About Linda

Linda is a pioneer of Raw Living Foods Education in Singapore; she is a certified Living Foods Chef & Teacher from Boston, certified Kundalini Yoga Teacher and certified Yoga Master from India. Dedicated to a purpose of teaching people on conscious living through diet and lifestyle, Linda is the Founder & Lead Trainer of Light Love Laughter Pte Ltd - a company that aims to transform lives for the better by integrating Living Foods & Yoga.

With more than 8 years of Yoga experience, she completed the Yoga Master 500 TTC Level Training, & Kundalini Yoga Master Certification in India under the direct guidance and discipleship of Swamiji Vidyananda - Founder and President of Yoga-Alliance-India and Yoga-Alliance-International.

Linda has been teaching Living Foods in Singapore & Asia since 2007. Her immense passion for the secret of lasting youth, vitality and longevity, led her to probe deep into the realms of Vedic Yogic wisdom and Living Foods Science. By marrying the 2 ancient schools of wisdom, Linda is a living example of the effect of conscious living through lifestyle and diet with her abundant energy, stamina and youthfulness. She believes that by combining Yoga and Living Foods intelligently, one can unleash the natural healing as well as rejuvenating powers latent in every living human being. Linda now conducts Yoga classes, Yoga & Live Food Workshops as well as special Transformational Yoga classes. You can connect with her at Linda@rawfoodlifestyles.com

Visit Yoga Alliance Asia Pacific for more details.

How Linda Discovered the Raw Foods Lifestyle

My name is Linda, I was born, studied, and grew up in Singapore. I’ve been eating mainly Living Foods for coming to 5 years now, and I’m more alive than ever!

Contrary to what most people think & say in the beginning, my hands, ears, eyes and hair are still intact, my nose did not drop off, my finger nails are still here – in fact I have stronger nails, hair and more radiant skin than ever.

I had a somewhat unconventional childhood; while most kids are studying and playing, I was busy working. The story is that my parents separated when I was 14, I decided to bring myself up because I loved to study & really wanted a University education.

Working part time at every odd job that will employ young students, I successfully went through Secondary, College and University. However, I also started to smoke and drink and led a pretty delinquent lifestyle.

Even before University, I knew I wanted to get into a trade that can help me make the most money, and so I chose banking. Needless to say, I’ve only been in the banking & finance industry since graduation. That was one of the shortest routes to material success, and within 3 years I was making 3 times that of my peers who were in other industries.

No matter how much money I made, I was never happy, and I wanted more. And somehow the money was just squandered away on shopping, cosmetics, food, alcohol and other material stuffs. I worked hard, so hard that I’d go days without sleeping, surviving just on cigarettes, and junk processed food. My way of dealing with the stress, is to be drinking almost every other night when not working.

When I turned 26, I became really sick – both physically & emotionally. My periods started to disappear now and then, and then totally stopped coming. The gynecologist said it was natural, and prescribed hormone pills. After taking the hormone pills, the menses returned, but I developed horrible Eczema. The rashes were a source of torture and agony during many nights.

I went to 6 Doctors and they all told me the same thing – there is no cure, no reason, the only remedies are to take steroids and apply creams. However, the creams only worked once; my body developed a resistance to it the second time and it doesn’t work.

When the menses stopped coming, it was not enough to wake me up yet. Because I was all about looking good, I would choose looking good over being healthy. I used to eat a lot of slimming diets, pills and medications even though I know they are not the best things. But when the Ezcema hit, I knew I’ve got to change.

And so I began researching into the relationship between beauty, skin health and internal health. The more I discovered, the more I was convinced that diet is a super underrated component of beauty and health.

Ever since I discovered Living Foods, life took on a drastic shift. I saw how my skin mended before my very eyes, my radiance and shine coming through the hair, eyes and my energy levels shot up. I felt obvious shifts in mental clarity and consciousness.

In the interim, I did a huge amount of work on myself to resolve hidden emotional issues that started to surface. When the diet cleans up, the emotions have to clean up too.

I gave up using makeup, cosmetics and conventional skin care because I know they do more harm than good; and besides, there is no need to. I look better now than I was previously behind 6 inches of powder. Collagen drinks, synthesized supplements and slimming pills were all thrown out of the cabinet.

With an intelligent combination of Yoga & Living Foods, I believe that the Fountain of Youth does really exist, and it is every man & woman’s birth-right to know. This is the reason for my choice of teaching people how to have the energy and radiance that I have.

