TeamRAW

Good evening Sweet Ones

And how was your day?  As you know we have been busy planning and manifesting here.  It seems our vision gets clearer and clearer just as we think we “see’ what is ahead something else shows itself.  That’s why it is good to have some sort of inventory check every now and then so you can assess and re-assess goals.

Part of our breakthrough this time is that what we are passionate about (other than food) is helping people help themselves.  In my darkest hours I would have (and often did) tried anything.

So, we have set up a sister site at www.rawsomeday.com.  This site is going to be more autobiograghical about my (Shivie) journey.  Hopefully there will be people out there who relate.  We will take our classes a stage further and offer coaching through lifestyle and diet education.  It promises to be radical!

The details are sorting themselves out and in the meantime Cemaaj and I are busy with the respective sites and now you can find me on twitter @shiviekaur too!

Thank you for sharing this journey with us.  We have so much we want to share and will be really working hard to get the platform up so we can brign you video classes and weekly radio show….yes, exciting things happening with “TeamRAW and RAWsomeDay presents…”

Go over and check out the new site, it is in preliminary stages but there are a couple of blog entries and workshops page up.  Let us know what you think and if there is a subject you would like us to cover please let us know and we will do our best!

Wherever you are, make it a RAWsome one!

Shivie

Good morning Sweet Ones

How are you on this beautiful Bay Area day…the sky is blue and the sun is shining.  I love these long summer days.  Tomorrow is the Equinox and Cemaaj and I will be joining the coven at Ocean Beach where will we go in the ocean and then jump the fire to plant seeds for the next quarter and to give our gratitude for all that is and has been and will be.  These are some of my favorite nights of the year.

Last year at the Summer Solstice we were waiting to jump in the ocean but there were a lot of fishermen down the coast (we go in naked).  We decided to go in anyway.  About 5 of us ran down the beach toward the waves screaming and laughing.  We ran straight in and the cold waters gave us the feel of rebirth and cleansing.  After enjoying the waves we went back to our spot to jump the fire.  As we began jumping the fisherman directly below us caught a huge fish.  We later went down to see him and he told the fish literally “jumped onto his line” as soon as we started jumping!  He had quite the story to tell the next day!

This is one of the “new worlds” that has opened up to me in what I refer to as my “new life”.  It seems there are so many new little worlds that have opened up in the arena of my life.  Though new, each one feels as old and as comfortable as if it had been that way forever.  One glimpse can change the color of your world.  And as exciting as it to have it happen to you, it is doubly so to see someone else catch that glimpse and have a perspective shift.

A couple of weeks ago we were getting ready to go out for our morning read at Stable when the doorbell rang.  I ran down thinking it must be a delivery.  Standing at the door was a man asking for “TeamRAW”.  His name was Oscar and he thought we were a restaurant.  We talked and I explained we did classes.  He wanted to come he said and then told me his story.

Oscar is 55 years old and originally from Nicaragua.  Fifteen years ago he had a heart attack.  He was put on medication and told he would have to take it for the rest of his life.  Oscar is also diabetic and on medications for that.  Over the last fifteen years he has had many health challenges.  He recounts that once he was in his apartment, alone, with no friends checking in, and he couldn’t even move to reach the telephone.   He also started to lose his hair.  Oscar did not have much to enjoy in life with all the medications he was on and the subsequent side effects.

In July of this year he went to a raw food party.  He liked the way the food “felt” in him.  In fact he liked it so much he went raw and started researching voraciously on the internet.  One such search led him to Dr Gabriel Cousens of the Tree of Life Center in Patagonia.  Dr Cousens has been curing people with diabetes for some thirty years using a protocol of a raw, vegan diet, meditation and exercise.  Results are impressive and can been seen in the documentary Raw for 30 Days.  He has been reading and following the protocol in Dr Cousen’s book, “There is a Cure for Diabetes”.  His search also led him to us.

Oscar has been raw for 2 months now; he has no idea how to make a raw recipe yet has stuck to a raw diet nonetheless.  He is convinced that this is the way for him.  He said it has taken him 55 years to see the light but now he has seen it, there is no going back.  He accepts that he will die one day (as will we all) but he longer accepts that his life should deteriorate.  He wants to around and healthy for a long time.

Yesterday (Saturday) Oscar came to meet us to pick up a book and CD by Alissa Cohen to give him a head start and something to work on before our next class on October 18.  We sat at Stable café talking about raw foods when he mentioned the restaurant Que SeRaw SeRaw in Burlingame.  I have heard of it but have not had the opportunity to go.  “Let’s go,” said Oscar, “Let’s go now”.  So we did!  We got into Oscar’s car and off we went toward Burlingame!  We then went to Target to buy a food processor for Oscar and a few other key kitchen items.

Oscar told us about the reaction within his circle to his lifestyle.  They think he is crazy for the most part but he doesn’t mind.  He is not looking for validation he feels the difference.  Friends are starting to notice it too.  He lost more than 30lbs and one friend even commented that his eyes had changed color.  Oscar feels brighter and lighter than he has in years, he doesn’t need “proof” he feels it!

Oscar has also influenced a couple of people in his life and they too are feeling the benefits.  This is all the proof Oscar needs to continue in his journey.

As I said earlier there is nothing more exciting than seeing someone else witness a new world opening up.  Look around, new worlds are all around us and each one has the potential to open us to a shift in perspective and that small shift can literally be life changing.

So, how is your world?  Is it the same old same old or do you find yourself constantly challenged to push the paradigm and try something new?  We may not be the creator in our journey but we are the co pilot, we do have a say in where and how we tread this path of life.  It is for each of us to find the harmony and balance our lives to allow us to experience the joy and happiness we were born to receive.

It is time for me to return to the kitchen to make raw chocolate for a truffle order that is due out in two days. 

Make it a RAWsome life and remember that you deserve to be the most vibrant you.

With peaceful steps and in love and light

Shivie and Cemaaj
TeamRAW

and then the day came
when the pain to remain
closed tight up in a bud
became more than the pain
it took to blossom
                              Anais Nin

Good evening Sweet Ones

And how are you on this beautiful San Francisco evening? For me, the time around Labor Day is a brief opportunity to review the year gone by so far and look ahead at the seeds that need to be planted to yield the changes I want in the New Year. Before arriving here in the US and having this holiday, September was always a transformation month. It think it started with the new school year which I always hotly anticipated. In many ways September marks my “new year” more than January. It is a time to take stock and decide what I want to take with me into the New Year, what I want to leave behind, and what I want to attract.

I think too often we get too busy with our daily routine to have time to reflect. We think that change “happens” to us rather than realizing we have the power to be the change we want to see. As His Holiness, the Dalai Lama says “If you don’t like your life, change your mind”. There was a long period of time back when I was practicing as corporate lawyer that I wrote in my journal and reflected and dreamed but yet did not really believe I had the power to change my life.

On September 9, 2001, two days before the horror of the World Trade Center, my roommate, Robert, and I nearly died in a four alarm fire that took 11 fire trucks to put out. By the time the fire alarm woke Robert, who in turn woke me, the house was engulfed in flames and smoke. We slept towards the back of the apartment and the front two rooms were already descimated. I could not find my way out. All I remember is seeing orange and gray. It was 6am Sunday morning and a startling way to wake up. As I took in a large gulp of smoke in the middle of the dining room I thought I knew so well yet could not find the door out, I had the thought, “I am going to die right here, right now”. Those were the exact words than ran through my head. I didn’t feel panicked, I felt quite calm to be honest and a few seconds later I was running naked up the street (yes, naked, I was after all sleeping at the time and there really is no time to pick anything up). It was as if though a hand had lifted me from the smoky room and put me on the street.

