Desperate Measures

Reflections on Raw Food

My primary reason for going to Bahay Kalipay was to detox.  After celebrating birthdays with food orgies in Taipei (mine) and Macau (my boyfriend's), I thought I would cleanse my system with a raw food diet for a week.

This is something I like to do, swing from one extreme to another.  I'll go on a seven-day fast in Koh Samui or Koh Chang then hit a champagne-foie gras buffet in Bangkok.  I just like to know that I can do both.  That I can indulge and that I can go without.

I first encountered the concept of raw food at the San Benito Farm in Lipa, Batangas.  There was a slew of publicity about it when it opened and I was intrigued.  A trip was in order.  Back then, you could pay a fee for a day tour which included a five-course lunch at their raw food restaurant.  I eyed the food with suspicion.  It all looked very nice but tasted, well, like... vegetables and I only ever regarded vegetables as a side dish, never the main attraction, and anyone who's ever stood in a buffet line with me knows that I often dismiss salads as a waste of space.

After lunch and a hot stone massage at the spa, my boyfriend and I got back into our car for the drive back to Manila.  As soon as we climbed in, I asked the driver if he had eaten.  He replied in the affirmative.  I asked if he had eaten the sandwich I had given him earlier.  My boyfriend was appalled.  "You're going to take back the sandwich that you gave him?!"  "Yes," I said matter-of-factly, "I'm hungry."  I turned back to the driver and politely asked if I could please, please, pretty please have the sandwich back.  As soon as it was in my hands, my boyfriend asked if he could have half.  Doh!

In Koh Samui, where we did our first detox, there were raw food classes being offered.  But I looked at the raw food chef and while he was probably the healthiest person on the planet and would live a thousand years, he was pale and gaunt and, quite frankly, looked like shit.  He and the other raw foodists I had seen were not good poster children for the raw food movement so my interest in it dried up and that was pretty much the end of that. 

Until... fast forward to last year when gal pal, Rosan Cruz, got into raw food.  While I poked fun at her on Facebook about it, I did promise that I would try out the raw food restaurant, Rawvolution, with her.  After several canceled dates, the restaurant moved to the same street where Rosan lives and we ran out of excuses not to go.

To my surprise, I enjoyed everything we ordered.  I thought the food looked fantastic and tasted pretty darned good.  Not to mention that the owner, Cheloy Ignacio, looked fabulous!  Of course, I was taken aback by the bill when it arrived (raw food can be damned expensive) but I liked the food so much that I was back in no time.

When I met up with my Aussie friend, Susan, in Ubud for a day when we were both in Bali last February, it was so hot and humid that I surprised her - and myself - by ordering raw lasagna for lunch.  It was delicious and perfect for that sweltering day. 

Raw lasagna at Little K, Yoga Barn's cafe.  Ubud, Bali, February 2011.  (Photo by Susan Brandstetter.)

Since then, I've done a raw food workshop with Asha Peri of Dahon Kusina, the vegetarian canteen of Asha's school, Creative Space, and while I thought the workshop was chaotic and was put off by the disorganization, when Susan visited me in Siargao, I served her and another guest some of the raw food I learned from Asha, which they both enjoyed.

In Cebu, where my boyfriend lives, I had taken to making green smoothies and drinking them throughout the day.

While you can read all about the mechanics of raw food online (- here's a link), I don't really subscribe to all that.

For instance, raw foodists insist that man wasn't meant to eat meat and that our forefathers ate only plants.  Well, they didn't have dehydrators or mandolin slicers back in the day either, did they?  And I doubt very much that Mr. Cro Magnon had green smoothies for breakfast.  And didn't they kick the bucket at about age 30 back then?

My friend's grandmother celebrated her 100th birthday recently and she eats pork everyday.  I certainly wouldn't want to live to be a hundred.  HAVE YOU SEEN PEOPLE THAT OLD?  Google it now and tell me if you ever want to look like that. 

If you've just googled the oldest people in the world like I told you to  (- fine, here's a link), you'll find out that a lot of them come from Japan, home of miso soup and tofu.  While they may eat a lot of seaweed and raw fish, that's probably the extent of their exposure to raw food.

Jeanne Calment of France reportedly smoked two sticks of cigarettes every day from when she was 21 up to 117.  She drank port and consumed about a kilo of chocolate every week.  She died at the age of 122.

