“I am Deva Yama | Minke Voorhorst. Naturally born wild and brutally vulnerable. A true passionfoodoholic who conquered a lot of eating disorders.  

I made this short video to win a scholarship for the coaching training of the Institute for the psychology of eating:

I have been chronically ill and struggling with my health for a very long time. Suffering a ‘bi-polar disorder, I have been following the advise of the so called experts on treatments and medication. It finally left me with an even bigger mess in my body and head, totally astray as to whom I really was and what I had to offer to this world. A couple of years ago I felt in every cell that I didn’t want this anymore, there must be another way. I totally surrendered to my gut feeling and intuition and learned to live with all my attention and all my heart in the present. Most important was slowing down, meditating, tuning into to my feelings and my own natural rhythm. Of course, I still do find myself in endless particular-not-to-be-forgotten-shopping-lists and oh-so-important-thoughts. But the base of my life is being connected in the moment.

“Bipolar disorder is a serious, chronic disease that can not be cured. However, some symptoms may lessen or disappear with medication, and new mood swings are prevented.”, I read on the Internet. However, all the different types of medications that I took interacted in my body in unknown ways and caused more and more symptoms, which were combated with even more medication! After a severe drug poisoning, I felt it was enough. I decided to (slowly and supervised) get rid off all my medication – since all the side effects were extremely disturbing and the pills weren’t really helping me anyway!

I started healing myself with healthy food, calmness and… surrendering to love! A lot of yoga and tantra. Meditation instead of medication. At first I met a lot of resistance in this process, because it would be too dangerous what I was doing. But what happened exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations: the brain fog disappeared completely, my daily migraines vanished, my memory came back and several serious chronic symptoms of my bi-polar disorder that I was told to learn to live with disappeared like snow in the sun. My own wisdom and ability to heal myself appeared to work far better than all the treatments and medications that I had had for so many years: in a little over a year I was completely drug free!

After staying some time in observation, my psychiatrist and the head of the Centre for Bipolar disorders (a highly specialized care for severe cases), concluded that I could better leave the centre since I was ‘occupying’ precious time of people who did need it…! He compared me with a patient who can’t walk and is being treated by an orthopedic surgeon specialist and suddenly decides to stop all treatment and wants to learn walking by himself. And a year later he is walking by himself.  Now I am dancing and singing all day. Nobody could believe it.

I have been detoxing a lot since that moment. To clean, cleanse and release all the toxins that I collected in my body. It takes time to release twenty-five years of medication and treatment out of your system. Little by little I am curing my damaged, malfunctioning intestines and liver and cleaning up the accumulated chemical residues, hoping that even that part of me will be healthy again and even the last most stubborn symptoms will disappear.

I have been a teacher and a coach for long, and at the moment I attract clients who want to go through similar transformation processes. I guide their personal changes from a physical input (listening to the body, taking care of the body, feed it well on every level, detox, meditation, massage).

I lead by example. Still having to conquer some more (body) issues myself (I have a long history of eating disorders), on my way to more health and an even more free me.”