With a qualification in Analytical Chemistry and a grandfather who planted all his own vegetables, finding a path of growing healthy food with the addition of a curiosity of all things on cellular level, made the creation of Raw Love a natural flow in Carmen Potgieter’s life path.
The addition of a yoga teacher qualification from The Shala in Cape Town and a plant based nutritional coaching qualification with David Wolfe as mentor via the Body Mind Institute gave Carmen Potgieter the confidence to actively introduce healthy lifestyle habits to her clients by introducing small sustainable changes starting with the single act of growing your own spinach.
More recently a new addition to the Raw Love program is: “Step into my Kitchen”. An interactive series where Carmen does live food demo’s to groups of friends or family in the comfort of their own homes while discussing the benefits of enzyme rich foods, detoxification, superfoods, the magic of drinking spring water and the importance of growing your own food.
When Carmen is not in her kitchen creating new delicious dishes for herself and her clients, you will find her in her Rudolf Steiner inspired food forest garden, lovingly talking to her fruit trees or seasonal veggies. Carmen lives in Malmesbury with her two cats and a countless array of self invited garden creatures.
Let’s chat to Carmen!
Tell us a little about your Raw Love journey – and how it has impacted your life.
The moment I tasted my own home grown tomato, I knew I could never go back to an ordinary life of consuming fake food. Listening to a lecture of David Wolfe which he gave in 2013 at the Botanical Gardens in Cape Town made me realize I am at the beginning of a magical discovery of life. I feel younger and more energized the older I get and that in itself is enough evidence for me to know the most important thing I can do is to introduce as many people as possible to this way of life.
If you had a theme song, what would it be?
Trust by Alexia Chellun
What is the biggest risk you have ever taken?
Selling everything I had in the city to buy a property in the countryside
If Mars were liveable, would you accept a one-way ticket there?
Not yet – there are too many things on this planet I have not yet discovered or experienced.
Plus, I do not think my beech tree would approve.
If you were given one thousand acres of land what would you do with it?
Plant plant plant – create a food forest
Are you more of a hunter or a gatherer?
I am a gatherer. Even the snails get taken back outside if they sneak in with the lettuce. I reckon if they were not supposed to be here, God would not have created them, right?
How many pairs of shoes do you own?
Perhaps 20?
If we came to your house for dinner, what would you prepare for us?
That would depend entirely on what is growing in my garden at the time.
How would people communicate in a perfect world?
Without judgement
Where do you find your inspiration?
Nature, friends, books, animals, the moon cycle, my Creator, small nudges from the Universe.
If you woke up to 300 unread emails, how would you prioritise which ones to answer?
I would work from my inner circle of connections outwards
Where do you go and what do you do to find peace and recharge?
To my garden
If you could write one new law that everybody had to obey, what would it be?
No more man-made chemicals in any form.
What, if anything, have you ever re-gifted?
Anything that I do not use gets a new home. This is very important to me. Items even given with love that you do not have use for have perhaps come into your life for the very purpose of being re-gifted. In my friend group we re-gift openly to keep the flow of abundant energy going.
What is the most interesting thing you have seen or read this week?
A Podcast Rich Roll did with Chris Burkard. Chris was expressing how important it is to say no to certain things to allow the full expression of your life purpose.
What skill or craft would you like to master?
Doing an un supported head stand – courage fails me on that one.
What would you say are some small steps that people can take to improve their relationship to the environment?
Grow your own spinach. You almost cannot fail and the feeling of accomplishment will fuel the drive to start growing more and more of your own food and in that you will go full circle in the realization of how interconnected we are with nature. It is not us and nature, it is us in nature.
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