Documentary details Summerlin woman’s Himalayan adventure

Elle Swan wants you to face your fears. That's the title of one of her motivational talks and a philosophy she lives every day. It led to her embracing a new challenge, riding a motorcycle through the Himalayas last fall as part of an independent documentary film.

"When the opportunity first came up, my family was like, 'Why would you want to do that? You're 44. You could potentially break (a bone), scrape up your face and stuff like that," she said.

Swan, a Summerlin resident, learned of the film while attending a yoga festival where Dr. Wayne Dyer was to speak. There, a film called "The Highest Pass" was being screened. She met the director and learned that a woman was being sought to be one of eight people featured in its sequel, "The Four Peaks of Freedom."

"They didn't want people who just wanted to be in the film," she said. "They wanted the background on them to see how interested they were in spirituality and how they would fit ... they wanted the people to have a personal commitment to personal transformation."

She was tapped to be included. Swan had never ridden a motorcycle before but approached the idea with a "how hard could it be?" attitude. She signed up for group lessons. Her initial attempts led to all the instructors at the Cycle School, 3494 Boulder Highway, hearing about her.

"It was brutal," she said. "I fell twice, and the third time had me crashing into the wall. The instructor came over to me and said, 'That's it. We're going to have to ask you to go. This isn't for you.' ... I was absolutely humiliated."

But she dusted off her pride and signed up for one-on-one instruction with a former motorcycle police officer, Joanna Needham.

The instructor determined that Swan was having clutch control issues. Needham had Swan watch and feel what she was doing.

"Once she understood that she was over-trying instead of relaxing and just letting it happen, that turned the switch for her," Needham said. "She actually went from the basic rider course to the experienced rider course in one week. I don't know of anyone else who's ever really done that. She actually got a perfect score on the experienced rider course. I videotaped her because I knew no one was going to believe me."

Swan flew to India and learned that the motorcycle trip was not a group caravan affair as she'd expected. She would be on her own much of the time.

The roads she traveled were just wide enough for oncoming vehicles to squeeze past, with a sheer cliff on one side and no guardrails. Worse, the roads were heavily traveled by big transport trucks.

"It was surreal; I had no clue what I was in for," she said. "When I got back, I told my family, 'It was the second time I faced death.' It was you and the elements, and you have to make peace with the fact that you're 10, 12, 15,000 feet up in the air. We had rain, we had mud ---- one time there was a landslide ---- if I'd (gone over the cliff), it would have taken, well, who knows when they would have found me?"

The film also covered how they slept outside and had no access to running water. Tempers flared and then were tamped by sharing food. Swan was there for 31 days.

Her journey to becoming a motivational speaker and web-based self-help adviser wasn't always rosy. She came from a privileged home and went to a private college in Ohio before working as a journalist in New York City. After her father, Leslie Darnell, died suddenly at 44, everything changed. Swan's life entered a dark period filled with drugs and alcohol abuse.

She wound up living in an abandoned van in Van Nuys, Calif. One night, Swan took a mixture of drugs, overdosed and technically died. She said she found herself in a dark place, plunging downward.

"I had a near-death experience ... but I wasn't going toward the light," she said. "A lot of times, people who've had a near-death experience will talk about the light. I believe there is another place where there's no light at all. Christians would call it 'hell,' and if I had to give it a name, that's where I was headed. There was complete hopelessness. I yelled out, just a guttural scream, to God to 'Give me another chance.' "

Swan believes the power of that experience is the reason she's never relapsed and why she's been so focused ever since.

"I went from complete hopelessness to where, coming out of it, I had a clarity of choice," she said. "It was so absolutely crystal clear, it had to be an act of God. There's no other way to explain it."

About seven years ago, while living in Los Angeles, Swan set up a life development business. She moved to Las Vegas about five years ago and now teaches women how to make their own lives as purposeful as hers. A woman who asked to be called Kathy told how Swan helped her get out of an abusive marriage, pay off $100,000 in debt and start a new life in Las Vegas.

"No one ever told me before that I could be more than I thought," she said. "Now, every day I wake up happy."

Dana Srebrenick, who lives in New Jersey, heard Swan speak at a training seminar about two years ago.

"She gets you to be accountable for your own actions," she said.

"The Four Peaks of Freedom" is planned to be part of a documentary series. It is set to be released this year with a separate TV show planned in 2014. What did Swan learn from doing it?

"That fear is vapor," she said. "It feels like concrete, but it really is vapor ... and we are designed to transcend fear."

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.