Originally published August 20 2009
Karen Knowler Part III: Cleaning Out What is in Your Way
by Kevin Gianni
(NaturalNews) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Rawkathon, which can be found at http://www.Rawkathon.com. In this excerpt, Karen Knowler shares on the process of getting honest and cleaning out what's in your way on the inside and out.
Rawkathon with Karen Knowler. Karen Knowler has been on a raw food journey for 15 years. She's a raw food coach and the co-author of Feel Good Food.
Kevin: You talked about honesty, and the process; this is probably going to be very instructive. So, as you're coaching someone how do you get someone to come to be more honest with themselves?
Karen: Well, I guess it stems from self-love. People have to commit to themselves. I think until they can feel valuable enough to hear themselves, then they won't do that. And like I said, for me, I had to go to rock-bottom to find the self-love I needed to bring myself back up. And so sometimes people have to go through that stuff.
And sometimes it's up to me to draw their attention to that, and sometimes people just see it for themselves and say, "Oh this is just too much too soon for me." Because it's a fast path, so people have to learn how to just pace themselves in a way that really works for them. When someone's ready, and sometimes it takes a few false starts, because for me, I yo-yoed with raw food for the first five years. Nowadays people are like, "I'm not 100% raw and it's been three months." I'm like, "Took me five years!"
Kevin: [laughter]
Karen: Because people have so many shifts going on at once, they need to just be at peace with themselves. And I even had someone yesterday who was saying, "I'm yo-yoing with raw food like crazy. And one minute I'm like 100%, and then I'm 50%; I'm like this the whole time." I said, "You need to just put the food to one side and not even look at food for a while. You just need to make peace, here, because you will not make peace with food choices until you're coming from a peaceful place." So whatever it is that you're not feeling peaceful about right now, make peace with that. People really do know, and it has to become that black and white where you just...for me as a coach, I'll just...I have this knack of just getting people to be real.
Because when people say, "Well, I don't know..." "Well, if you did know, what would the answer be?" And they're like, "I do actually know, I just didn't want to say it." There's not many people in life who will be that mirror and that direct to people. That's what I kind of do naturally now, and that's what I'm paid to do, but that's now who I am.
Kevin: Do you probably do it in your personal life too, right? [laughter]
Karen: Yeah, probably. The thing is, and a lot of people find this on raw food, they become so less tolerant of B.S. and other stuff. It's like, "If you're not real, I really haven't got the time," unless I'm coaching that person to become real, but in my personal life, I can't be around people who are living a lie. And this isn't a conscious choice; this is just how it shows up, because you become so aware of your own energy, and the value of where you spend your energy on raw food, that I'm not going to invest energy in things, people, situations that aren't real. Because I really feel I know where I'm going in life now, and it was a long road, so the questions you've asked me about people just starting off -- it's not that I suddenly woke up and went, "Ah! That's why I'm here." It was a very heartfelt opening up and saying, "Show me why I'm here, because I don't know." I just felt an inner pull saying, "It's time, do your thing," and I'm like, "What thing? I don't know what the thing is." But the journey kind of went from that to that, and the more I perceived the things that interest me and made me happy and kind of spot me off, the more I knew I was getting closer to it. It's like when you play "hunt the object in the house," and you go "cold, warm, hotter, hot hot hot hot hot." And you get to your hot point and then you follow it and then that's when the synchronicities really pick up.
So energetically, I have to just be really careful now of where I spend my time and my energy, because there's so many other things I want to be doing. And if I waste my energy in situations that aren't conducive to helping me be who I am and where I want to go, then I'm taking away from the people that I'm serving.
One of my fears, when I first started raw food, was, "Well, when I get to 100% raw foods, what happens next? Is that like, I've arrived?" And that actually scared me, so I almost had fun just playing around in the periphery of being 50% raw, 80% raw, thinking, "Well, at least there's 100% raw out there waiting for me one day." But when I stepped into 100% raw, I kicked myself for not going there sooner, because I thought, "Ah, it's like a whole different playing field; it's like a whole different planet to be on." And once you get there, there's so many other things waiting for you.
Kevin: Do you think that you needed the five years to go raw?
Karen: Yeah -- a lot of people say, "Oh, I went raw overnight," and I'm like, "Hat off to you." But I couldn't have done that, because there were so many aspects of me that had to shift to accommodate the energy of raw food. I grew up in a situation where, just like an average family I guess, eating out of boxes and putting food in boxes and taking it out of boxes and my parents are not very kind of go-getting types of people. I always felt different to everyone -- my family, my friends, the whole thing. But I always thought that dreams happened for other people, not for me.
