It was a magical evening in early May of this year, I had just finished teaching my Wednesday night Kundalini Yoga class, I was feeling amazing, full of gratitude, blissed out and high from all of the good vibrations when when my husband called, he needed his specific soy creamer for his coffee that can only be found at our local Whole Foods. This is where it all began........
Let me back up a little and tell you a bit about my self, I have a wonderful Yoga studio in Memphis Tn and I have been teaching yoga since 2004. I am am married with a kick ass husband and two unbelievable children. I often think that it has to be weird to be married to me (we are like Dharma and Greg), and my children are too young, but when they get older they will either think I am the coolest mom in the world or they will be totally embaresed and wish they had a "normal mom"
So it was of no surprise to my family when I came home from Whole foods that night with Natalia Rose's book "Raw food detox Diet". I had heard of raw foodies before but it all sounded way to extreme for me, I had been extreme in my diet plenty of times in the past and had never been interested in going back to anything that felt like deprivation....I was at a point in my life where I did not need to loose weight and I did not want any restrictions laid on me, but there was something about this book , I do not know why, but when I saw it I did not even think twice, I just put it in my cart.....something in me knew.
For three years following my daughters birth my body had been in daily pain. I had never known pain in my body before and I had no idea what it was about......I tried everything from massages to different yoga techniques, hot tubs and saunas....nothing worked, my body was always hurting. The main places were in between my shoulder blades and in my low back. I think these are very common places for many people to feel pain in our modern world but it did not make sense to me because I spend very little time in front of a computer, I don't sit at a desk and I am pretty physically fit...it was driving me crazy.
The night I took home Natalia Rose's book I read the whole thing in one night and I knew this would be a part of my life. Although the more I think back on it, I have to admit that there must have been some part of me that was subconsciously remembering the Playboy edition that I saw of Carol Alt who has been a raw foodie for 13 years and looked like a freakin million dollars in her mid life. I know there was some vanity involved.
Anyway, I started the next day. I will not lie, the first two weeks were rough, the detox was intense and everything in my body felt different.....good different........ Here is the mamma jamma reason that I stuck with it, after only one week, going 90 percent raw, the pain in my body was gone....ALL OF IT. I mean it, three years of nonstop pain, Gone.
It is almost six months later and the pain has never come back, and all of the other transitions in my life have been amazing. I experience so much more clarity, my skin is clearer and more vibrant than it has ever been, and my energy levels are off the charts. This way of eating enhances every level of my life and has been a real blessing. There is a lot to understand about it, and there are shadow sides as well. With everything we do in life we must know ourselves, nothing is separate, everything is connected and if we have imbalances within us they will play out in every aspect of our lives including our relationship with our food. I feel that eating raw foods paired with either yoga or some kind of practice of awareness grants you the chance to live your greatest life, the ability to see and let go of all that does not serve you. It offers grace....... grace is realizing that are lives are full of endless possibilities, we CAN experience freedom while living and we can dance through our lives on a higher frequency......this is just the beginning, and this is my real raw groove.