Dear Love,
The day with the most light approaches as we honor the Summer Solstice. While there is never a bad time for ceremony, ritual, movement, community, or pilgrimage, if there is one thing you take from this newsletter, know that today and this week is an exceptionally supportive time for anything that brings you to the center of the center, to the brightest part of your own sun, which is your heart.
I’m a big fan of this new moon in Gemini. I’m also a big fan of Beyonce’s visual album, Lemonade (more on that later).
Being a Gemini myself, I’m getting ready for my birthday on June 11th and find myself reflecting on all that has happened in the past year of my life.
Maybe it’s somewhat similar to the past year for you…
On June 9th, I'm leading a co-ed Evolutionary Integration Workshop in Sedona, Arizona with Shamanic Astrologer Sao! I asked Sao to write about the intersection of Qoya and Shamanic Astrology to share with you whether you can attend this workshop or not. Enjoy his vision of creating a global hospice for the old paradigms of fear as we midwife a new paradigm of love – in our individual lives and in the collective.
xo,
Rochelle
Resident Qoya Astrologer Virginia Rosenberg shares that:
"The Full Moon in Sagittarius May 21 (5:13pm EST) is an activation. For the last three weeks, the skies encouraged us to harness our core values and make investments to support their long-term growth in our lives. Now, we are inspired to take what we’ve consolidated and widen our sphere. What we nourished at the root is entering pollination. We enter a season of change, adaptation, and flexibility. Curiosity is peaked. Spread words and share ideas. Disseminate information. Explore a global, multicultural, multidimensional perspective. Network, adventure, and connect with people. Duality dances; opportunities arise to unite opposites. Look for the rainbow threads of commonality and expansion. Synthesize. Polarities and extremes, when harmonized and braided, create art. Enter into a conversation with life and your world. The desire to learn, understand, and grow motivates. This full moon is energetic. Feeling spurred? Anger, frustration, and heat can arise. Let them be clarifying! Let them facilitate right action. Tame rash impulse, yet firmly protect your boundaries. If conflict emerges, listen to it. Tension can stir to facilitate healthy expressions of sexuality and the masculine-feminine balance in each of us. Hear the struggle and be definitive in your movements. What fires you up? What are you passionate about defending? What action must you absolutely take now? What is your mission to contribute to the health of the globe? Get moving. Act in favor of the passions in your heart and spirit. Tend to the fire within, and keep growing."
I’m honored and excited to introduce you to one of my closest friends, Rachel Schipper, who writes to us this week about Qoya and her journey through motherhood in honor of Mother’s Day on Sunday, May 8th. Whether you are a mother or just have mothers in your life, her honest story sheds some light on our culture’s unrealistic expectations of motherhood. We’re honored to feature her incredible program, New Mom Dream Team, on Lifestyle of Reverence as an essential resource for new moms everywhere (tip: If you are a new mom or have a new mom in your life, it makes a WONDERFUL Mother’s Day gift!)
There is a medicine that comes only from lived experience - specifically, your lived experience. Many of us have been raised, encouraged, and rewarded to focus on what we think about things; however, the task for those looking to embody more of their feminine intuitive wisdom is to focus on how you feel about things. I sometimes offer, "Instead of figuring it out, let's feel it out."
I like to think of it this way:
Go deep into your feminine heart and body to receive a vision for your future.
When you don't have a clear vision, keep going in.
When you do have a clear vision, employ your masculine productivity to water that seed, pull the weeds, and make plans for the upcoming harvest.
Dear Spirit Infused into Form,
Do you like being addressed like that? As a Spirit infused into form?
Infusing spirit into form isn't only the basis of the human experience, it's also what inspired the creation of Lifestyle of Reverence.
I love asking the question, "How do you infuse the sacred into form and make it tangible?"
Dear Soul on the other Side of the Screen,
YOU ARE A LIGHT POINT!
Of course, you already knew this, but sometimes when we look into a murky mirror, we see a murky version of ourselves. It's important to do the practices that clear the mirror of our consciousness to see our essence. As we say in Qoya, to remember.
Dear Sisters and Brothers Walking/Dancing Alongside One Another On This Forever Road,
After three weeks of Qoya retreats in Hawaii, it was an honor to witness each woman being initiated into the beauty and magnificence of the island as a mirrored invitation to wake up to Her own inner beauty and cosmic magnificence, embodying that universal energy that every person expresses in their own individually unique way. Every woman there also was invited into deep healing like a riptide that comes under the surface of the sea and pulls you out from shore. In those tender trying times, we practice not to panic in the immensity of feeling a touch of the infinite, and learn how to trust our small and eternal self/Self swimming together in the sea of all creation.
