Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes did a Raw Food Transformation Talk Last Night

OK, so writing about the event last night - Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes did a Raw Food Transformation Talk in Montpelier on Aug 11th at 6 pm... We got to the church to set up around 4:30 pm. If I wanted to, I'd write about the EXCELLENT day I had the day before with Joshua helping me prepare for Tuesday. But for now, I'll keep it to just Tuesday and say THANK YOU virtually again to Joshua Pfeil for helping me so much. I was absolutely grateful. By the time we got there, Matt and Angela were already there. They had just finished setting up like FIVE tables or something crazy with all their inventory. It was totally amazing to see. They said they were wishing that every event could be held at the place we had - nice wide open space and plenty of room for chairs and tables. That was good to hear. This is definitely their livelihood and it showed that they've got this all figured out. I set up my little table and I put up a table for Geniel Fife. She is the only other raw food lady making food for stores here in VT. She a grandmom and she's amazing! I just met her on Sunday at her potluck that we had for Natasha Kyssa. I just instantly liked Geniel. Geniel wanted to set up a table to put out samples and I said, "Absolutely!" On my table, I had a little section for my brochures and business cards, plus had some hemp nut milk bags for sale. We didn't want to bring any nylon bags because we figured the Monarch's would bring our nylon bags (turns out they didn't put out our nylon bags because they wanted us to sell ours! How funny!) So we just put the hemp out and only one size: the 9 x 12. I put out some cookies that Matt decided to bring - the hazelnut spice cookies. I put out some plates to hold the chocolate orange heaven cheeze cake that Joshua and I made as well as the VitaMinteral Green Cheeze Cake that I made. I put out some fudge balls that I made which Joshua rolled out in coconut flakes. Plus I had 3 gallons of nut milk in the coolers ready - 2 gallons of hazelnut milk sweetened with agave and 1 gallon of hazenut chai. Angela asked if I brought any of my god/goddess butters because she loved them so much. So we sent Matt home to get them as I didn't have enough space to bring the first trip around. OH! Also brought some tee-shirts but we had no real place to show them but at least I was wearing one, Emily was wearing one and Cat was wearing one! I gave one to Angela too so that she could represent as well! :-) So we were all set up and then we realized we forgot a sign for outside! Thankfully the church had a sandwich board and Cat/Emily went to the drawing board, got some poster paper and I gave Cat a marker to write out signs for the sandwich board. The two of them put that out on the street, we opened the doors and in came in the guests! We had 24 paid guests and if you included me and my worker bees, we had 30 people listening to what Matt and Angela had to say! That was so cool! Pat, my neighbor and friend, came and she took my little point-and-shoot digital camera and took many pictures which you can see posted on my fiddleheads facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Worcester-VT/Vermont-Fiddle-Heads/63781489465?ref=nf#/album.php?aid=137458&id=63781489465 As we let the guests settle in and peruse Matt/Angela's table, we decided to start the talk. I said hello to everyone and welcomed our guests and we began. Matt started the talks. He talked about a wide range of raw food transformation - talking about many ways to adjust the diet for better health and vitality. Meanwhile, Angela was our first paying customer, buying a cup of chai milk and loved it. (YAYYY!) He talked about spirituality, colon hydrotherapy and various transformations that take place in the body when we clean up our diet. I saw a bunch of note taking happening which was way cool! I totally found Mr Monarch to be quite fun to watch as he spoke - he's a sweetie and he definitely has experimented with himself and read a WHOLE bunch along the way. He kept calling himself an extremist and I found myself chuckling at the things he was saying. I'm SURE some (or maybe a lot) of what he said was maybe the first time people heard of such things, but for me, it was like preaching to the choir... And I needed to hear the extra preaching to be honest. For me, I am finding that I JONES to hear what people are doing who have been doing raw food longer than I. I still find that I've got a lot of conditioning/mental programming around stuff that I know makes no sense really, but there's fragments still there... This is why I SO enjoy hearing what these guys are doing - totally validates that what I'm doing is along the norm. For example, I was listening to Matt talk about eating less and how the body goes through healing/detox and also how the body starts to feel really really good on less food. It's just a matter of finding the right amount of food that works for you. This is what I've been evolving to in the last 6 months or so. I don't eat a lot most days. Well, it seems like every other day I find that I'm hungry. Of course I have that conditioning in me like the 1950s housewife that goes, "three square meals a day!" And for me, that doesn't feel quite right in my body anymore. So when Natasha was here this past weekend, I asked her about it and she nodded and said, "that sounds about right." And last night Matt said pretty much the same thing. So, for me, who has been on this raw journey for 8 years now, doing it quite by myself (no spa retreats yet!) and happy to experiment, it's just nice to hear these validations. It was hella fun to just listen to all that he had to say and I was also THRILLED that these words were coming out of someone else's mouth for my kids to hear! YIPPPEEEEE!!! So back to the night. Matt talked for quite a while and answered a lot of questions. He announced it was time to take a break and so people got up and went over to their table to ask more questions and we had some visitors at our table, too. It was just fun talking with people and then Matt comes over with his little video camera and asks us if we want to be on his little TV show. Well, this is something that we weren't expecting! I was totally not prepared but it was still totally fun. I only hope he edits a bit because I was very silly sounding, I'm sure. But whatever! It's all good. Matt M. asked Matt W. about healing his asthma on the raw food diet and me about all the slew of things that I've reversed. I am not exactly sure how coherent I was. I was still pretty much like "NOT expecting this!" but like I said it was fun. Just added! A link to his TV show here: http://mattmonarch.blogspot.com/2009/08/healing-asthma-with-raw-foods-episode.html So then Angela's turn came up to talk and she talked about her own transformation going from being 300 lbs and morbidly obese to losing more than half her weight on the raw food diet. She talked about her journey, her favorite foods to eat, the foods that are best to eat each day, tips and tricks to how to eat this way while you are traveling, etc. She talked about her ideology and how it's changed as well as how her own emotions have changed on her raw food journey. She took questions. One of the best questions was "How many calories is in bee pollen?" And I loved the answer that Angela gave - she said she likes to equate things to nature so she said, "We're the only animals that think it's necessary to count calories. No animal in the woods is out there taking out a calorie counter and measuring his food." I love when the raw food dudes talk like this. David Wolfe does that too. It makes sense when you really think about it. She said (as others have) that no other animal puts fire to their food and yet we do and feel that it is best. To her, this is crazy thinking and I love that. Again, she talked like Matt Monarch did about "wild and crazy" things and yet to my ears, it was very much welcomed. I think it might have been a lot to digest (pun intended) for a lot of people and probably for some it was their first exposure to this kinda stuff but how great is that?! Everyone saw 2 people that are articulate and healthy looking talking about their own experiences. Wonderful wonderful! The night ended and people stayed and bought things or asked questions. It was a very inspiring night! Everyone left with smiles so we did something good, me thinks! The Monarchs had about 5 empty boxes from their inventory so hopefully they made some money to help them continue what they are doing. We helped them pack up their RAV4 full to the brim with alllllll their stuff, gave them hugs and sent them on their merry way. I was totally hoping they could check out lots more fun stuff here in Central VT but they were off to get to Buffalo for their next day's event. So that was the day! Pretty cool, right? P.S. I'll write more about the weekend with Natasha tomorrow!