So if raw foodists are to be believed that cooking at high temperatures destroys much-needed nutrients and enzymes in food, and we know for a fact that most, if not all the oldest folk in the world have eaten mostly cooked food, then - following that line of thinking - nutrients and enzymes must be overrated.

So, no, I don't buy into all that.

But I've always believed that what we take into our system has a very powerful effect on us.  And, nowadays, with all these chemicals in the soil and in our food, which end up in our system, these not only our physical health, but our emotional and mental health as well.

For our picnic by the beach, Bahay Kalipay served raw pesto with sundried tomatoes and Tropical Mango-Pineapple "pancit".  (Photo by Cris Silva.)

When we watched the video "Raw For Life", it struck a chord in me when they spoke about energy coming from food.  Having had only raw food for a few days, I felt light, clean and clear.  When they mentioned bacon and fried food (my favorite foods), all I could think of was how heavy and dense their energy was.

Animals no longer eat what they are supposed to eat and are pumped full of hormones so that even before they are butchered, they no longer resemble the animals they are supposed to be.  Then there are the additives that go into packaging and storing so that they still look fresh once we come face to face with them at the grocery.  And then we fry or grill or broil or bake them to become palatable.  How much energy - pure energy - can we still derive from food that has been processed and prepared this way?  I can imagine that people who eat only this must suffer from depression and mood swings a lot.

I have no doubt that raw food is the way to go for optimum health.  Do watch this other documentary called "Raw for 30 Days" in which diabetes patients were put on a strict raw food diet for 30 days.  The results are pretty amazing.

Bahay Kalipay's best dessert was this beetroot "crepe" with mango-banana filling, guyabano (soursop) "ice cream" with choco-coco-almond shards.  (Photo by Cris Silva.)

I think seven days wasn't enough time for me to experience the full benefits of a raw food diet as my body would have still been in the process of detoxing and getting used to raw food.  My next challenge will be to go raw for, at least, a month.  If I were strong enough, I would probably adapt a raw food diet for life.  But I do love to eat and I love to cook and I love travel and, as I said, I have no desire to live forever...

The best advice I can give is to listen to your body.  If you've only ever eaten meat in your life and you find yourself sickly or depressed a lot, try to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into your meals.  You can start of by making fresh smoothies every morning.  Have these instead of a cooked breakfast.

A typical breakfast at Bahay Kalipay consists of chopped fruits in season (shown here top to bottom are: red papayas, bananas, avocados, jack fruit, mangoes and dried raisins) served with with plain coconut milk and/or coconut milk with carob.  They might also serve sunflower seeds and dried coconut meat on the side which add a nice, crunchy texture to the fruit.

When I got off raw food, I went into retox mode straight away.  Fried fish, fried eggs and white rice.  I immediately noticed the build-up of mucus in my nose and throat.  It was noticeable because I didn't have it when I was on raw food.  Now that I'm fully retoxed (it didn't take very long), I've gotten used to its presence and it's now normal to me.  Just as it probably was normal for me before I went raw and my passageways cleared up.

Then again, a friend's brother once tried being vegetarian and he became one of the grumpiest people in the world.  His mood changed when he finally resumed eating meat.

So listen to your body.  Most of the time, it knows what is best for you. 

Overcoming an Aversion to Ashtanga

Without knowing too much about it, except that they did raw food, my Aussie friend, Susan, and I wanted to try out Bahay Kalipay for some time and, when she suggested we go in June, I told her to inquire with them about possible retreats that they might have.  As it turned out, there was a yoga retreat with Clayton Horton happening around the time we wanted to go.  Ashtanga yoga.

It was probably around 2002 that I began my search for a yoga guru.  I tried out Sandy Arando, Robert Dario, Rina Ortiza and Anna Price.  And then, in early 2003, I found Bela Lipat.

She was a bit of a yoga nazi.  She chose her students.  I turned up with a friend and, after class, she came up to me and told me that I could come back but that my friend couldn't.  She didn't like her attitude.  (Seems that while Bela was demonstrating certain poses, my friend would put her hands on her hips and cock her head.  Bela didn't like it when her students didn't stand at attention.)  She told me, "You'll see.  She'll tell you I'm not the teacher for her either."  True enough, as soon as my friend got back from the bathroom, she hissed, "I don't like her!  Let's go!"

