all these parts along the way where I was getting a little bit of information. And each time it was more and more-- I don't know the word in English. More and more--

[01:38:47] Luke: Concerning?

[01:38:48] Elle: Concerning, yeah. And so I'd thought it's nothing until the end of the second lumpectomy where the doctor had already taken half my breast pretty much, and she just said, "Oh, we can't get any clear margins." And this is where we have to move on to another phase of treatment, whether it be chemotherapy or mastectomy or radiation.

[01:39:13] And that's when things got really scary. But the lead up to that, for the first few months before that, as I'm going through the other tests, it was bite-sized pieces of information. So it is not like one day they go, you're fine, and then you've got cancer.

[01:39:29] Luke: Right. I talk about some things that aren't controversial to me, but are to some people in the mainstream. But I've always been very suspicious of mammograms just on an intuitive basis just because I know radiation is not great for you.

[01:39:49] And now I forget if it was Switzerland, somewhere they just banned mammograms because they caused breast cancer. And I'm thinking, oh my God, how many women have been doing their due diligence and getting their regular checkups and getting mammograms from the time they grew breast and now are like, oh, mysteriously ending up with this issue? Were you someone who got mammograms on a regular basis?

[01:40:14] Elle: I did. Regular testing, I believe is imperative. Mammograms was the way I chose to do it with the information that I had at the time. And then once I was diagnosed and I started to do a deep dive into a lot of the practices that were common practice for me, I changed my method of testing to either thermography or to ultrasound. And still very, very accurate and perhaps less invasive.

[01:40:49] But at the time, I just did what girls do. I went and did my tests all the time, and I was very responsible with my body in that sense. And it was really just by chance that we found this lump.

[01:41:05] Luke: Wow. What about ultrasounds? Do you think that those are a good diagnostic tool?

[01:41:13] Elle: It's definitely one that I've used.

[01:41:17] Luke: I'm sorry. MRIs.

[01:41:19] Elle: Oh, MRIs.

[01:41:20] Luke: Yeah. You already said ultrasounds. There was one--

[01:41:21] Elle: So there's a functional MRI that doesn't use as much radiation. It depends on what you're testing. Sometimes-- and I'm not a doctor and I don't pretend to be an expert.

[01:41:33] Luke: And we're not giving medical advice.

[01:41:34] Elle: And we're not giving medical advice.

[01:41:36] Luke: You're speaking from your experience. We've got that clear.

[01:41:39] Elle: There are some conditions that an MRI is really great and there's some conditions that it's not. But if you do have to do an MRI, apparently if you do a functional MRI, it is more conducive to health and wellbeing than others.

[01:41:54] Luke: Yeah. We went and did one a couple months ago called Prenuvo. Have you heard about that?

[01:41:58] Elle: Yeah, I've heard about it. It's that full body scan.

[01:42:00] Luke: Yeah. Super cool. No radiation and you don't have to take the contrast dye.

[01:42:05] Elle: I wouldn't put a contrast dye in my body at this point.

[01:42:09] Luke: Yeah, I wouldn't either.

[01:42:10] Elle: I did though. I did when I first was diagnosed.

[01:42:14] Luke: Yeah. But we had a great experience doing that. Its validity was proven to me because they didn't know anything about me and then the scan showed, oh, I have some arthritis in my right hip and there's this. It found the things I already knew about, which was affirming, and thankfully didn't find anything abnormal either. But I thought that was a valuable test to do. Not cheap, but still you do it every couple of years.

[01:42:45] Elle: Sometimes early diagnosis of things is really helpful and sometimes it can have the opposite effect where you're doing perfectly well. But then you start to focus on what you think is not working in your body and then what you focus on grows.

[01:43:05] Luke: Right. You manifest the thing out of belief. Yeah.

[01:43:09] Elle: Exactly. So it's a bit of a double-edged sword, like everything in life.

[01:43:12] Luke: Going back to-- so you had a minor surgery and then they couldn't get a clean-- what did you call it?

[01:43:20] Elle: It's called clean margins.

[01:43:21] Luke: Margins. Okay.

[01:43:22] Elle: So they couldn't get the tissue around the growth that had no cancer cells really. And then they tried again and they still couldn't get clean margins. And so they'd done what they could do with surgery. And then the next option was, okay, so now you have choices. You can do radiation. You can do chemotherapy. You can do a mastectomy. You can do a double mastectomy.

[01:43:54] If you want to feel like you have balanced breasts, reconstructive surgery. And then that goes into so much more detail. And then it's like, well, can we spare the nipple? No, we can't spare the nipple. And then you can do nipple tattooing. There's a lot of decisions to make if you do a mastectomy.

