In this post I am going to brag about my teacher, Master Minke de Vos and tell you about our friendship and how I helped her with the writing of her book: Tao Tantric Arts for Women: Cultivating Sexual Energy, Love, and Spirit
This is me holding her newly published book which she gave to me last summer, 2016. You can order it by clicking the link above.
I met Minke at a Qigong class in Vancouver at SLY Wushu Institute. Grandmaster Shou Yu Liang was teaching us Taoist Qigong. Up until then I had been studying Taoist qigong, been given books about Taoist Sexual energy cultivation for women, books on Tantra and the Taoist practices had been popping up in so many ways in my life for several years. I had been studying this before I ever really knew what it was all about. Suffice it to say the Taoist path was CALLING ME!
I was attracted to Minke as soon as I found out what she taught, she was the answer to my prayers. I was looking for a sacred feminine teacher, one who could help me access my feminine, help me open my heart and my yoni to myself and Spirit.
I began attending Minke’s classes at her small home studio in the West End of Vancouver. She seemed to come into my life at a very important point. I was feeling less joy than I had ever felt, I had been struggling with a health issue and I felt like my spirit, that sparkle in my eye, was dwindling. So that summer she graciously gave me a work-study opportunity at her summer retreat on Silent Ground. The Inner Smile meditations, the immersion into the beauty of nature on Read Island, the daily purification and strengthening through Qigong REALLY helped me. I felt centered, present and in my body, my worry and anxiety lessened and my joy came back!
I had been told by a Medical Intuitive that to heal I should to learn to love myself, to nurture myself and Minke gave me the tools I needed through her infinitely loving heart and the Taoist teachings. My most memorable days there where practising outside right on the grass under a big grandmother cedar tree, gathering oysters from the beach, hunting for clay from an earthquake fault and coating ourselves in it! We dried in the sun with the clay over our bodies and then scrubbed it off and jumped into the most pristine lake, from which you could drink the water as you swam, it was that pure! We practiced with the Jade Egg our healing love qigong outside with other women, baking our yoni’s in the warm summer sunshine!
I received some very powerful messages from nature while there that I was on my path. One day as we were relaxing and sun-tanning on the dock I looked up to see and eagle with a snake clutched in it’s claws as it circled the sun three times. A perfect symbol of the joining of sex and Spirit.
When I received the course manual for the retreat I had some trouble recalling the exercises from what was written and so I made a vow to myself and Minke that I would like to help her write a new one some day.
Minke was VERY generous throughout the years sharing her teachings with me and we became friends. We danced and performed her choreography together, we hosted a Solstice celebration on the eve of 2012, we helped organize a Sacred Dance event in Vancouver with other dance leaders. I attended many workshops over several years that were organized by Minke, with Grandmaster Mantak Chia, and other special Taoist teachers like Gilles Marin in Chi Nei Tsang. You have to understand that Minke and her abundance of energy was almost hard to keep up with!! Sometime (many times) I had to say no to dance performances as I was still on my path of healing and learning balance in my life.
In 2013 I attended the one month Tao Tantra Teacher training with her and Shashi Solluna Thailand. I was on “staff” helping with the retreat. This was one of the most powerful experiences in my entire life. I was literally in a Tantra temple with twelve other Goddesses. I went quite deep with this group of women and into myself and released some huge trauma and fears from my body and sexual area. This made room for more energy, health and creativity.
The Jade Egg was a tool that I had and had been introduced to many years previously to this but it was not really until this complete immersion that I learned the power of the Taoist practices for women. After the retreat my yoni had completely changed as I had shed so much. I was very open, I was new and transformed. I was catapulted in the following years further on my path of helping others heal.
It was in the year leading up to this retreat that Minke and I gathered together almost every week for a year to help her put in motion the writing of the book Tao Tantric Arts for Women: Cultivating Sexual Energy, Love, and Spirit to honour my vow and her generosity. It felt so good to help my friend with one of the most important contributions in her career.
The process was so fun! We would gather at her place, practice qigong and Minke would test me with all my Tao Qigong basics to certify me as a teacher. We had yummy tea, did Tao yoga, not to mention the excellent smoothies and lunch Dave would make us! I was the typist and Minke was the muse. She would channel the words of her book and I would type, type, type. We would stop, discuss and iron out thoughts into words and share experiences on the practices we were writing about. I am sure that we had lots of angels helping us with the process. I learned SO much and I marvelled at how deeply Minke embodied and understood the teachings. I did as much as I could do to help her and after almost a year and a half the book was submitted to the publisher. That felt very good indeed as did the moment I was presented my certificate as an official instructor in the Universal Healing Tao while we were in Thailand together!
During the next year I recorded my on-line Jade Egg course material while it was all so fresh. I did this with a very important break from the city in mind, in search of a lifestyle more immersed in nature with nature as my guide and teacher. Then I left. Now I am here, in the Shuswap and loving every second of it!
Minke’s wisdom is deepening all the time for those of you who may have studied with her in the past, and she is a good reflection of my deepening feminine wisdom. I feel so fortunate that my life had intersected with this powerful woman and these teachings. I feel blessed to have Minke as my friend and mirror and I look forward to more adventures together.
This summer, 2017 I will be attending another month-long training to certify instructors in Qigong and Tao Yoga. (see poster below) I hope you can come and join us!!!
