He has inspired Gwyneth Paltrow and Emma Watson, has a house on the beach in LA and is worth £25million.
Not bad for a monk from Bristol who ran off to join the circus.
Andy Puddicombe is the founder of Headspace – a meditation and “mindfulness” mobile phone app which is taking the world by storm.
It has been downloaded by two million people in more than 150 countries since its launch three years ago and is an increasingly popular way for people to cope with mental health issues.
“We’ve always known we should eat well and exercise to look after our bodies, to avoid heart attacks. But we never look after our minds,” says Andy.
“Mental health has so much stigma attached to it, but mindfulness is now being used by people to make our minds fit.”
Andy certainly has the credentials. He left Britain to study meditation 20 years ago and was eventually ordained as a Buddhist monk at a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas.
He travelled for 10 years, teaching meditation techniques across Asia and Russia.
And then came a rather sudden career change – he returned to London in 2004 to do a degree in Circus Arts, and trained with the Moscow State Circus, no less.
He ran meditation clinics in London, where he met his business partner Rich Pierson.
The seeds were sown along the way for Headspace, which started out as an events company. But they wanted to make it more accessible to the masses – and the guided meditation app was launched in January 2012.
Andy says: “I would teach it in Burma and Tibet – now athletes, actors and millions of members of the public are using it to change their daily lives.”
Harry Potter star Emma describes it as “genius” and Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes insisted his cast followed the techniques during filming to keep calm and de-stressed.
Super-fit Davina McCall is also a huge fan, as is Hollywood royalty Goldie Hawn.
Andy is now 42, and lives in Los Angeles.
Today two million people are using his app and the National Institute for Health and Care and Excellence (NICE) has just approved it as a way of staving off mental health illnesses, and keeping the brain fit and well.
He has also written three books on the subject.
Andy says: “These tools and techniques have been around for thousands of years. I was a monk and I was lucky enough to study with the real masters of it.
"We might feel inclined to feel anxious, but we can train it through mindfulness, that’s what Headspace does. It can cause a physio-logical shift in the brain.”
And this is backed up by science. Studies by mental health experts claim regular mindfulness helps with stress, worry and lack of focus, and leads to greater peace of mind.
Neuro- scientists have found meditation causes structural changes in the part of the brain monitoring focus and self-control.
And there are dozens of studies that have found meditation has a positive affect on improving anxiety and stress.
Andy has written a book about how his techniques can be used during pregnancy and childbirth. He accepts it’s a bit of an odd subject for a man to write about, but he says he learned from his wife Lucinda, who gave birth to their son last year.
Speaking from his home on Venice Beach, California, Andy explained how his book, A Mindful Pregnancy, can help women conceive, have a non-stressful pregnancy and even control their own pain while giving birth.
He says: “Pregnancy is such a huge life event, and using mindfulness can help self-esteem, chronic pain and stress.
“I am a bloke but I watched my wife live through the experiences, which is where I got the idea.”
Andy says it can also be used to help women get pregnant in the first place. There are studies which show that when women are stressed they are less likely to conceive.
He says: “Mindfulness gives us the ability to be present and undistracted and as a consequence we feel more calm. It enables us to get away from everyday life, and this can help women get pregnant.”
David says that Lucinda practised mindfulness during her 36-hour labour with their son – and it helped a lot. He added: “It was amazing, it helps keep the mind in the moment and that in itself helps the pain.
“I was thinking about writing a book on parenting – but my son is only six months old so I don’t know enough about that yet!”
The Headspace Guide To...A Mindful Pregnancy is out now.