Dear Qoya Community,
Whatever path you are walking right now, I invite you to pause long enough to breathe in and breathe out. Look to the left, look to the right. Look up to the sky, down to the Earth, and as you breathe in again, I invite you to close your eyes and exhale into the center of your own heart. Contemplate for a few moments how much of the day you feel yourself, residing in this center of the center.
As we spend these few shared moments of awareness together, with me writing these words and you reading them, my prayer and intention is that they offer opportunities for reflection to notice the pathways that nourish you and deepen your connection with your heart. Not the mental abstract concept of heart, the embodied visceral, physical sensation of living in a way where every once in a while, you can pause, look to the left, look to the right, look up to the sky, and down to the Earth, then offer yourself a deep breath and feel your heart as you take the next step on your path.
We live in a time of accelerated change, reckoning with systems of oppression and social injustice, catastrophes, climate crises, witnessing excruciating violence, and the list goes on. And so, the question becomes how one navigates life amid so much collective grief. How does one reconcile brokenheartedness?
Heartbreak is what first led me to Peru. I awoke from the delusion of my own fantasy projection of a relationship that looked the way I wanted it to look but felt out of alignment. I brought myself to therapy with a self-diagnosis of an inability to receive love. I put my partner on a pedestal and was convinced that I was plagued by my own insecurity. When I sat down with a therapist, she inquired for specifics: what is the heart of the issue? I said, "I love this man. We have the best time together, we have the best life together. However, every time he goes to take a shower, everything in my body starts to scream for me to check his phone. I don't want to betray his trust." She said she was less concerned about me trusting him and more about me trusting myself. Long story short, what I found when I finally followed my instinct and looked shattered my heart into a multitude of pieces, like a dish being thrown on the floor. Shards were left behind, so I needed to be careful where to step afterwards to not continue perpetuating a cycle of pain and suffering.
Gratefully, healing is inevitable, and the call for repair eventually came in the form of investing my savings into an energy healing program that culminated with a month-long trip to Peru.
In the spirit of pilgrimage, we spent several days hiking to the peak of Salkantay. When we reached the lagoon at 17,000 feet, we were encouraged to notice what we had brought up the mountain that we didn't want to bring back down. What pain or hurt could we offer back to the Earth, and in commuting with the Earth receive the wisdom to bring with us on our way back down? It was an invitation to integrate our pain into a source of purpose.
With this invitation for contemplation, I realized something essential to my journey. The essence of the work I was called to do was encouraging people to listen deeply to the inner voice. This could be the voice of the body, the voice of the soul, the voice that emerges in the deepest place inside us. This voice is what was so loud for me. However, I had been conditioned not to listen. I realized that if I could take this inquiry forward in my life, to deeply explore the truth and resonance inside myself, and allow that to be a guide, this situation would not be one where I was only victimized and hurt but one where, because of the situation, I realigned with myself. I was able to have this insight by aligning with the healing force of nature. The mountain standing tall gave me strength and perspective. Witnessing the glacier water flowing down the stream reminded me to follow the flow. The consciousness of Mother Earth held me every step of that journey, as she always had and always will.
Since that trip to Peru 14 years ago, I have taught thousands of Qoya classes as invitations for people to reconnect to their wise, wild and free essence. I've trained hundreds of teachers in over 20 countries and led over 100 retreats worldwide. It's been a powerful path of being intimate with so many souls, focusing on healing and holding space for transformation inside themselves, their communities, and our world.
Many of us have realized on the path of personal growth that the most important thing is our daily lifestyle and how we cultivate and curate our life experiences to bring us back to the space of our hearts. This is the journey of aligning with the work we love, people we love, activities we love, and places we love—so that Love can lead the way. The second time I went to Peru, this is the message that I received about my sacred work: it begins with movement and feeling so that we can better navigate our lives by living a Lifestyle of Reverence.
My trips to Peru were an awakening to remember the physical sensation of alignment, congruence, what the Q'ero would call Ayni, which translates to right relationship, sacred reciprocity, or harmonious relating. Although I have been studying Andean nature mysticism for over 14 years, I acknowledge that I am a humble beginner, and there is such a rich tradition here deserving of lifetimes of inquiry. I've been taught that there is one foundational principal, one law for the functioning of their society, which is this practice of right relationship, Ayni.
In my life, this is really my prayer. This is my prayer for myself. This is my prayer in relationships with others. How do we find a place where there is a true regard for one another's being, a true offering of the gifts that we share, a generous receiving of what the other is bringing, and opening up to the ways to exchange the love and respect there?
Nature gives us everything we need for our eternal souls to take residence in a human body. The Q'ero refer to themselves as the haywariquy people, which translates as "the people who make offerings." And I completely resonate with that. When in doubt, I make an offering. When in joy, I make an offering. Again and again, all day, every day, I bow in reverence that everything I want to learn Mother Earth embodies. She is my master teacher. Any question I bring, she offers me the nourishment I need to soothe my scattered mind and re-awaken my heart. The challenge, however, is expanding my capacity to receive the stream of unconditional love she offers. And this is where the offerings come into play.