Once outside I really knew what was happening. Until then I was just reacting. Seeing 10′ flames coming out of the front window and flames coming out of the roof three stories up, I stood watching everything we owned be eaten by fire. I ran up the street banging on doors and shouting. This is a time when you realize there are not many pay phones and in the day of the cell phone we have no idea where they are. Everyone was accounted for except my roommate (who had to go back in and find his golden lab, Drake, who was foud hiding in the back of the closet) and the girl that lived in the uppermost apartment. Until everyone was accounted for they could not start fighting the fire. 100’s of feet of fire hose lined 4th Avenue. Overheard wires caught fire and snapped, sizzling and dancing in the street like an angry snake. Fire trucks and ambulances woke everyone in the neighborhood. Pyjama clad and sleepy they stood on the street and watched an event that could quite easily have happened to them.

Robert and Drake came out of the house after what seemed like a lifetime. I had grabbed my robe off the bed on the way out and was stood wrapped in one of the few possessions to survive, crying in the street, amidst so many people. The girl from upstairs soon came running round the corner. She had left via the back (wooden) fire excape and had to climb a fence to the opposite neighbors to go throuhg their house. Sobbing still I felt a had on my shoulder and heard the person reprimand a camera man who was shamelessly videoing the horror I was living. Robert and I were loaded into an ambulance and put on oxygen before being taken to St Marys Hospital. It was this scene that was played on every Bay area news station that night, Robert and I, covered in smoke sitting in the back of the ambulance hooked up to oxygen masks.

Going to the hospital actually allowed us to have a little peace. Our quiet neighborhood had been turned into a circus. We were released later in the day after taking oxygen for a few hours. Robert’s brother came and took our clothes and shoe sizes and dutifully (and as I remember rather excitedly, seems Tom likes buying clothes) went to Mervyns to buy us clothes so we could leave the hospital. After being here a year I had friends but not the deeply rooted relationships I have today. I didn’t know where I would be staying that night, though I knew it would not be my bed. A friend’s mother, Debbie. offered to take me in.

That night Debbie sweetly got the bathroom ready for my shower. I still had soot and remnants of the fire on my skin. The smell seemed deeply rooted in me (and at times I still get a whiff of smoke from the prayer wheel that survived on the shrine). As I turned in the shower I caught sight of the candle she had lit for me. I stood paralyzed with fear…it took a few months to happily have candles lit, and today it is not a probalem at all. I went to bed and slept fitfully on the edge of the bed ready I guess to jump out quickly should the need arise. Adrenalin was still keeping me from fuly realzing what had happened, that we had gone to sleep one Saturday night and very nearly did not wake up the next morning. Almost everythig we owned from treasured possessions to photos to cleaning materials were eaten by the fire. One of the few things of mine that survived were my Dharma books (kept separately from the other 3,000 or so books we had at the time), my recently set up shrine (I was studying with a Buddhist Lama at the time and considering, very seriously, taking robes and becoming a nun – but that is a whole other entry) and a Kundalini yoga book I had bought the day before.

Monday, the day after the fire, was spent in a daze. Tuesday looked like it would be a similar kind of day until Debbie recieved a call from her sister telling to put on the tv, America is at war she said. The first thing we saw when we turned on the tv was a huge gray smoke ball….it seemed so familiar. My head was really spinning now. Looking back at the previous days I took stock of the events. On the Friday before the fire a friend in England passed up with liver problems, he was my age. On Saturday as I was driving Roberts jeep to a training run with the SF Aids Foundation I had my first accident after swerving to miss a homeless guy that wandered into the middle of Market Street. It cost $650 to repair the car. The very next morning was the fire and two days later the World Trade Center fell.

This all had to mean something. I had been writing about needing to change to my life to get out of practicing law which seemed to be a toxic environment to me (I was 200lbs and regularly sick and/or in hospital). The year before I had met Goyo in Mexico. He had a profound influnece on the way I later shaped my life. I hear him tell me “Leap and the net will appear”. What is one supposed to do after a near death moment? Surely life doesn’t just keep on rolling the same way. My head spun and spun. All I knew was that I wanted to live my life in a different way. I wanted to make a change because as my Native American teacher told me “one person can” and I believe her. I wanted to feel more connected to my purpose. I wanted to help.