And it wasn't until I moved to London, and it was, literally, fate that pushed me to London -- my mother and my stepfather split up, and I was like, "Well, where do I go now?" My father kind of stepped in and rescued me, and said, "Come live with us." And he had married a woman who had two children who now were adults and worked in London, so the natural thing was, "Go and work in London like they do." So I was terrified, but I went. And London was the making of me, because suddenly I was in an environment where everyone thought outside the box and did life bigger than my small town where I came from. And I was doing raw food at the same time, and my world was just blowing wide open -- raw food, exercise, interesting people who were really living, and wow. So it's worth spending a couple minutes within that environment, because environment is critical.
Basically, a lot of people fail on raw food because their environment's not set up right. And that's as basic as their kitchen, through to having the foods they don't want to eat staring at them, and not the right equipment or everything, and then it's their home -- does their home feel nurturing and supportive to this unfolding that's occurring? I often liken the home to the chrysalis; a lot of people talk about raw transformation, and I really think that we start off like caterpillars, where we're kind of hanging around in groups, doing the tribal thing, eating a lot, and not really doing too much. And then, at some point in a caterpillar's life, it gets this moment where it must just go, "Ha -- it's time to go to the twig," [laughter], and it's off. Butterflies do not hatch in groups; they hatch alone. And so that the caterpillar goes off to its twig or its branch or whatever, and it spins this chrysalis. And in the chrysalis, that's where all the magic happens, but it breaks down first; the caterpillar turns to mush first, and this is what happens on a raw food journey for people. Often they feel like their whole life is falling apart, and their whole sense of self is falling apart, and they go, "What the hell is going on? I'm eating fresh food, and I feel a wreck." But basically it's all these other levels that are melting down so that they can be rebuilt, because you can't build vibrant health on poor emotional, mental, and spiritual health -- all those four things have to be in place, so that goes into what we said earlier. So the mush is part of the process. But we all know what happens at the end -- when the mush re-forms, it re-forms into something much more beautiful, much more light, and much more incredible, and out emerges this butterfly. And that is the raw food journey to me.. You know, people have the potential to come in as one thing and move forward as another. And you can bet that the butterfly has a different existence than the caterpillar because it's flying high...
Kevin: How do you create that nurturing home?
Karen: Well, feng shui is something that became really fascinating to me as I went raw and I look at raw food as inner feng shui, because you're kind of reorganizing everything internally and getting it into harmony. And feng shui for the home is like having everything feel good, and most people, if not everyone, when they go raw, they suddenly allow that throwing tons of stuff out, de-junking the cupboards and the paperwork and everything. And it sometimes just starts with the desk, and then it spreads and people are running around the house with these big black sacks going, "Go! Go!" It's because as they clean out internally, they want to have that show up externally. And again, that's a bit chicken and egg because they clean up the house and they go, "I'm going to clean up my diet." The more you do this the more you realize that everything on the outside is a mirror for everything going on on the inside. So the house, some people will go, "Why have I got all this stuff? I've moved house ten times and I've carried all this stuff around me? I never even use it or look at it and it's just there." It's like blocked energy pockets in the home. So people suddenly just go, "It doesn't feel good, it's going."
Beyond the home the next stage is the job. What environment are they placing themselves in 9 to 5 every day? That's huge. How many hours do we spend working? The job is a biggie for people because it's all about survival. It's their source of income. They freak out and go, "I've spent 20 years in this job. I've gone raw; I hate it, and it's my money. How am I going to live?" I say, "Don't freak out. This is your opportunity to find out what's buried in here and pursue that purpose that you were born with. Raw food is actually helping you. It's not the enemy. It's your friend and it's going to help lead you to that place where you live the life that you were born to live."
For more from this excerpt of the Rawkathon, plus 14 other amazing raw food interviews, please visit http://www.Rawkathon.com.
About the author
Kevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it. To view his popular internet TV Show "The Renegade Health Show" (and get a free gift!) with commentary on natural health issues, vegan and raw food diets, holistic nutrition and more click here.
His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped. To find out more about abundance, optimum health and self motivation click here... or you're interested in the vegan and raw food diet and cutting edge holistic nutrition click here. For access to free interviews, downloads and a complete bodyweight exercise archive visit www.LiveAwesome.com.
All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml