Dear Dancers of Light, I hope this finds each of you doing well in whichever season it is in your heart. Maybe you're feeling like hibernating and contracting like winter in the morning and warm and expressive like the summer in the evening. Maybe filled with enthusiasm and the sparkle of possibility like spring when you think he or she might call. Maybe the pain of letting go, like when the last leaf falls off the tree in autumn, and you're the one who knows it's best for both of you if you don't call. Wherever you are, with all this valentine's day hula-a-baloo the inner romantic or cynic in us is easily evoked.
Valentine's day is the dramatic obsession with the quest for finding love outside of yourself, as in, your valentine. However, most wisdom teachers encourage you to first go within. Qoya agrees. While there are hundreds of books and classes to help you heal your heart, open your heart, find your soul mate, manifest your perfect lover, conjure true love, keep it once you have it and along the way learn how to love yourself, I was deeply moved recently when reading new book by author Agapi Stassinopoulos Unbinding the Heart where she simply says,
"There are no seven or eight simple steps to unbind our hearts, but there is one choice that we all have, and this is our golden opportunity in every moment of every day, whatever small or big challenges it brings: Do I shut down or do I choose to open up one more time, even deeper?"
Reading those words are liberating from the how to's of studying the magic equation to bring love into our lives. With this example, loving becomes a simple practice in each present moment to be willing to open your heart one more time?
Are you in? Can you feel the physical sensation in your heart of contraction or expansion? Do an experiment and think of someone and notice how your body responds. Are you closed? Can you open?
I invite you to think of this the next time your phone rings, the next person you have a conversation with or the next time you look in the mirror. Can you choose to open up your heart one more time, even deeper?
A friend put this quote on my Facebook yesterday, "those who don't move won't notice their chains." Agreed. I invite you to open your heart just a little bit more than feels safe and to dance just a little more wildly outside your comfort zone. To help, here is a preview of one of the shorter videos that will be on my online Qoya studio. This is called Dancing your heartbeat and is less than 5 minutes of movement leading with your heart.
The most effective and enjoyable way I know into the heart, into our essence, into the well of love is by going within. The fastest and most pleasurable way I know in is Qoya. The movements of yoga, dance and sensual movement unbind and release us to express our wise, wild and free essence and that's why I show up and offer Qoya to you as a gift from my heart. May we all realize that it is not the question of whether we are gifted, but what are our gifts. And with whatever gift we are blessed with, may valentine's day be less about the fairytale of romantic love, but the love of life and sharing of our gifts from our heart and the dance of it all.
Love big. It doesn't matter how big, but just a little more each moment that you can.
With a dancing heart, Rochelle
P.S. Qoya updates! If you're not in New York, know that I am so excited when I can offer you EmbodyQoya.com. So so so excited. Until then, if the spirit moves you, please consider joining us for the next Qoya retreat in Costa Rica April 21-28, 2012.
If you are in New York. I'm here too!!! and teaching Qoya in Manhattan Saturday mornings 9-10:15am and in Brooklyn Sunday afternoons 5:15-6:15pm. See more details here.
All my Qoya classes the next three saturdays in Manhattan, are donation based and all donations go to Gems. See more about them here!
Would LOVE to see you and dance together.