I kept journalling my thoughts and was woken by them demanding to be written down at all times of the day and night. I kept writing and wondering how I could achieve what I needed. Less than three months later on New Year’s Eve, 2001, I walked into the offices of what was the Pillsbury Winthrop LLP for the last time. It was a surreal day, I felt as though I was watching myself through a video lens. I had no idea what I was going to do other than being booked to do my Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training…that book survived for a reason and whilst I didn’t know why I knew I had to pursue it. That night I had dinner with a friend in the neighborhood and went home to meditate through the New Year.

One of the fondest memories I have of that time is having the time to sweep the kitchen daily, walk out to buy provisions to cook with and have the time to prepare all my own food. I had been voraciously learning new ways to cook all the new and weird (yes tofu and polenta were at the time “weird” foods to me). As a new vegetarian coming off the SAD diet I had alot to learn and now I had the time to do it. Every day I walked in the park and marvelled at being out under the bule sky rather than being stuck in an office for 10-16 hours a day.

I had leapt and the net appeared. But not without many challenges along the way and I felt I ws living the text of the Alchemist (I still do and I welcome the challenes now)and that Universe was testing how badly I wanted to make this life change. Though my finances went from six figures a year to under $20,000 for the first year “out” other change had happened in other areas…I was certified to teach yoga, something I thought never possible, I lost nearly 40lbs that year and remember eating more than I ever had when I had previousy tried to lose weight. I had time to read and write and take daily walks to run my errands. My life was no longer on fast forward on the fast track. I had time think and more importantly time to breathe and dream.

Fast forward to today, eight years later and my life is more my own than it has ever been. I often still don”t know exactly how and why it will work out but I have faith that it will. Part of me deep inside knows I am doing what I should be doing. I became the change I wanted to see and with that I started to beome more “me” than I have ever been. I am happier today than at any time in my life, I do not fear getting old, on the contrary I have found like a good wine that life gets better as it matures. I have a love in my life that is so radiant I can get through the darkest days under it’s luminous shadow. I have LIFE in my life and we are working toward manifesting the details of our dreams. I realized that even though I am not the Creator of my life I am the “co-pilot”, every decision I make has a ripple effect. I cannot manifest in chaos, so in order to attract change one often has to “give up” something to create the space for the dream to enter into reality. Almost evey detail of my daily life has changed.

The deepest, and I feel the most profound, change in my life has been my diet. Raised in a small village in England I was lucky to eat home cooked meals every day. we were meat and potatoes kind of people. I hated vegetables, drank gallons of soda (sometimes diet and others “full fat”), never (and I mean that) drank a glass of water – and my health and body showed it. No amount of fancy gyms (I was after all “earning the big bucks”) and trainers could make the change I needed. I dieted and starved myself only to binge in between which would then be followed by self loathing. A very toxic cycle. As I journalled and went back to old entries I found that I had been saying the same thing for three years and thinking it for longer, yet no change was coming. I was the epitome of the saying that “insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results”.

For me the change I needed was drastic, it may not be that way for everyone. I sit and wonder today what I might feel and look like if I had not taken that leap out of corporate culture, who would I be with eight more years under my belt. I am not sure, but I know I would not be as happy as I am today even if I found a way to make peace with the envirmonment and culture such a profession brings with it. (And lest you wonder, I have nothing against those that choose to practice law, we each have our path, though I know too many who wish they were not!). But change does not always need to be big to make drastic changes in the way you live.

Phew, are you still with me? This is a long entry and now I invite you to take the time to take an inventory of where you are, to reflect on the seeds you want to plant, to harvest the fruits that take you toward your higher goal and to “compost” the seeds that no longer serve you. This is YOUR life and other than living it with compassion and love there is no right way to do it. We are each unique and we each have uniques talents, even if you have yet to find them, they are there. Dig deep and dream even deeper and make love a priority in your life.

Make it a RAWsome life
Shivie and Cemaaj
TeamRAW