Delwyn Griffith is an accomplished Australian soft tissue therapist, wellness expert, and former athlete whose 32-year career has taken her to the highest levels of international sport, including the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, and Rugby World Cups. Drawing on decades of experience helping elite athletes perform, recover, and travel effectively, she is now bringing that knowledge to everyday travellers through her debut book, Mindful Traveller. Having also navigated chronic pain, the challenges of a demanding career, and life as a single mother, Griffith combines elite-level expertise with a deeply personal understanding of resilience, recovery, and wellbeing. As she prepares for the book’s launch in late 2026, she continues to inspire others with her belief that proactive recovery, consistent self-care, and purposeful goals are essential to living a healthier and more fulfilling life.

Here is the Q&A session we had with Delwyn Griffith.

Delwyn Griffith As Cover Story Interview – August 2026 Magazine Edition

How do you introduce yourself?

I’m Delwyn Griffith. I grew up in Canberra, Australia, and I’m the proud mother of my 26-year-old son, Elijah, he has taught me more about what love really means than anything else in my life, and raising him, largely as a single mother with the support of my family, has been the greatest privilege of my journey.

I trained in sports science, soft tissue therapy, and nutrition and wellness consulting, and for the past 32 years I’ve worked as a Soft Tissue Therapist in private practice and with elite athletes. I’ve represented Australia as a Soft Tissue Therapist with medical teams at three Olympic Games and two Commonwealth Games, three Rugby World Cups with the Wallabies, and one Rugby World Cup with the USA Women’s Eagles, alongside work with Rowing Australia, Basketball Australia and the Australian Institute of Sport.

I was an athlete myself long before I became a therapist, starting out in gymnastics before I’d grown too tall for the sport. From there I moved through development squads for athletics and water polo, before eventually finding my way to triathlon in my early twenties, finishing an Ironman in 1996 before turning my full focus to this career. In 2000 I began working with the ACT Brumbies, a local professional rugby union team, here in Canberra, and not long after took on the Wallabies alongside them, juggling both for years while raising Elijah.

All that time on the road with elite teams, learning how to help athletes travel, perform and recover at the highest level, is what eventually inspired me to write Mindful Traveller. It is a travel wellness book that takes 30 years of elite sporting travel knowledge and translates it for the everyday traveller, so they can prepare, travel and arrive ready to get the most out of their trip.

Struggle — What hardships have you gone through in life?

I’ve been living with an autoimmune disease since 2014, which brought chronic pain into my own life in a very direct way. I still live with it today, but I’ve learned to manage it well through clean eating, natural remedies, medication, and reducing stress wherever I can.
And honestly, that experience is what gave me the passion to formally study lifestyle medicine through Harvard University. It turned something difficult into a genuine second calling. Elite sport is unforgiving too, and building a 30-year career in it as a woman meant proving myself repeatedly in rooms that weren’t always built for me. More recently, writing and publishing my first book while still running a full client practice has been its own kind of endurance test, nearly two years of early mornings, edits, and learning an entirely new industry from scratch.

What do people usually not know about you?

What people don’t often realise is just how physically demanding this career actually is. At around 55kg, I regularly work on bodies up to 130kg, so staying strong myself isn’t optional, it’s what gives me the stamina and control to apply the right pressure safely. I’m meticulous about technique, the same way you’d be careful with your form at the gym to avoid injury, your core has to be switched on, and you’re constantly managing your own body while working to relieve someone else’s chronic pain or imbalances. People also don’t always know how much of my Instagram content, the illustrations, the visuals, I build myself, often at 11pm after a full day of client work. On a quieter note, I have a real love of fine art, wall paintings and brass sculptures in particular, and I find the bush and the beach deeply spiritual and relaxing. Canberra is about an hour and a half from the coast, so it’s not something I get to often, but I hope to live closer to the ocean one day. Away from the discipline of it all, I also have a genuine love of fine dining and great flavours. I did sports modelling briefly in my twenties, something I’ve recently ventured back into in my fifties whenever time allows.

What sets you apart from others?

I’ve worked pitch-side and track-side with some of the best athletes in the world, but my real interest has always been in translating that elite-level recovery knowledge for everyday people, the frequent traveller, the weekend athlete, the person managing chronic pain of their own. Most wellness voices haven’t lived the extremes I have: keeping a an athlete moving mid–Rugby World Cup, or managing 130kg athletes’ bodies on a 55kg frame of my own. I work incredibly hard, on myself and for others, but I’m also someone who deeply values peace, gentleness and stillness. I’m learning to slow down and spoil myself a little, and I love spoiling the people I love even more. There’s something almost spiritual in it for me: taking the time to make the people close to you feel truly seen and special for who they are. That combination, elite-level intensity paired with a soft, nurturing heart, is what I think sets me apart.

What are your upcoming major events?

My debut book, Mindful Traveller: Travel Like a Pro. Simple Strategies to Travel Well, Feel Better and Recover Faster, is in post-production now, with launch planned for the end of September into early October 2026. I’m running a multi-city launch across Australia alongside media features and promoting products from companies I have collaborated with. A second book, a Business and Corporate Travel edition of Mindful Traveller is already in early planning.

Looking further ahead, I’m hoping to shift more of my focus toward helping people live longer and feel younger, and gradually ease off the physical, hands-on load of soft tissue therapy over the next couple of years and focus on nutrition and longevity coaching. I also have a few other personal goals I’d love to achieve, nothing is set in stone, but I’ve always believed goals matter. As I like to say: if you never aim for something, how will you ever discover what you’re truly capable of? After that, I think it’ll be time to slow down a little, travel the world, work remotely, and simply focus on living life happy and healthy.

What expert advice would you like to give?

Recovery isn’t a luxury, it’s a strategy, whether you’re an elite athlete or someone who just got off a long-haul flight. Across 30 years working with elite teams, the athletes who lasted longest were never the ones with the most talent alone, they were the ones who treated recovery as part of training, not a reaction to breaking down. The small, consistent things matter more than any single big intervention: staying hydrated, moving well, prioritising sleep, doing your self-massage before the tightness turns into pain. Don’t wait until your body forces you to pay attention to it. Build the habit before you need it, because by the time pain shows up, you’re already playing catch-up. That philosophy is really the heart of Mindful Traveller — taking what elite sport taught me about proactive recovery and making it something anyone can build into everyday life.

Your social media handles and website links?

• Instagram: @delwyn_griffith_
• Website: delwyngriffith.com