Dear Qoya Community,
I'd love to share a story with you. On my journey, I've come to find that healing is often the integration of our many life experiences. The practice is to bring loving-kindness and embodied presence to each part of ourselves, each other, and life. This is, as they say, easier said than done. Through living a lifestyle of reverence, with intentional and inspired actions of movement, communication, and ritual, we can transform our daily lives from mundane obligation to tending the altar of own sacred life force. While we go on many inner and outer journeys, we cultivate the practices that bring us back home to our most true self.
Under this full moon in Gemini, I am traveling back to Minneapolis, Minnesota where I was born (with the moon in Gemini). I shared with my mom that I want to spend some time on the land where I was born, and I was curious if I should go by myself or if we all wanted to go together. We said we'd talk about it later. Then, she came back to share with me that there is a festival happening the week I'm visiting in a town called Hollidazzle, which I remember as a kid. She also shared that it is in Loring Park, the park directly next to the hospital where I was born.
I don't know if I can fully describe the layers here, and still I will try. For the last 12 years, I have been a humble student of the Q'ero and Andean Traditions of Nature Mysticism. The easiest way I can explain what I have learned is an emphasis on having a personal relationship with nature and most importantly, your nature parents. I find the easiest way to describe this is to people who follow astrology and feel they receive many insights about the archetypical activations of their being based on the placements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars when they were born. Just like we might look to the sky, here we look to the earth and inquire: is there is a specific supportive energy of the land, water, and mountains or hills around where you were born?
Have you ever taken the time to get to know the earth that welcomed you when you took your first breath in this body?
When asking Q'ero elders what they noticed are the most common ailments with the modern people they see for healing sessions, the response was, "They are disconnected from their nature family." Of course, we can see this as a culture in its destruction of nature and possibly also feel it in our own disconnection from the miracle of life that supports every aspect of our lives. The trees, plants, animals, and diverse ecosystems.
Every day I have the good sense to remember, I get outside and invite the wisdom of my nature relationships to guide me. I call on my nature parents to be with me. When I call on Loring Pond, I call on the inspiration to create alongside nature, with nature, as nature. When I call on Loring Hill, I call on compassion for all beings in all cycles of their journey, including my own.
In the context of my study, my prayers, my belief system, and my desire to go home and be with the land that held me when I was born, Holidazzle feels like my nature parents are throwing me a welcome home party! It brings tears to my eyes to honor that intuitive call I felt to go home. When I went to look at the activities for Holidazzle, there is even a "Meet the Alpacas" session, weaving in the Andean connection!
It's a moment in my life where the love and magic is so precise, like a love arrow right into the center of my heart.
Under this full moon, I invite you in your own way to go home. Go to the home of your body. Go to the places that nourish you. Go towards the music that stirs your soul. Go towards the challenging conversations with a depth of compassion. Go make an offering for your nature parents and say, "Thanks for welcoming me to the world!" Go to the home of each emerging present moment and feel yourself rest in the moment that is right here, right now.
To support you in making a nature offering, here is the handout we shared in LORE this week to guide participants in making a nature offering to connect with the Solar Plexus Chakra and the element of fire.
Blessings on this full moon. May the light illuminate the true essence of your being to also shine.
With love from my heart to yours,
Rochelle