Verve sits down with the actress to discuss her new book, Good For You, co-written with health journalist Kylie Bailey, that documents her battle with Crohn’s disease.
How did you and Kylie come up with the idea to write a book?
It’s always been floating around as an idea for me, in that I wanted to share my story after I had come out the other side of healing my Crohn’s disease. But I never felt like it was a big enough story to be a whole book. That was about 15 years ago. When Kylie and I started working together three years ago we had a shared passion for health and wellbeing stories and were both story-tellers, but we knew there wasn’t much out there that answered the questions so many people have about health. We wanted to create something that could give people a basic understanding of what we both knew to be true about holistic health today, that helped with the overwhelm. This is our version of a ‘recipe book for health’ which also has our personal stories within it. There’s a bunch of info about how our guts work, the link between our guts and our brains, how our bodies work and then a collection of tips and advice that might be useful for your own health journey.
How did you meet co-author Kylie?
Kylie was a journalist and editor at the Women’s Weekly back in the days that I was on Shortland St. She had interviewed me a few times back then so we knew of each other. But about three years ago, after I’d returned from living overseas, we bumped into each other outside a cafe. She’d heard I was interested in doing something in the health and wellbeing space, as she had gone on her own journey of healing, living with extreme anxiety and leaving her highly stressful career in the woman’s magazine world. So we connected over another coffee (yes, we both love coffee, we’re not health purists! ) and I shared my ideas for a health hub called Good For You with her. We’ve been plotting this thing ever since then.
What is your background in health and wellness?
In 2005 I completed my training to be a pilates teacher at Suna Pilates in Takapuna. I worked there for about a year and since then have taught in Australia and the US as a fully qualified mat and reformer teacher you have to complete anatomy and physiology courses as well as obviously gain an intimate knowledge of how the body, its skeletal system, muscular system and respiratory system works, amongst other things. Pilates has a functional and postural focus and this informs so much about how the body works. This has been an amazing foundation for me, but it also comes on top of my own experience having had Crohn’s disease since I was 12. I went through a massive healing journey (which is all in the book!) and ever since then I’ve been a student of all things related to my health and the body. I’ve tried many different types of therapies and practices over the years, I’ve learned about what works for me, but that’s not going to be true for everyone. However, over the last 20 years of my own lessons and failures, I’ve learned some fundamental truths about how we all seem to approach our health. I’m not the expert in everything, but I know lots of people who are and it’s my goal to help get their messages and info out to a wider audience.
What is the main thing you hope readers will take away from your new book?
I really want people to start learning about their own bodies and health, growing a better understanding of how we all work and then taking action to correct things if they’re a bit off. Our healthcare system is very broken, but we can help ourselves if we become less afraid of what we don’t know, and can enjoy the process of engaging with our own health and taking on that responsibility without it feeling like it’s a burden. It can actually be fun and incredibly empowering. We want people to develop their own prescription for having great health and vitality — not just feeling okay — that includes mental, physical, emotional and energetic health. Holistic health in the truest sense of the word. Taking care of the whole self. So many people think if they have a health problem, mental or physical, that it’s too hard to fix it or they don’t know where to start looking. We’d like to give them that place.
What lessons have you learnt from being in the public eye?
That it doesn’t take much to be polite. That people usually just want to form a connection with you and that’s a part of your job. That a smile doesn’t cost anything. That making television and telling stories brings me a great amount of joy and that’s why I do it. That people knowing who you are doesn’t really mean much in regards to your own health and happiness, especially not if you don’t know yourself well. That’s what’s important.
Who are the people who have been most supportive during your health journey?
My friends and family, always, as they are the ones that have to listen to me moan, or prop me up when I’m exhausted, stressed or low, or mostly tolerate listening to the great new discovery I’ve just made about some new health science, “did you know…” And the next most important people have been the practitioners who have helped me heal my body. I have people I’ve seen fairly regularly now for over 15 years. The team at Real Health clinic have been part of my A-team for years and Susie at SUNA is such an important part of my life and she’s in our book.