[01:44:16] My route to choosing a different path was when I spoke to a doctor and I said, "Listen, I'm thinking of doing a mastectomy. I don't know whether I should do saline implants or silicone. And when I started to do a deep dive on what happens to a body with saline and silicone implants, then I was stuck with, okay, now what do you do?

[01:44:46] And so that wasn't a choice for me. And yeah, it was a long and winding road to find a series of protocols that felt right for me. But I saw many doctors and nobody guaranteed 100% wellness. And they all had different routes to getting there. And so when there's that situation where there's so many different opinions, the only thing you can do is listen, do your research, and then find the road that feels most resonant with you.

[01:45:32] Because when you have the backing of your belief system behind you, the chances of recovery are going to be much greater, whatever you choose. If you think chemotherapy is the only way to go, you truly believe that, and then somebody says, oh no, you should be trying this and this protocols, chances are whatever you try other than what you truly believe is right for you, you may not have the same success. So it's important to have your belief system behind you.

[01:46:01] Luke: Yeah. And I'm imagining if you're getting no guarantees from the allopathic side or the alternative side, then what's your decision-making process then if it's not just tapping into that inner wisdom, that inner knowing? I think that would be really difficult, as opposed as I am to a lot of what Western medicine has to offer and it's centralized current model.

[01:46:29] It maybe does more harm than good in some cases. I think it would be difficult for me because I think I would write off that entire category at the get go and maybe even miss some value there and then be left with, oh my God, even in the realm of the alternative treatments, there's a million "experts" in all kinds of different ways you can go.

[01:46:54] And the fear of, I think I resonate with this particular practitioner or clinician or whatever, but then there's 10 other options. It's like, to me, the decision fatigue could be really difficult in and of itself.

[01:47:09] Elle: The indecision is very painful. Not truly knowing is a very painful place to be. And not being able to make a decision because there's so many options, you have to be a bit of a samurai. And once you decide to do whatever it is you've decided, to do it 110%.

[01:47:45] And I didn't know. I didn't have any ideological perception. It wasn't like, oh, I'm against allopathic medicine, and therefore-- and nobody will ever truly know until they're in that situation. You don't know what you're going to do if faced with that. I certainly didn't have a preconceived idea of, oh, if ever I get cancer, I'm definitely not doing chemotherapy. That wasn't in my--

[01:48:11] Luke: So this was all in real time. Each decision along the path was tapping into your inner knowing and proceeding to the next indicated step?

[01:48:21] Elle: Absolutely. Based on what I felt and what I heard and the information that became available to me.

[01:48:29] Luke: With cancer in particular, it's the one that most of us are most afraid of in terms of issues you could have. But I think what makes it so gnarly is just the time sensitive nature of it. That it's not something you can just, ah, I'll deal with that later.

[01:48:46] Elle: We say that. That's what they teach us, is that, oh, you have to make a decision now. But most cancers in bodies have taken 10 years to form.

[01:48:56] Luke: really? See, I think about--

[01:48:56] Elle: It didn't come overnight.

[01:48:58] Luke: I think it's like getting poison oak or something. Like, oh, you just got it one day and it's going to get worse and worse.

[01:49:04] Elle: No. Usually, there's been many layers that have contributed to it. It could be environmental toxicity, emotional toxicity. It can be belief systems. There's so many different layers that just keep-- addiction to sugar. I didn't know that there was such a correlation between sugar and--

[01:49:35] Luke: I forgot that when we were talking about addictions.

[01:49:37] Elle: Yeah. Sugar and cancer.

[01:49:38] Luke: I have a thing with ice cream.

[01:49:39] Elle: Cancer thrives on sugar.

[01:49:43] Luke: Is that a true thing? Because I've heard that a lot. I've just never looked into it because I've never had cancer, knock on wood.

[01:49:48] Elle: Yeah. Again, I'm not a specialist in anybody else's case. I am not authorized really, even to talk about it. I am authorized to talk about my experience with cancer. But what I found was that if you have cancer, you better not be eating sugar.

[01:50:06] Luke: Yeah, yeah,

[01:50:07] Elle: That was a big no-no.

[01:50:09] Luke: I think there's a pretty thing upon which most people agree, and that is around your pH. That the acid-alkaline balance in the body in terms of cancer healing prefers a more alkaline environment, which would speak to why it's not a great idea to eat sugar.

[01:50:28] Elle: Every disease is amplified through inflammation. So whatever causes inflammation in the body, which can be high acidity in the body, will exacerbate, will make worse any disease, any dis-ease that we're talking about that manifests in the body physically. But then there's other stuff. There's emotional factors. There's environmental factors. There's genetic factors. There's nutritional factors.

[01:51:05] Luke: I think the emotional part, it's exciting that people are becoming more aware of how impactful that is. I was talking to my younger brother today before you arrived, and he's really taken to the Joe Dispenza work. It's just beautiful to watch. He's super committed. He and his wife get up at 5:30 every day and do a 90-minute Joe Dispenza every day.

[01:51:30] But he reminded me after having gone to some of those events at these miraculous healings that people have of supposedly incurable conditions, whether it's Parkinson's, MS, cancer, whatever. They're not doing any other treatments. They're just changing their consciousness and their deeply held belief about something in their energy.

[01:51:53] And they're verifiably healing themselves just based on that. It's totally in the spiritual-emotional realm with little or no intervention to the physical body itself. And there's so much to that. I think we're just barely peeking into the potential of that power.

[01:52:14] Elle: Yeah. And until we've mastered it, it's probably best not to just rely on that.

[01:52:19] Luke: Yeah. Right, right. What? I meditated twice. It's not gone. Yeah.

[01:52:23] Elle: Yeah. So I address it on so many different levels, and I felt that I needed to. I wasn't going to leave any stone unturned. And I don't go into a lot of detail about it in the book. The chapter on cancer is really about how to make a decision when you're grouped with fear and faced with a life and death situation, or a perceived life and death situation. Because we will all experience that.

[01:52:53] We may not all experience cancer, but we will all experience a time where we're so gripped with fear, we just don't know what to do. And so that whole chapter is about how to slow down, get quiet, listen to your inner sense, as well as your common sense, and then act on it, even in the most dire situations.

[01:53:18] And that's what I did in my case. And I didn't know if I was making the right decision, but I knew I was making the right decision for me at that time. And I'm glad I did because I find myself, eight years later, talking about it. It was such a catalyst for me. There's some great books that you can read, which is, The Body Keeps Score, was really helpful for me.

[01:53:47] And Collation of Health was another one that was really wonderful that talked about the emotional, physical, and spiritual connection to any dis-ease in the body and how it's all related. And I felt like I knew a lot about health and wellbeing. I knew about staying fit and being thin and looking good and all that kind of stuff, but I didn't truly understand the effects that our emotional and spiritual wellbeing can have on our physical body until I was faced with this imbalance, which we call cancer.

[01:54:25] Luke: I like that, an imbalance. Being a public figure, was it difficult to deal with contrarian ideas in terms of how public you could be about talking about your path? Whether it was from the media or people in your personal life, did you get a lot of resistance or flack because of the decisions you made? And was that part of another hurdle to overcome, was owning your sovereignty and making your own decisions?

[01:54:57] Elle: Yeah, absolutely. I know the power of the pharmaceutical industry. I've seen it. And we've seen that in the last 10 years, the rise of the power of the pharmaceutical industry. So even though I knew it, I was still surprised when there was so much pushback on me sharing that I made a decision that was contrary to conventional ways of doing things.

[01:55:32] So like, heaven forbid, she trusted herself. Really, that's basically the thing. Heaven forbid. She didn't put her power outside herself. She trusted herself. And to be-- I don't want to say persecuted because that is victim consciousness, but to be called out for that is really extraordinary in this day and age.

[01:55:55] And the bottom line is, made a choice. I'm well. It doesn't matter what choice I made. If somebody had written, particularly in Australia when I was at home, like, "Wow, she had cancer and now she doesn't and she's well, thank goodness. What a celebration." And there was none of that. And then none of, well, what did you do?

[01:56:24] Luke: So they were more so critical in Australia.

[01:56:28] Elle: I launched my book in Australia, so perhaps it was just the first port of entry.

[01:56:32] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:56:33] Elle: But there was a lot of discussion about me being irresponsible because I was perhaps encouraging other people to go down the road that I went. But if you read the book, I don't talk about what I did. So there's no advice at all about what to do.

[01:56:49] Luke: You don't even name the doctors you worked with or what the protocols were or any of that. So that, true to your intent, was the message is not like, oh, don't do this treatment, do this one. The message is decide for yourself.

[01:57:04] Elle: Based on what feels aligned with where you are at and what you have. Because it's not a one-size-fits-all disease. Any disease is not like, well, everybody, if you just do this, everybody will be well. It's not the case. And I had a very specific type of cancer, and it responded extremely well to the protocols that I followed.

[01:57:37] And it was intense. It wasn't like I just went off and just said, oh, I think I'll drink some green juice for a little while and changed my perspective on it. It was intense. And I'm so grateful because the protocols and the new ways of doing things have become my lifestyle today.

