About Sunny

Sunny Smyth, Daoshen

Sunny is a Daoshen or lineage bearer in the MogaDao tradition. She began her intensive study with Zhenevere Sophia Dao in 2011 and has attended, with very few exceptions, every class and intensive that Zhen has taught since that time, holding the unique position of having trained for more hours with the founder than any other student.

She is certified to teach MogaDao Ethos Programs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, which comprises all the existing codified forms and practices of MogaDao Qigong, Depth Sexuality and the Erotic Basis of Being, Yoga and Meditation within the framework of Post-Daoist philosophy. Her background includes 6 years of offering this work full-time at Life Healing Center in Santa Fe, a residential treatment center for behavioral health, trauma, and addiction, and three years at Christus St. Vincent Holistic Health and Wellness Center, specifically working with individuals navigating health challenges.

Sunny has been on the staff of the MogaDao Institute since 2013 as Business Manager and part of the “think tank” of the tradition. At the present time, she teaches group classes online and in person, mentors students and teachers privately, and offers in-depth trainings on the journey from trauma to sexual vitality as well as the exquisite beauty of sexuality and aging.

Testimonial from ZHEN DAO, Founder of MogaDao Tradition

"Never in my teaching career have I had a student of such flawless constancy—and that includes thousands of students over decades of teaching. What is more, this devotion with Sunny is not mere routine. Sunny brings her heart to every session, indeed to every intersection of her life. Every class in which I had the honor of teaching her, every single session represented a new level of practice for her. She is that rare student who always makes a form of presence in the room, for herself but also for others, by virtue of her sheer commitment.

Sunny feels with her abundant heart and deploys her gifts from every part of her being. I cannot think of any who have crossed my path whose gifts are broader and more evenly distributed than Sunny’s. She is ebullient and wise, studious and intuitive, organized and spontaneous, precise and forgiving, spiritual and practical, “sunny” and serious, gracious and exacting.

It is this astonishing width, and the paradoxes that inhere in it, which she holds without pride, with a Daoist’s sense of the plain and the normal, that makes her such a fine teacher and such a touchstone among the entire MogaDao practice tradition. For younger students, she is a senior teacher and perhaps for some a mother figure of sorts. For women in the middle of life she is a beacon of hope; a living inspiration, not an icon figure on a pedestal, but a woman women can admire, learn from, follow, be near, lean on, need, and love. For colleagues, she is a familiar representation of the unfamiliar. This is perhaps her greatest gift. For she is a living representation of the sublime fierceness of a woman who is determined to grow and change, to develop rather than to lament, to not stagnate, to embrace the difficult and the beautiful, to challenge her body and spirit and to accept her body and spirit in nearly the same breath, and to remain all the while in touch with the deep cord of humility, the openness to self-revelation, which is the only true center of a spiritual life. For above all Sunny’s journey is spiritual, for she moves within spirit and lives in and for beauty. There is no one I would not send to her to study in any of the disciplines of which she is the finest Teacher.”