In the Beginning

My mother says I started following her around the kitchen aged nine or ten. That was 1986, I’m forty eight now and its 2024. I used to be at an all-boys weekly boarding school from age five to twelve. So I would live at school from Monday morning to Friday afternoon. Then Friday lunch time I would walk out to the parking lot where my mother was waiting to take me home. And I can still remember from as young an age as six or seven, starting every Thursday night, all through Friday, I would dream of Mum’s food that would be waiting for me, and I would salivate for it. From age six until today, whether returning home from boarding school, or later as a university student, or a solo backpacker across continents, when I stopped by Mum’s for a visit, I could always count on a pot of my favourite freshly prepared meal waiting for me on the stove the moment I entered the house. Because that’s what Indians do, we enter the house through the kitchen. Everyone else uses the front door.

The First Turning Point

Now I remember, at that young age, around 1986, having a profound realization:

I want to eat Mum’s food every day until I die

That was my first life’s purpose. And from that early age I realized that either Mum would need to outlive me – not likely – or I would need to marry a woman who learned from my mother . . an idea I didn’t like because it felt that I’d be a lifelong dependent . . . or I needed to learn everything myself. So from that day forward, aged between nine and ten, I first asked my mother the question that would guide much of my life over several decades and continents:

“How do you cook this?”

To which my mother responded: “Stand here and watch.”

And for the next fourteen years, that would be her response every time I asked the question.

“Stand here and watch.”

From showing up regularly to watch, I was assigned the task of peeling onions, garlic and potatoes, then cleaning up the prep area, which meant catching all peels, skins, stalks, stems and other unwanted bits – bones and fat included – in newspaper placed under the chopping board, and dumping it all in the bin. Then washing chopping board, knives and utensils and leaving to dry in the drying rack, and then taking a soapy, damp cloth and wiping down the counter and table. Over the years, I graduated to sweeping floors, washing dishes, chopping and slicing vegetables. Always watching everything my mother was doing..

Graduation

In the year 2000, aged 24, when extended family was coming over for a meal at my mother’s house, for the first time in human history, she allowed me to cook the main dish that guests would eat and judge her by. All the Indians in the house know exactly how high these stakes are! It turned out though, that I ended up sitting at the table that evening listening to everyone praise my mother for her outstanding food once again. My mother’s sideway glance to me with that subtle smile of secrecy among thieves was my graduation.

Since then I have cooked practically every day over twenty four years on three different continents, as a backpacker in hostels, as a camper outside my tent, on and in wood and charcoal fires under the canopy of a forest or the night’s sky, in deserts, next to oceans, on hilltops and mountains, in valleys, in cities, on islands; as a freelance Ayurvedic cook for events, weddings, retreats, private functions in people’s homes, and social cooking classes and workshops; London, South Africa, Zambia, India, Nepal, Malta and Corsica. But it is only after that fateful year of 2021 that I would begin to see why this insatiable passion for cooking and serving others was planted in me, why it never let me go, and how it was about to move from a life hobby into a deeper calling.

Coming Home

In June 2021 my father, aged 75, passed away quietly in his sleep. The autopsy said ‘heart disease’. For me, my family and all his friends who knew him through his life, this made no sense. The man was an athletic machine. He played competitive football, he ran, swam, played tennis, squash, cricket, golf, hiked, cycled, coached high school children in sports, and even on the day he passed away, he speed-walked 10 kilometers and did three sets of thirty squats. People like this did not die from heart disease. This is what I knew. But I was wrong. For several months I sat silently by my shrine, with an open heart, waiting. My father and I had always had a deep spiritual connection and I knew that while his body had left, yet he was still very much present.

“Dad, this all feels too abrupt. It feels like there is an unfinished conversation. If there is anything you need from me, for the peace of your soul, then tell me. I am here, and I am ready.”

So, with my own private questions in my heart, I sat daily by my shrine and waited. And then one day, a couple months later, he visited. As if he was sitting right next to me, speaking in that voice that only I could know, as clear as when he was still in his body, he responded to the questions I had been asking that never left my mouth, but hung around in my heart like a hungry cat waiting by its food bowl.

“Research the link between food and disease. Then teach them how to eat, boy, they have forgotten and it’s killing them. Do this for me.”

I shifted my focus immediately and began formalizing my years of studying and research to become a registered member of the Complimentary Medical Association. 

I specialize in creating online programs, courses and ebooks to empower individuals to Reconnect – with their body and emotions, ancestors and Earth Mother – by cultivating a conscious relationship with Food. Using Food as Medicine and Conscious Eating as foundational tools, rooted in the principles of Ayurveda, Right Digestion and Gut Health, I guide and mentor individuals to transform their lives from the Inside Out.

My programs are designed to empower you to create a joyful, fun, nourishing and creative relationship with your kitchen, while addressing deeper needs of: 

• Physical Healing and Wellness, from the Root upward
• Emotional Healing and Trauma Release
• Nervous System Regulation
• Gut Health, Immune System Support and Cognitive Function
• Reconnection with Earth and its Natural Cycles
• Reconnection with Ancestral lineage

So if you’re ready to Re-Connect and allow the process of transformation to work its magic through you, check out my Online Learning Portal. Everything carries a Money-Back-Guarantee, and I have some great freebies to help you get started, so you couldn’t be any safer. xx

All my love,
Philen