When we give, we open up space in ourselves to receive. We make space.
*Here is a photo from the nature offering I made and placed at the center of my Qoya Class in NYC last Sunday.
One of the challenges of the modern lifestyle is deferring to the momentum tunnel that moves so fast that there isn't enough time to feel what's true and stay aligned with it. There are constant overrides of the intuition and of the body voice. Of course, this is necessary at times, but without making time to reflect and restore, living in a way that overrides one's heart, one's truth, and one's deeper sense of being is a high price to pay.
In this moment, I hear the call of a wild bird. Its ancient echo soars through the valley, bounces off the rock wall. In the distance, I hear another bird, and then another, and as I acknowledge these birds, they start to fly over my head. There is a symphony of song. There are chirps of cheerfulness. There is morning dew on the green grass. There are trees who offer a transmission of trust as they let go of their leaves. I see the surface of a pond. Still water. Unknown depths. An opportunity to dive in, be immersed in the water of the womb, and to be reborn. I look up to the infinite sky, with its passing clouds reflecting the impermanence of time and an invitation to contemplate the eternal mystery woven through each moment. I notice my breath. I notice the sensation of my knee and feet on the ground. I feel my shoulders relax and my weight lean to my left side. My attention now moves to a beautiful birdhouse with two birds inside it. I feel a sense of happiness that they have a home, a place to feel safe to find refuge, shelter from the storm, and I wish that for all of us, and for every part of us: our minds, for our bodies, for our hearts, for our souls.
When I love, I am home.
In this sense, love is the quantum field of interconnection.
Home as a place of consciousness and aliveness.
From a nervous system perspective, our bodies are wired to experience a sense of safety and comfort as a child held by a parent or caregiver. As adults, we can be held in a similar way. When we lie on the Earth, we are supported by something greater than us. When we lean against the mountain, we remember that we can lean into a wisdom far beyond our own understanding. For the Q'ero, the most important thing is deepening your personal relationship with nature, and I think "relationship" is the key to that phrase. Instead of viewing nature as an object, when we begin to relate to the consciousness of the world around us, we are better able to receive the consciousness that is love.
Exploring right relationship is a moment-to-moment practice of correcting my perspective, remembering how to see through the eyes of the heart. When asking for specific instructions on rituals, healing, and offerings, the Q'ero generously share what they know and what they've been taught from their ancestors and then always add: the most important thing is that you do it with your whole heart.
This. This access to your whole heart. This is what called me to Peru. I'm getting ready to travel back to Peru on Saturday, leading a group of 20 people with daily morning Qoya Inspired Movement sessions and traveling to sacred sites with the Q'ero Elders each afternoon. On our preparation call yesterday, I shared that we are not only embarking on a pilgrimage to Peru as in another location in the world, we are embarking on a pilgrimage to the place where Peru lives inside us. This transmission of heart, right relationship, reverence for nature, embodied presence.
And, the Q'ero have repeatedly shared that this is not a Peruvian Practice. That their way is simply the way of the Earth, and that all of us, wherever we are are being called at this time to reconnect, to develop our personal relationship with nature as a guide, for being in right relationship with ourselves, each other, nature, society, life. It's important to get your bare feet on the ground and listen for the learning that's yours. When disconnected from nature, we become starved for living energy and life force, unconsciously becoming a vacuum searching for life force energy that is all around us. It's time to offer our gratitude to the regenerative flow of energy that emanates from every tree, plant, flower, food, rock, and cloud. We simply must remember how to receive. And to receive, we must remember to give.
What keeps us from our remembering? Often our suffering. In moments of pain, the opportunity for resilience comes with resources. A certain level of nourishment and support is needed to meet the toughest moments of our lives. There is an energy that can hold, has been holding, and will always be holding, the journey of humanity. This is the consciousness of Mother Earth. There is nothing too complicated for her, and what's simple is not always easy. As we re-enter the realm of the heart, most assuredly, our first interface is our grief.
The descent into heartbreak is inevitable. The ascent into love is something that we must choose. In the polarity and paradox of our human journeys, our free will is this choice to love. Aligning with the healing forces of nature guides us on our path.
The last time I went to Peru, I learned that hearts break so they can open. My experience of the world at this time is expanding our capacity, individually and collectively, to bring love to all we see. Again, I can't overemphasize enough that I'm not talking about an abstract mental concept when I say love. I am speaking about the physical sensation of living inside one's heart and feeling like a stone makes ripples in a lake. When one is present in their heart energy, that love emanates through their body, through their energetic field, and into the world.
The teachings of the Q'ero emphasize the importance of developing a personal relationship with nature. Part of my practice is to visit the creek outside my house to listen for a message for the day. What I heard today was, "keep loving." I invite you to explore what right relationship feels like in your body and what support is needed to meet the moment of our lives and to keep loving.
I love you.
Rochelle