How I transitioned over the 5 years:

When I first stumbled onto Raw Foods on the internet in 2006, it seemed like an impossible idea. Being curious by nature, I probed and researched before deciding to experiment on myself. Even only for a few days, I could feel that something was changing inside my body, and the experience was phenomenal.

Living purely on fruits and raw vegetables, i started needing lesser sleep and getting a lot more energy. My mind became sharp and focused like never before, and the world seemed different. Day after day I woke up on lesser sleep and higher energy!

But everybody thought I’d gone insane when I told friends about it! I stood out like a sore thumb, social situations turned out extremely bad and people frowned upon my diet disapprovingly. People viewed me as a weirdo at best, and a lunatic at worst!

Raw food just started nibbling at the Western countries then, and Singapore was definitely not a great place to introduce new ideas yet! With so much new found energy, nobody could match my pace and I grew bored, lonely, even scared, and eventually gave up.

Turning raw was not an easy change. I scrambled feebly onto raw after every backslide, only to find myself back in the comfort of cooked foods too soon. Somehow, thank God, I made enough progress through months of research, perseverance, trials and errors, that I slowly found my path back to raw again. It was really difficult because I was all alone here and my nearest “raw buddy” was an Australian living in Canada! There wasn’t even a shadow of any raw foodist in Asia then.

But still, it wasn’t complete until I finally took a month off and flew to Boston. After 3 flights, 2 days of being in the air, 1 shuttle bus, and a 2 hour car ride, I reached Kittery, Maine - the place where I received training. There, I experienced the biggest transformation of my lifetime.

I had access to gourmet raw food everyday, world-class trainers on both raw food preparation AND personal development. Everyday was packed with training on raw food preparation, terminology and character development to qualify as a living foods teacher.

I also met many people from Europe, America, Germany, Australia - most of them had healed themselves of ‘incurable diseases’ with living foods and Yoga; and they all look amazing!

Honestly, having been in banking for the whole of my working career, being a teacher was the last thing on my mind then! I only wanted to satisfy my curiosity and learn to prepare raw gourmet for myself. But then remembering how tough it was to stick to raw in Singapore, I thought it would be cool if I could be a teacher and coach myself.

That was, I classify as, the best decision ever made for my life. My learning curve was exponential, coupled with the fabulous raw gourmet food which was available all day long, made that period the most unbelievable time of my life. That was one of the first major turning points on my journey of healing.

Click here to see my raw transformations

Honestly, there are just so many benefits I have from eating raw! The most obvious ones include weight loss, my skin became firmer and clearer, I look even younger now than I did 10 years ago! Oh yes, and my favorite one - my white hairs started to disappear!

Sticking to raw and healthy eating in Singapore, alone and “misunderstood” by many, is no easy feat. Even today, it is still not easy, but not impossible! I’m delighted to say that the hours of extensive research and distant learning, plus keeping abreast with latest raw food news, has continued to keep my fire alive. The more I learn, the more I felt compelled to share. Now my passion and fire burns even more strongly because my physical transformations were astounding!

And because I love my country, I wanted to reach out to fellow Singaporeans.

After I came back from the States, I was modifying recipes to local tastes because I got bored with the Western dishes. And eventually, I started creating raw versions of local dishes like “Ba Cho Mee”, “Glutinous Rice” and “Ondeh Ondeh” which wowed friends and family!

Despite fear and the natural human resistance to change, I gritted my teeth and pushed on in my journey alone. Then miracles started to happen. One by one, loved ones started to show interest and tried for themselves. Then more miracles happened! They started to notice how much better they look and feel and became even more interested. That was big motivation

What started out as hobby and passion, propelled me onto a new mission in life. And besides, it is much more meaningful to do it together than to do it alone. It is now a personal mission to make available training, skills and support to every learner, which will enable him/her to sustain on a raw food lifestyle for as long as they wish to!

So what kind of person am I and what kind of life do I lead now? To sum it all up, all I can say is:

When I’m not jumping for joy, I’m usually happy for no reason I continue to be amazed by the wonders of Mother Earth, the magic of our ecosystems, and the delicate connections in between. Never did a day passed without a new discovery about myself, my potential and creativity. My mantra now is to learn, grow and share!

Before Raw (Jun 2005)

After Raw