Bela shushed anyone talking in the shala and reprimanded students texting on their mobile phones while waiting for class to start.  She wanted you to be focused as soon as you stepped into her domain.  If she found out you joined her class to get a yoga butt, you could be sure that you wouldn't be attending any more of her classes.

And that's precisely what drew me to her.  Her total dedication and demanding perfection.  She lived and breathed yoga.  And she expected her students to do the same.  The wild, undisciplined child in me is attracted to people like her - those with an unyielding drive and uncompromised principles.  To her credit, and to ours, all of her students, at some point in time, tried becoming vegetarian.

We started out with Sivananda, until Bela got into Ashtanga and we shifted to that.  I remember walking out of her class, breathing deeply into the night air, exhilarated by yoga.

But my practice was, at best, inconsistent.  I was shuttling back and forth from Siargao and could never get into self-practice.  So I went whenever I found myself in Manila.  I would go to her classes as faithfully as my time would allow.

When Bela wrote an article on Vipassana, in October that same year, I joined the fourth Vipassana meditation course in the Philippines.

She held yoga retreats with Moching Yip and with Paul Dallaghan.  Paul was a revelation as he was fun and wacky and showed us that yoga didn't have to be serious.  Eventually, Bela started loosening up.  She would still call out to Rosan and me not to drink or smoke too much when she knew we would have a night out.  And, one evening, when she joined us for dinner at Geni Psinaki's then restaurant, Mati, as she watched us clinking our wine glasses, I could hear her telling herself quietly, "My students are drinking grape juice."

Me and yoga buddy, Rosan Cruz.

But she got busier and spent less and less time at the shala.  Her student-teachers were gradually taking over her classes for her.  By the time, I joined my second Vipassana course in October 2004, I too was wavering.  I hardly spent any time at yoga and everyday that I was at Vipassana, I had to keep fighting the urge to quit.

Eventually, travel and work took over and, for some reason, contrary to all that Vipassana teaches, I developed an aversion to yoga.  Ashtanga yoga in particular.  None of my friends could get me onto a yoga mat.  I didn't mind Bikram yoga, as I didn't and still don't consider it yoga.  It's McYoga, unapologetically and undisguisedly commercial.  Purely physical.  Nothing spiritual.  I tried it for a month in 2008 and liked it, before disappearing to Siargao again.

And so it was in April this year that I found myself faced with the quandary of the Clayton Horton retreat.  Susan, who is half Austrian, half Japanese but born and raised in Australia and now lives eight months of the year in Siargao, is one of my travel buddies.  We've been to Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, India, and China together.  But since she had a baby four years ago, it's been harder and harder to find travel time together so, for old time's sake, I grudgingly agreed to the retreat.

Susan Brandstetter and me in India.  (Photo by Rocio Magana.)

To warm up for it, literally and figuratively, I took up Bikram again for a month in May.  (Went to a total of 19 classes, as I spent one long weekend in Taiwan and another in Macau, and was hungover for two days and too lazy to go for one.)  I wanted, at the very least, to be able to touch my toes.

By the time my mat was face to face with Clayton Horton's, not only was I able to touch my toes, but my mind was open to Ashtanga once again.

One thing I've always believed is that, when a student approaches a new teacher, that student should always have the humility to unlearn what she believes she knows and be open to the new teacher and what he or she has to offer.

To my surprise, I found that I missed Ashtanga.  Clayton is a an excellent teacher.  Very clear, precise and nurturing.  After he left, I got to practice with Claudia Maciulis, a Swedish instructor also living in Boracay, and her compassion now compels me to find myself a new yoga guru in Manila.

Pi Villaraza, Clayton Horton and Zemfira Khayrullina preparing to do pranayama on a hilltop.

But I've committed to doing CrossFit this June and boxing in July so my quest will have to wait till August.  I am faced with the dilemma of knowing almost all the Ashtanga teachers in Manila as I practiced with most of them under Bela.  I am hoping that, by August, my mind will be open to having one of them as my guru.

Pfft.

Since I started this blog, I spent a weekend in Macau and went on a week-long raw food detox in Palawan.  You'd think I would have written about those food experiences and yet I haven't written squat.  For someone who isn't doing anything, I never have time for anything.  Sigh.