Qoya's resident astrologer, Virginia Rosenberg, shares that the New Moon in Pisces March 8, 2016 (8:54pmEST) is also a Total Solar Eclipse. Eclipses are like reset buttons: the big lights in the sky (Sun and Moon) temporarily go out as our Earth passes between them. When they come back on again, something has changed. Listen quietly; sometimes the deepest shifts are the most subtle. Close your eyes. Turn your senses within. What is there, beyond the story? Underneath all form? Beyond your past and potential future, what lies eternal? Something permeating. Something shared by all of us. Something like the ocean. The ocean is a wide expanse that makes us big and small at once. The ocean effortlessly and constantly churns stone and bone into minuscule pieces of sand. The ocean is the oldest thing, refreshing and humbling all it touches. There are things in life beyond our control. Life includes loss. It includes disappointment, failure, and grief. Life brings tears and joy and things that help us to surrender. Life is always healing us. When I heal, you heal. When you heal, your family heals. When your family heals, our community heals. When our community heals, our world heals. We are healing. We are love. Together, we heal our collective past so that we may know and live unconditional love. The world is love. Believe it, allow it, and it is so.
I love this quote by Anaïs Nin:
“We do not see things as they are, but as we are.”
This philosophy is not another way to judge or feel bad about yourself, nor does it imply that the things that are challenging in your life are your fault. It is empowering, because if you have the courage to look inside and sense where the external disturbance lives within you, there is an opportunity for healing.
Dr. Anne Davin, a pivotal thought leader on the evolution of consciousness integrating indigenous wisdom into the modern day psychological landscape with a PhD in Depth Psychology and decades of experience in service to psyche and spirit (also the author of the forward to my book!), once said to me:
"The old paradigm of leadership is where a leader takes up all the space and inspires others to emulate themselves. The new paradigm of leadership is where a leader doesn't take up all the space, but creates space for others to rise."
This deeply impacted me.
February 14th-21st, 2016 is a Week of Qoya.Love.
(It's more than being excited about our new web domain, but how incredible is .love vs .com?)
To celebrate the launch of the Qoya book, join us for 46 classes in 42 cities and 9 countries.
This book and these classes are for all who feel the call to explore the language beyond words and ideas and expand our capacity to communicate through the experience of feeling truth in our bones.
To dance.
Dance becomes the embodied metaphor. We are not moving in a way that feels good and true, expansive and expressive, authentic and empowered - releasing inhibitions and embracing our lives exactly as they are - in an hour or so long dance class.
We are training spiritual warriors to do this in their daily lives. To stand for what they believe in. To stand for themselves. Most importantly, to stand for love.
I am honored at all the Qoya teachers who have stepped forward to share their gifts, stand for love, and celebrate my first book.
Join us in the dance.
Love,
Rochelle
Qoya means Queen. Not a bejeweled, emotionally distant, woman of inherited power, but a woman, or the feminine aspect of a man who remembers. Who is sovereign. Who is interdependent and reverent of the interconnection of all things. Who is embodying her essence as wise, wild and free. In Quechuan, the indigenous language of the Andes and shamans in Peru, Qoya means a feminine manifestation of higher consciousness. What is higher consciousness? LOVE. It's not about powerful kings or queens reigning over this world; it's about love reigning over this world. It begins with the benevolent king and queen within us becoming sovereign over Self.
Happy New Year Qoya Tribe!
In the ancient sacred scripture the Bhagavad Gita, there is guidance that it is better to fail miserably at your own dharma (soul work) than succeed at someone else's.
Your soul work can be your garden, the way you parent, a business you start, or whatever way that you infuse your gifts into the world to serve and steward life.
Dear Dancers and Prancers (as well as Comets and Cupids),
Hi! It's such an honor to be able to write words and have you read them. Such an honor to co-create paradigms that revere the embodiment of the feminine together. Such an exciting time to imagine more of us dancing and inspiring those around us to dance, literally and figuratively. Dancing with our lives. With art. With movement. Most importantly, with love.
If you are in a similar place to me or the multitudes of others I know in the multiverse, you will be feeling a LOT of fullness today and at this time.
So much is happening.
So much is changing.
So much is OPENING.
The tendency is to let this buzzing energy keep you up at night and daydreaming during the day. The invitation of these words are to ground into your body, root your deepest knowing into the soil, and let yourself be open to all the weather of this time - the rain, sleet, snow, sun, wind, and peaceful moments between. Stay open to life.
How do you infuse the Sacred into the external world?
More importantly, why do you infuse the Sacred into the external world?
The same reason you dance to remember the sacred essence of yourself that is wise, wild and free.
The default for most of us when something happens, or doesn't happen, is to stage a demonstration of our capabilities at mental gymnastics as we twist, turn and flip from one thought to another. While analysis can be helpful, it can also be paralyzing (I recommend having a good therapist to differentiate the two!)