How many times can we hear the encouragement, "Trust yourself!"?
How many ways can we receive the message, "Follow your heart!"?
How many heartbreaks need to heal until we trust the resilience of love to heal all wounds?
How many times do we have to see our old habits and patterns hold us back until we stand up and say, "Enough!"?
Everyone reading these words knows the next step you are being called to in your life, and you know the main thing you have to let go of to do it. I promise you, you know!
So now the question becomes: are you willing?
It's been said unless there is a question, there is no need for teaching.
When we are connected to our body, our breath, our heart, our life, we trust in its flow. When we lose connection with our body, our breath, our heart, and our life, we feel bound by the patterns of the past and torn towards the thoughts of the future, feeling disconnected from the power of the present moment. Many variations of the same question arise here: How do we return? Remember? Heal? Awaken?
Qoya means Queen.
Not an emotionally distant, bejeweled, position of inherited power. Queen as a feminine manifestation of consciousness. Queen as embodied wisdom. Queen as expressed creation.
Queen as free. As sovereign. Sovereign not on a throne dominating others. Sovereign as a conscious chooser and co-creator in her own life. Sovereign as a woman who has remembered her essence as wise, wild and free. Because she has a deep experience and awareness of the physical sensation of that truth when it zings through her spine, she recognizes others as expressions of that same eternal light.
She can trust life because she realizes: she is life.
Do you remember the story of David and Goliath?
One man against a large giant?
Do you remember how David defeats Goliath?
A slingshot to his head. Let's say his third eye.
Do you know the brilliant metaphor of a slingshot that applies to honoring feminine cycles? The deeper you go within, the more momentum you have to move forward.
Dear Dreamers,
During the Qoya Remember Our Future Retreat last weekend in upstate New York, we created our own sense of reality. We dedicated the luxury of our free time to movement to honor the sacred gift of our bodies that make it possible for our spirits to be here. We did ritual and ceremony to honor the awareness of our consciousness and emotions that pass through our hearts for all things that bring us back to love. We gathered in community to strengthen our spirits on the sometimes arduous journey of life. We followed the call of pilgrimage.
Dear Qoya Dancers of Light,
There's a game I like to play from Ester and Jerry Hicks' book Ask and It is Given called Rampage of Appreciation, and it goes like this: set the timer and for a few minutes, name as many things in the room that delight you.
This game reminds me of a time I had an epiphany after I heard, "If you want to be happy later, you have to be happy now." It was one of the first times I really understood that instead of focusing on external events to determine or derail my happiness, it is dependent on my own perspective. What you look for is often what you see. If you look for a miracle and believe in your heart of hearts it is possible, you are the most likely to experience it. However, if you do not believe that it is possible, it may cross your path but you may not be able to see it, because when you're not looking for a miracle, you may be looking for more evidence of loss.
Dear Courageous Embodied Soul,
If you are reading this, you are likely conscious of the transformational process you as an individual and we collectively as humanity are being forcefully initiated into. On a soul level, you acknowledge that you most likely chose or won the lottery to be here for this moment.
You are becoming a master of sensitivity to the non-dual aspect of everything truly being one. One breath. One mind. One heart. One pulse. One love. You are praying for yourself and all others as we courageously face unity's contrast through thoughts of hate, actions of violence, and emotions of fearing the other.
What if someone told you the world is spiraling towards impending doom and destruction and that the prophecies of this time are to break down the old systems that do not serve the highest good of all? Would you get that fight, flight, or freeze feeling in your body?
What if someone told you the world is re-birthing itself into an inevitable fifth dimensional reality where polarity is no longer necessary as a teacher? What if they promised that if you keep doing your energetic practices, you can levitate your consciousness above all that does not appear as love and magically one day ascend to a land with perennial sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns? Would you feel relieved in some ways and simultaneously suspicious?
Dear Dancers of the Dance,
A lot has happened since our last cycle of the moon.
Many are shocked and disoriented from the results of the American Presidential election triggering PTSD from past hurts and inciting fear of the future. In the midst of these challenges, there has also been a spark ignited to wholeheartedly commit to co-creating the world we want to live in.
For many of us, activism, service, and participation felt optional. Somewhat unexpectedly, we have all now been thrust into what a friend said to me this week with his eyes and with his words, "Welcome to our Brave New World."
Here's a recipe you may want to consider.
STEP 1) Honor your grief. You don't have to force it. It doesn't really work that way. But if you sit still for a little while, something may happen. When the numbness of being so busy falls away and you can take the true grief in the heart of your heart and offer it the gift of your attention.
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
I invite you to gather with me around the fire. Have a seat and rest your bones.
Yes.
Now we will all inhale together and exhale together and see ourselves and one another more clearly by the light of the fire, even through it may be dark this night.
If we get closer to the flame, the light illuminates our true faces and helps us acknowledge that human desire to be in a circle of support and be part of a community in which we feel supported authentically.
This New Moon is an invitation to see the grace and beauty in the dance of separation as it leads us back together. Through lived experience, day by day, we get initiated into this evolution of consciousness that is happening in us and all around us, and on some special days, like at a wedding, or on a New Moon in Libra, the divine whispers into our soul ear and says, "There is one thing to which there is no opposite. Do you remember what it is?"
Dear Dreamers and Doers,
You know the saying...Patience pays.
I just made up another one...Patience PRAYS.
What do you do when you want something, not indulgently but from a place of needing it SO badly. The perfect home. The perfect partner. The perfect job. The perfect a/b/c/x/y/z. We know that honoring everything has it's fair share of challenges or imperfections, but still, we yearn for the things that are puzzle piece perfect for us.
Have you read the book Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping? For me, that book was like oxygen when something so challenging happened in my personal life. It can also be helpful when one is feeling weighed down by what is happening in the collective because it poses an interesting invitation:
What if life is not happening to you, but for you?
Sometimes there is a moment that becomes a new reference point, a new way in which to associate context, especially as we are all working so hard to co-create a new world - individually for ourselves, in our relationships, and within our collective evolution.
You are a star. Together we are a constellation. We each shine a unique luminescence of the same light, and when we gather together, we embody archetypes that magnify and mirror our human experiences so that we can see them more clearly.
We are at a crossroads in our individual and collective experience that requires us to know our true essence, embody it, shine it and SHARE it. The antidote to destruction is creation. The elixir to pain is love. The cure for hopelessness is faith. The remedy for isolation is community. The healing from fear-based existence comes by remembering who we are and why we came here.
Dear Dancer,
I'm on the road again. Everything is in storage, and my boyfriend and I have decided to drive across the United States in the shape of an infinity loop. I'm teaching Qoya classes, retreats, and teacher trainings, and together we are having conversations with people about the evolution of consciousness that is happening at this time in a project we are calling the Infinity Migration, which you can check out here.
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…
