From hard-partying TV star to mindfulness-practising family guy, Günsberg says he got really lucky in life. But he also got osteoarthritis in his 30s

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Osher Günsberg keeps stopping to smell the flowers. As we walk along Sydney’s eastern coastline, he cuts himself off mid-sentence to point out warrigal greens (“cook them like kale or spinach, they’re really good”) and ginger (someone will pinch it soon, he says, given “those things are $20 a kilo”). We pause to touch the soft fronds of a woolly bush, which he uses at home in place of a Christmas tree, and admire the seed pods and bottle brushes growing wild.

The TV host is not launching a new career as a botanist but trying to impart a lesson about the value of mindfulness – and how all it takes is slowing down to notice the things around us.