[01:57:56] And I have a much healthier life than I ever did. I learned about oxygen and hyperbaric chambers and ozone and infrared saunas, and castor oil packs and sunlight and prayer and meditation and diet and the quality of the water, the quality of the air. It became such a wonderful education on how to live better and with no side effects.

[01:58:25] Luke: Yeah. You and Doyle are quite the biohacking couple actually.

[01:58:29] Elle: We call it biotweaking.

[01:58:31] Luke: Yeah. I don't like the term biohacking.

[01:58:32] Elle: Yeah. Because we say you can't hack the intelligence of the body.

[01:58:36] Luke: True. I always say this on the show, but I've been trying to come up with a better word, I think. Oh, biohealing, biotweaking. Tweaking reminds me of crystal meth though.

[01:58:44] Elle: That's true. That's not a good one.

[01:58:46] Luke: That's just my own thing.

[01:58:47] Elle: But if we come from the place, which is where I came from, even in my decision to choose the protocols that I did, if we believe that the body has the capacity to heal, if we give it the right tools-- and in my case it was like, I do believe the body has the capacity to heal. What are the tools?

[01:59:13] And in some cases the tools could be chemotherapy, radiation, whatever. In some took in cases, it could be dietary changes, IVs, high dose vitamin Cs, extra oxygen. There's so many different ways of going about it, but the body does have the capacity to heal. And I believe, if the body has created such an invasive dissonance within it, if it has the power to do that, it also has the power to create absolute wellness.

[01:59:51] Luke: 100%.

[01:59:52] Elle: Because they're two very powerful ways of expression inside the body. And so I choose to adopt a way that amplifies my body and wellness in wellbeing constantly.

[02:00:09] Luke: It's interesting how we, and maybe some of it's programming, to outsource our power and the extractive nature of the medical industry as a whole. It's like we're not shocked if we cut our arm with a knife that it just magically becomes skin again in a couple weeks. You know what I mean?

[02:00:29] Elle: Yeah, coagulates.

[02:00:30] Luke: Yeah. It's just, well, what's doing that? Or you break a bone and if you set the bone right, it's like it never happened. It's like what force, what energetics, what intelligence is coming together to bring that injury or that dis-ease back into coherence.

[02:00:48] There's some unifying force there that's doing that, and we all kind of know it on the external level of our physical being, but if it's something on the inside that we can't see such as cancer, we're like, no, that's not going to work. It's like the body only knows how to do it if you accidentally knock your toenail off.

[02:01:11] But if it's something on the inside and your intestines or organs or wherever you think, oh, no, I need to go find someone to fix it for me, and not that there's anything wrong with doing that either, but I'm looking forward to a new paradigm where more of us honor our bodies and embrace.

[02:01:28] And as you said, the body, to me, it's like it either needs some inputs, as you called tools. There's things it's not getting that it wants and needs to do its job. Or you're doing things that are getting in the way of it doing its job. It's like you either need to subtract or add depending on what your situation is.

[02:01:47] Elle: And sometimes we need guidance. So it's not like, well, I've got all the answers. No, we can seek guidance. We can educate ourselves. It's not like you're supposed to have all the answers except for the inner knowing that the body has the capacity to heal.

[02:02:05] And I first got an idea of this when I became pregnant. Think about the miraculousness of growing another human being inside you while you are still in this body, still going about your life, and not even knowing what's going on. We don't know all that cell division and, okay, now the eyes are being formed and the brain.

[02:02:33] We are growing this other soul and spirit and physical body inside our bodies while we're going about just doing our normal daily stuff. It's extraordinary how magical our bodies are.

[02:02:52] Luke: Yeah, it's insane. That's probably the greatest example of that, the miracle of the body.

[02:03:01] Elle: Just knowing what to do.

[02:03:02] Luke: Women just make a thing out of nothing. It's the true manifestation.

[02:03:07] Elle: Made out of love usually.

[02:03:09] Luke: Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully that's the case. Yeah. So as I said, you're a biotweaker, biohealer, and after we met the first time, someone on your team sent me a bunch of your WelleCo products, which I only have one left because I enjoyed it, and I gobbled them all up. But this is one that I really covet, which is why I have some left.

[02:03:32] It's the Calm Elixir. It's got lemon balm and passionflower and all these great plant extracts and stuff. And I usually will take two to four of those and empty the capsules out into my little nightly drink because I'm usually too hyper at night and I need to really slow it down quickly.

[02:03:51] So I've been enjoying that. How did that come about? When did you go from someone who was a health enthusiast for your own life to go, hey, I want to create something and bring it to the world?

[02:04:05] Elle: Well, I didn't think I want to create something and bring it to the world. I went through my own crisis when I turned 50 where I realized that all the things that I'd been doing before were not working. So my diet didn't change. My workout routine didn't change, but my body started changing. And I started putting on weight and my skin changed. My hair changed. My moods changed.

[02:04:30] I started to get out of bed and I started to feel achy. I was getting hot flushes. So obviously my hormones are changing and I didn't realize it. And I was just like, I feel like crap all the time. So something's not working. And I can't rely on genetics anymore because I could go to work and look fabulous in my 20, 30, and 40s.

[02:04:54] It started to get very difficult when I turned 50. And so I went on a bit of a journey myself to go, okay, what can I do to support myself through hormonal changes and physical changes and just aging? Because I still want to work. I still want to get out there. I want covers of magazines. I still want to play with my kids.

[02:05:16] I want to feel good. I want to feel beautiful. I want to have a libido. I want to have a sense of vitality. And I don't have any of that right now. And a lot of people were saying, traditional doctors was just saying, "Listen, this is just what happens when you're 50." And it's like, well, hell no.

[02:05:36] I'm just not going to be fat and 50. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it wasn't the way I wanted to experience my life at that time. And so I found a brilliant nutritionist on Harley Street, and I went to see her and I said, "Listen, I don't understand. I'm taking all these vitamins and minerals. I'm doing the same thing. I work out every day."

[02:05:58] And she said, "The vitamins that you're taking are synthetic, so your body's not recognizing them. They're not bioavailable. And basically, you're malnourished." Because as Zack will tell us, Zack Bush will tell us, the soils that we have today don't have the nutrients that they used to have them anymore because we farm them. We till the soils.

[02:06:18] We don't let the soils rest for seven years like we used to. So our food doesn't have the vitamin and minerals, and we are not really-- the microbiome of our bodies being messed up from glyphosate and from all the stuff we're spraying on our fruit and vegetables. So I said to her, "I want to create a Māori vitamin and mineral for me. Can you give me something that can help me through these phases?"

[02:06:47] And so she created these greens, and they were in capsule form in the beginning. She already had them, part of her program with her clients, and I was taking them religiously. And then after about six weeks, I saw a huge change in my body and in my spirit. And I just said, "I love it, but I don't like taking 10 pills five times a day. Can we make a powder?"

[02:07:16] Luke: Alyson's the same way. I'll be like, "Hey, you should get on this thing." She's like, "I'm not eating 10 pills a day ever."

[02:07:22] Elle: Horse pills too. And so she said, "Yeah, I think I can." And she made a powder that was a one and done multivitamin mineral adaptogen, a probiotic, prebiotic, super-duper take this every day and you'll feel fabulous with water and look good.

[02:07:43] And that was it. That was the birth of the Super Elixir, which was our hero product. And people were coming to me and saying, "You look different. You seem different. You feel different." I was like, "Yeah, I am." I can't believe it was so simple, that I could change this course of the flow of whatever it is, cycle of my life quite easily. I can support myself through it.

[02:08:15] And then I decided I wanted to share that with other women because so many people were coming to me with the similar symptoms as I had. And so I said, "Listen, I want to make this available to as many people as I can." And that was the birth of the Super Elixir.

[02:08:29] And I got onto a three-step program, which was the greens in the morning, a clean lean protein in the afternoon and a sleep tea at night. So it was three steps, morning, noon, and night. And that became the foundation of our business, creating those three products. And now, we have 15, 20 products, but the one that I want to get for you is the Evening Elixir.

[02:08:52] Luke: Oh, bring it on.

[02:08:53] Elle: Yeah. Which is a hot chocolate, magnesium hot chocolate, and it's got a lot of these ingredients as well-- passionflower and vitamin C. And it's been a beautiful journey of service, building a business from my heartfelt value or my heartfelt desire to help other people. And it is a life of service and one of the biggest choice of my life. And I started it at 50, so it's never too late.

[02:09:22] Luke: That's epic. That's great to hear.

[02:09:25] Elle: And we've been going for 10, 12 years now.

[02:09:27] Luke: That's so cool. Yeah, sometimes I wonder if I have another thing in me. You know what I mean? I'm like, I've been podcasting for almost nine years, and I often think like, I don't know if I want to keep doing this. But then I sit down and have a great conversation like this and go, "Oh, this is awesome." But then I forget in between because there's a grind in between. There's a lot more behind the scenes obviously, than sitting down and talking to someone.

[02:09:53] Elle: Yeah, there's the research and the thing and the setting.

[02:09:54] Luke: Yeah. It's a thing. And I have a great team, Jarrod and Bailey and Megan.

