About Linda

Linda is dedicated to a purpose of teaching people on conscious living through diet and lifestyle. She has been practicing Yoga for 5 years, and completed the Yoga Master 500 TTC Level Training in India under the direct guidance and discipleship of Swamiji Vidyananda - Founder and President of Yoga-Alliance-India and Yoga-Alliance-International. She is also a certified Living Foods Chef & Teacher from Boston, and has been teaching Live Foods for more than 2 years. Linda’s 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

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 opted for both chef and teacher certification, and boy, I didn’t know that there were in fact, more learning for teacher than chef certification!

We were told in class that being a live foods chef is one thing, and being a live foods teacher, is another.

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. I felt like I was reborn!.

Ever since then, I had never felt the same. With all that skills and knowledge, nothing can stop me on my pursuit for maximum health and beauty!

Click here to see my raw transformations

I can write a glacier of stuff just on the benefits I have from eating raw! Well perhaps, just in this context we shall talk about something familiar? 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 motivated me big time man!

What started out as hobby and passion, propelled me onto a new mission in life. It is now a life-long objective 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