Raw Yogini Sonia: November's Raw Beauty

Sonia G. Astudillo (aka Raw Yogini Sonia) is a Certified Raw Food Chef, Health Educator, and Detox Coach who trained at Raw Food Bali and Pure Joy Culinary Academy with raw food Chefs Jonny Freesh and Elaina Love in Bali, Indonesia. She is also a certified Yoga Teacher who trained at Sivananda Ashram in Kerala, South India. She was the Brand Ambassador for Moulinex Philippines and Corporate Chef for Tefal Appliance Philippines and is the lead proponent for the 2017 Live Healthy, Stay Happy Campaign. She authored two recipe books: FIT + FAB Guide and Fruity Summer Fresh.

We met through a common friend who asked us both to do workshops last year at BGC. I did a smoothie workshop while she did her famous Raw Yogini Salad Workshop. I tasted her salad and it was superb! I couldn't forget how delicious her dressings and salad combinations are! She truly has a gift in creating nourishing food for the body and soul that's why i thought of featuring her as November's Raw Beauty.

As you can remember, Gerone Pascal was the first Raw Beauty to be featured in my blog and Sonia is the second. I hope to consistently feature Raw Beauty personalities here in my blog in order to share more light and health and happiness to the world.

Read on for Raw Yogini Sonia's full interview!

1. What is your definition of Beauty?

Beauty is peace (shanti!). Peace with an exclamation mark! It is showing up to the world in your most natural self, and at peace with yourself. It is a fullmoon on a dark night. Or a quiet ocean on a sunny yoga day. A pack of horses galloping towards some unknown place. Nothing’s forced. It happens naturally and there is nothing there you want to alter.

It isn’t easy to articulate but somehow you like it for what it is.

2. What makes a woman truly beautiful?

A truly beautiful woman is someone who loves herself despite and inspite of her perfection and imperfections. She shows up to the world not asking for anyone’s approval. She is kind, humble, and compassionate too (these are my 3 most favorite traits in people).

3. How does your nutrition look like in a day? ( Cite what you usually eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. )

For breakfast, I start the day with a 750 ml water. After an hour, I eat breakfast at the office. I’m lucky enough to be working in an office that serves free breakfast to its staff. Every morning, we get to choose between any fruits in season or bread. And we have coffee too from Cambodia, or Vietnam, or Benguet, you name it! When I feel I need extra energy for the day, I eat chia seeds soaked in soymilk or rolled oats (soaked overnight in water). Lunch is always salad (check out my salad offerings at IG: salads_by_chef_sonia) plus some cooked vegetable from the outdoor office café. Sometimes I eat rice. Dinner is fruits or nuts and my homemade coconut yogurt, unless I’m out with friends then I eat something vegetarian. Weekend is different because that’s when I go home to Indang, Cavite. I eat bread for breakfast, white rice and tofu lumpia for lunch and dinner and there’s snack in between too.

I recently went vegan (just this Nov 4, not even a week yet!). I was vegan for a year in 2005 then vegetarian, and then on and off raw vegan. But this year, a month before I turn 41, I made this decision. Several reasons: One, I want to age gracefully – Right now, I easily get tired and extra flabs are showing here and there and I just generally feel I am not at 100%. Two, I’d been promoting healthy eating and cleaning up our body and the environment to friends and social media acquaintances. I know that by going vegan, I’d get to accomplish both. Going vegan is one of the best things I can do for the environment and for animals and going raw vegan is one of the best things I can give to my body.

4. Can you provide us three health and wellness rituals/habits that you cannot live without?

I’d say these are rituals and habits I do not want to live without.

Yoga. Dry skin brushing. Listening to Daphne Tse, Steve Gold and the likes. These three things ground and empower me.

Yoga always has a way of shifting my mood. I can be in the worst mood but few minutes into yoga and instantly I feel better.

Dry skinbrushing wakes me up in the morning. But what I like most about it is the 5 to 10 minutes of just looking at yourself in the mirror while you brush. Sometimes you’d hate your body. Sometimes you’d love it. But in the end, you’re reminded that this is the body given to you and so you just love it!

Daphne Tse and Steve Gold’s music relaxes me. I’ve first heard Daphne played live at the Bali Spirit Festival in 2014. I’d been a fan since then. Steve Gold is a recent discovery but his music... it’s gold! Or mustard and teal and red - my current favorite colors 🙃. Normally I turn off the music when I’m trying to concentrate but not with him. His voice is something I can listen to all day. I call him my current crush/infatuation!

5. What is the most challenging experience you’ve ever had? How did you handle it?

I’d say when I left my fulltime job in December 2013 just as I turned 35. I was working then for an international environmental health NGO. It was a good advocacy group that paid well plus the office is a 2 minute walk from where I live. It was challenging and scary because I was giving up something comfortable, familiar, and secured and moving on to freelance life teaching raw food and yoga and doing private detox coaching. But I managed to do it. I always subscribe to the belief that we are always taken cared of.