[02:09:58] Elle: And you have all your affiliate programs and you're such an education source, especially for EMF, which is my favorite thing.

[02:10:06] Luke: Oh yeah. The EMF thing, I just feel like it's such an underserved and crucial awareness that we need to have. But back to your doing something at 50, I think that's really inspiring because sometimes at 54, I feel the sense that it's too late to pivot. Like, what could I do? This is what I do. You know what I mean?

[02:10:32] Elle: It'll come to you though.

[02:10:32] Luke: I feel like even if I didn't want to do this anymore, I would be compelled to keep doing it just because I don't know what the other thing could possibly be. So it's inspiring.

[02:10:41] Elle: For me, it wasn't really about what can I do. It wasn't just like, I need to redefine myself at this age. It was more, I have to freaking share this stuff that I've learned with other people. And it became a business. But my intention wasn't to create 100-million-dollar business. It was to create a resource for people who were struggling or who wanted support in their wellness journey.

[02:11:10] Luke: Same here with the podcast. I didn't even know you could make money on a podcast when I started. It was really expensive. My production was like three or four grand a month, and I was paying for it before I had sponsors and stuff. And I thought, how do people do this? You can't do it if you're broke.

[02:11:26] Elle: Yeah.

[02:11:27] Luke: It was my little extra revenue from my other career, and I used that for this. And thankfully it eventually started paying for itself.

[02:11:36] Elle: And you followed your heart. It moved you.

[02:11:38] Luke: Yeah. It's just what I felt like doing. I wanted to do something that I would do for free because I was doing it for free for a long time in the beginning. And that's how it feels now. It rarely feels like work because I know it's having an impact on other people, but selfishly it has an impact on me.

[02:11:59] I sit down and talk to someone like you and I go, "Shit, I learned something, or I was inspired, or I just had a beautiful interaction." And it's like my social life kind of. It's really taken the place of a lot of my social activities and things like that.

[02:12:17] Elle: And connecting with people on a deep level.

[02:12:20] Luke: Yeah. I don't get out a lot, so it's an opportunity. And I know it's not going to be small talk, which I have a very difficult time with. So I know if someone sits down, it's going to be a meaningful conversation because I don't invite anyone on that can't have a meaningful conversation.

[02:12:37] Elle: And a life of service is so fulfilling, to be able to help other people. And everybody who watches your podcast, whether it's this one or any of them, somebody will walk away with one or many tips that will improve their life, the quality of their life. And that's so powerful.

[02:13:04] Luke: It's epic.

[02:13:05] Elle: You're bringing your uniqueness into the world, and that's what we are here to do, your unique gifts. And this is your method of doing it.

[02:13:12] Luke: Yeah. I know that because I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I've grown and expanded and evolved so much from the things that I've learned other people talking about. I'm an audio learner, I think, is one of the reasons. When I hear something, for some reason it sticks in a way that it wouldn't if I was reading it, for example.

[02:13:35] Elle: Yeah. And that's why you're interested in music too, because that's your love.

[02:13:41] Luke: Yeah, totally.

[02:13:42] Elle: Comes from the ear.

[02:13:43] Luke: It started with audio books. Back in the day, before there were MP3s, I used to get spiritual teachers. I would get their big cassette books, Tony Robbins, stuff like that, personal development. And they'd be these big books you would get at the conferences and they had a bunch of cassettes in them. And then there were CDs and then MP3s.

[02:14:03] Elle: I remember those, yeah.

[02:14:05] Luke: And I'm like, "That shit changed my life in early sobriety because I had so much bad information in my subconscious mind." I was so demented.

[02:14:18] Elle: And it's inspiration too.

[02:14:22] Luke: I needed to displace all the bad information I had with something true. And that started to eventually seep in and I thought, "Wow, this is incredible." It's a very affordable way to transform your life just by listening to someone who has some experience or wisdom and then taking what they said they do and do it myself, and I get the same result.

[02:14:46] Elle: Give it a go.

[02:14:47] Luke: It's just like in meetings. You hear someone, "I've been sober for 40 years and I got a great life." And you go, "What are you doing? Because my life sucks. I got 30 days and I want to kill myself still." So you take the model that they're demonstrating for you and you start to apply it. And next thing you know, you have the same thing they have. It's cool.

[02:15:05] Elle: Yeah. Or you have your blissful experience in your life, which may not be the same thing because what you're looking for is that peace, fulfillment. And it may look different in everybody's lives. It's not the same as everyone else's life, but it's your version of it that, that sense of joy.

[02:15:25] Luke: Yeah, it is. We're on your third glass of water.

[02:15:28] Elle: I know. And I'm licking my lips. You guys are going, "Why does she keep licking her lips?" I don't know why I am. I'm so dry.

[02:15:33] Luke: You must really like to hydrate. You've drink more water than any guest in history. I love it.

[02:15:38] Elle: I do drink a lot.

[02:15:39] Luke: But I have kept you for a long time too, in all fairness. I got one last question for you, Elle. Who have been three teachers or teachings throughout your life that have informed who you are today?

[02:15:55] Elle: My children will be my greatest teachers because through their birth, I experienced unconditional love for the first time, the understanding of what it means to be unconditionally loving in life. And that was a huge turning point, when I realized that love is not like, that love is allowance, that love is the foundation for everything.

[02:16:32] I was 35 when I had my first child, and 40 when I had my second, 41 when I had my second. So I think they were probably my biggest teachers through their birth. And also learning to be a wise loving guide parent to two young boys. They teach me every day with their stuff.

[02:16:55] My youngest said to me the other day, "I got to give you a tip here, mum. Less fluff on the texts. Get to the information, less fluff." I said, "Why don't you answer my texts?" And he goes, "Too fluffy."

[02:17:10] Luke: Wow. That's funny.

[02:17:11] Elle: And I was embarrassed. I got hot. And he said, "Yeah, if you want to talk, pick up the phone, talk to me. Don't do fluffy texts." And I was like, "Man, thanks." I think I do that quite a lot. Why don't I just pick up the phone? Why do I think I need to write a book on a text?

[02:17:31] Luke: That's funny. There might be a difference in male and female communication styles within that too.

[02:17:38] Elle: Well, true. And if a boy's talking to a father or talking to his mother.

[02:17:41] Luke: Yeah. I observe Alyson and her friends doing these really long voice notes. 10, 15, 20 minutes. I just shut off voicemail on my phone because I literally--

[02:17:55] Elle: Mee too. I don't have any voice notes.

[02:17:56] Luke: It's a 30-second voicemail, I'm like, "Boring. I'm done. Get to the point." So it might just be in a way that the masculine just wants to get to the core of the issue.

[02:18:07] Elle: How can I take action on what you're saying?

[02:18:10] Luke: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[02:18:12] Elle: So I would say my children. The other person that has really influenced me in my life is my mentor and teacher. His name is Paul Darrol Walsh. I talk about him in the book

[02:18:23] Luke: Yeah, you did talk about him a lot.

[02:18:24] Elle: Yeah. And actually, he's somebody I'd like to connect you with because he is such a badass OG.

[02:18:31] Luke: I would love that.

[02:18:31] Elle: He teaches ascension, which is living heaven on Earth, basically, how we live our lives in the most loving, abundant, transient way while maintaining a body on this plane. So he's a really remarkable teacher, and his book From Atoms To Angels is what really started me on this course, or on this journey towards this more spiritual perspective of life. That with AA.

[02:19:11] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[02:19:12] Elle: So him and-- what else? Two sons and a mentor; is that three?

[02:19:22] Luke: Yeah, that counts. That counts.

[02:19:24] Elle: No, I've read a lot of books. There's been so many great teachers along the way that have influenced me at different times in my life, depending on where I'm at.

[02:19:35] Luke: Yeah. I look at that sometimes, speaking of ascension, as your understanding, maturity, awareness, consciousness evolves. Or maybe an elevator might be a better analogy. It's like at first you get off on the third floor and you meet a teacher there and it's revelatory and life changing. And then you spend some time on the third floor and you absorb what there is there, and then the inspiration is lost.

[02:20:05] And you got all that you could get at that level. And then you go up subsequent floors and at each floor you meet someone that meets you there that takes you to the next level. That's the way it's been with me. And then there are some I think I mastered. I go back down to the third floor. I'm like, "Oh, I totally didn't get it the first time. There's more to integrate here."

[02:20:26] Elle: I wanted to read you something here about ascension. And this can either be on camera or off, but I love this because-- okay, so what is ascension? What is the teachings of ascension? Deliberately raising our consciousness individually and collectively to elevated levels of mental, emotional, and physical awareness and experience.

[02:20:52] It's quite a simple definition. This means integrating our higher selves, our soul and spirit, so that we live and experience our unlimited nature as divinity in embodiment. And so there's benefits of taking this journey. This is our rare opportunity to rise above and beyond the fear, pain, struggle, and limitation that has plagued our earthly lives, and instead, embrace a reality of love, prosperity, vibrancy, and ease by learning and mastering through practice our innate power to effortlessly create our own reality in our sovereignty and divinity.

[02:21:37] Luke: Damn, son.

[02:21:39] Elle: Give me some of that.

[02:21:40] Luke: Who wrote that?

