It all happens step by step, so quietly in fact, that you don’t realize it and it’s not until you reflect much later, that you are able to understand where life was guiding you all along.I was born 23rd January 1975 and thought that turning vegetarian at age 15 was healthy but a few years later, after reading the Diamond’s ‘Fit For Life’, I realized that there were good and bad vegetarians. I was bad! By this time I had finished my degree in English Literature from London University and had begun teaching at a private school where a colleague and I set up the school’s Ecology Club. Over the decade that followed, we promoted care for the environment in its many forms and highlighted the essential fact that just as there was outer ecology, there was also inner: the food we eat and its impact on us. This led to many trips including one up in the Machairas mountains around 2003. There, Dr Maria Georgiou and her husband provided some valuable insights into proper eating habits. Impressed, I returned there again, alone, and out of everything Dr Maria said to me over that weekend, one big truth resounded within me.
‘Always make sure you eat something living with each meal’
I had read Ann Wigmore’s ‘Be Your Own Doctor’, but after that day, I saw food very differently. Of course I was still unaware one could have a 80-100% raw lifestyle, but I’d look at the grilled vegetables, then at the large salad and wonder, ‘If that salad is living, then what is the cooked stuff?’ Quite dead of course! At this point, I increased my intake of greens, made juices and was probably 50% raw – but the other 50% also comprised of ahem…certain nasties.
And so it was that a few years after that I attended a detox talk where my life was truly about to swivel. I thought it would be like any other such lecture and in some ways it was with the exception that I came out more inspired than usual. At the end of the talk, Siri Shabd Singh recommended a book, ‘Detox Your World’ which I bought soon after and within days, the world of the raw lifestyle made its fullest impact upon me. Life would never be the same.
I had a three month honeymoon period where I was pretty much 80-90% raw and I was overwhelmed at the changes. The weight fell off, my mind grew clear and the world was one gorgeous adventure! However, I guess you can’t kick 30 years of bad habits in three months and the drastic change did catch up with me. Eating raw is just as much an emotional, mental and spiritual change as it is a physical one. I had to start with basic steps all over again, ones that had to be learned well before moving to the next level.
Now I feel that I have tuned into the rhythm of my raw dance. Although I am not always sure what is around the corner, I know one thing: raw is always there to catch and pirouette me! And is it perhaps your time to dance?