Another challenging experience is when in March 2019 as I turned 40, I decided to leave the freelance work and go back to working fulltime. Challenging because I knew my heart belongs to raw food, yoga, and everything shanti plus I was coming back to a very familiar place – an environment NGO, different office but in the same office space seeing same faces and fighting the same cause.

How did I handle it? At first I was so scared. But then later I just flow with the situation. What I realized in the first situation is when you are doing what you love most, opportunities open up for you. Naturally. As a freelancer, I thought I will have more free time but I ended up working longer hours but loving every minute of it. I earned more! Later, I realized that the thing I was so scared of is right in front of me and it’s not scary at all.

For the second situation, I knew I was ready to do more. I was a freelancer for five years. There was nothing more to prove. I can be what I wanted to be. If I want to become a chef, then I can be a chef anytime and even if I’m working fulltime. If I want to become a yoga teacher then I can be a yoga teacher. This time, I knew I wanted to do more. Initially I was ready to give up the salad business. It was doing ok. It’s a start-up but already it was paying all my bills.

I was advising and teaching people to clean up their body through yoga, raw food, and the salad business but we live in a very polluted world. I had too much time on my hands too. I wanted to be where I can contribute something more significant . All the past work experiences from women’s magazines, Congress, Senate, animal rights NGO, environmental health NGO, ethics training NGO, and the yoga, raw food, and salad business all led me to where I should be.

6. What’s your favourite smoothie combination?

A handful of greens, a cup of pineapple, and 1-inch ginger! Plus water.

7. What is your favourite memory that you would like to reminisce over and over again?

There’s no one particular memory but collection of memories with my mom. She passed away in 2009 and the space she left will never be filled in by anyone or anything. That empty space remains. It is true that you just learn to live with it. So yes, all those times with her.

8. What are you passionate about? What kind of work do you do?

Yoga. Raw food. Environment and health.

I am currently working as the Regional Communications Officer for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) Asia Pacific. Part of my job is communicating the alliance’s messages on Zero Waste, plastic, and non burning. Also providing communications support to our members.

I still have my salad delivery. I don’t have many clients nowadays – sometimes just one or two clients in a week - but it is something I enjoy doing, I’m not losing money plus I now have a kitchen assistant who helps in the kitchen and other household work.

9. Share to us your ultimate vacation destination for all time.

I don’t want to call it vacation because vacation sounds so transient. For me, I can spend a night in one place and already make that space my home. But ok for the purpose of answering this, I’d say Kerala in South India where I did my yoga teacher’s training certification and Ubud in Bali Indonesia where I did my raw vegan chef and detox coaching certification. They are the ultimate destinations because those are the two places that opened further my path towards the two things I love most.

Bohol too for the Chocolate Hills! You can’t find it anywhere else and it feels so magical to be there. That’s my nationalistic pride and love & belief in magic speaking here.

Plus Batad. I usually go there alone and instead of staying where most tourists stay, I walk all the way down the rice terraces and spend solo time there. Sometimes I chat with the people in the village. You know that place you don’t want to share with other people? That’s Batad for me.

10. What completes your health routine?

Keeping a healthy mind. Cutting off unnecessary and negative connections. Reading. Learning. Praying/Meditation.

You might want to join her FREE RAW FOOD DEMO CLASS!!!!

MORE ABOUT RAW YOGINI SONIA

As an advocate for healthy living through raw vegan food in the Philippines, Sonia conducts private and group raw vegan and detox classes and yoga trainings under Raw Yogini Sonia. Before venturing into Raw Food, Chef Sonia also worked as writer and editor for several women’s and wedding magazine, Asia Project Assistant and Writing Coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Asia Pacific, Policy Research and Media Head for then Senator Edgardo J. Angara and as PR Writer for then Congressman Juan Miguel Zubiri. There after she transferred to non-profit work as Communications Campaigner working in the forefront of mercury phase out in all Philippine hospitals and the promotion of Global Green and Healthy Hospitals with Health Care Without Harm(HCWH) Asia. She also volunteered for The Way to Happiness Philippines as its Communications Director.

Chef Sonia studied Journalism in UP Diliman, graduating cum laude, and later took a Masters in Public Policy from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan as an Asian Development Bank (ADB) scholar. She currently runs Salad by Chef Sonia and is the Regional Communications Officer for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) Asia Pacific. She has a collection of her batik painting and dragonfly photos. For more info, visit RawYoginiSonia.com FB RawYoginiSonia IG Raw Yogini Sonia IG salads_by_chef_sonia Her other interests may be viewed at IG st.artandme IG differentplacesdifferentloo