[02:21:43] Elle: Paul Darrol Walsh. This is a discussion that we had the other day on ascension.

[02:21:51] Luke: Wow, that's beautiful. It's so grounded. Sometimes when I think about the idea of ascension, there's like a new age, Atlantian, spaced out fantasy.

[02:22:06] Elle: No, seriously grounded.

[02:22:07] Luke: Yeah, that's rock solid.

[02:22:10] Elle: That's what I hoped for my book to be, is the grounded realizations and wisdoms that I had learned along the way. And sometime people think spirituality is woo woo, and belief systems and philosophy and religion. But actually, it is the grounded practicality of how do you live life on life's terms in the most blissful, beautiful way? And to be of service. And that's very grounding in itself.

[02:22:44] Luke: It is. You just reminded me, there was one thing I wanted to ask you, if you forgive me. I know you're out of water. But it's a short question with maybe a long answer. I think it's top of mind because I'm not getting any younger, but I was thinking about, in preparation for this, you're a woman who has been celebrated and created a career out of your physical beauty and out of what is on the external.

[02:23:16] And as time passes, now you're on your wellness journey and you're maintaining that external beauty, I think largely based on the radiance of who you are on the inside. But what's it like to get older when that's been such a part of your life path and identity, the karmic lottery that you want of being someone who is fortunate in that way?

[02:23:42] And some people have other talents and gifts for which they're celebrated that they can build on, but that's been one of yours. And now as you get older, that is changing and will continue to change. What's your relationship to aging?

[02:23:57] Elle: Oh, there's been a relationship, that's for sure. I have come to understand that the true beauty is soul deep, not just skin deep. And that's very fortunate because I don't look the same as I did when I was 20, but I certainly don't feel the same as I did when I was 20 either.

[02:24:26] And I believe that we are all beautiful, beautiful souls, beautiful spirits, and we have the capacity to bring that into the world, and bring our uniqueness into the world, which is valuable and meaningful. So we have a beauty that we bring out in our lives individually.

[02:24:48] And that's from a more esoteric point of view, but when it comes to just, I don't look the same as I used to, when I was in my 20s and 30s and I was at the peak of my career, I still didn't think I was particularly beautiful. I look back on pictures back then and I was going, "Man, I was phenomenal." So different from I am today in the physical world.

[02:25:19] But I couldn't appreciate it. I didn't understand it. I didn't value it. I treated myself badly. I spoke badly about myself to myself. And so today I have such love and compassion for myself that I am enjoying this phase of my life and I'm enjoying what I can bring to the world through the products that we create with WelleCo, through my book, through my relationships with other people. That's really where I get off today.

[02:25:55] Luke: Yeah, yeah. It's like finding your intrinsic value as a whole. I try to remind myself of that when I see my receding hairline. It's the only thing physically that I'm bummed about, to be honest. I see in videos or pictures and I'm like, "Holy shit. I'm half bald. This sucks." And then I remind myself like, oh my God, how insignificant that actually is in the big picture.

[02:26:23] Elle: And that wisdom that comes with age through experience, and you can only have wisdom through experience. And for me it was a question of like, going from the body in my 20s and 30s and 40s to embodiment, from realizing that it was nothing out there, that it was in here that really mattered. That was hugely freeing. And I wouldn't forego that experience for skin that I had when I was 20.

[02:26:54] Luke: [Inaudible] in the time machine.

[02:26:55] Elle: Yeah, yeah.

[02:26:56] Luke: Yeah. I wouldn't go back in the time machine when I was young and maybe beautiful too. I'm happy with where I am.

[02:27:02] Elle: You're still beautiful, and we are all forever young.

[02:27:06] Luke: Yeah, yeah. Well thank you. I thank you for indulging me. That was one thing I was wondering about, I think, just based on my own experience of life. And you don't really realize you're getting older, I think, because you're just in your skin and having your experience. But sometimes it's like in a photo or video, I go, "Who is that? What happened?" You know what I mean? It's a weird experience.

[02:27:25] Elle: It's a weird thing. But then what I remember, because I've seen so many photographs of myself over the times, I always remember that I can look at something now, probably look at this podcast and think, oh, man. I could look at myself and pick myself apart. In five years’ time, I will look back at this podcast and go, "Man, I looked good then. Why don't I look like that now?"

[02:27:51] Luke: That's a good reminder.

[02:27:53] Elle: It's always a good reminder that what you think you don't love now, I bet you'll love in five years' time, or three years' time.

[02:28:00] Luke: 100%. All right, Elle. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure as I knew it would be. Thank you for making the time.

[02:28:06] Elle: It's been a joy. Thank you.