Dear Heart-Centered Seekers (and Finders),

As I begin, I offer a deep breath to the journey we all find ourselves on. Different details, different timings, and some similar themes can sometimes be tracked alongside the cycles of the moon. As the moon comes into fullness in the astrological sign of Capricorn, the themes of what we are working towards and working for, and the resources and nourishment needed to stay on task may be emerging for you. You may find yourself asking the question: how can I most earnestly do my part of the greater work that is here to do?

Virginia Rosenberg shared in her newsletter that the Capricorn archetype activates integrity and alignment.

Chani Nicholas mentioned on her Instagram that the full moon in Capricorn is a good time to ask, “How can I take responsibility to reparent myself?”

How is the inquiry for the Full Moon in Capricorn landing for you today?

For me, I’m thinking about Khalil Gibran’s words, “Work is love made visible.” Especially in the midst of great challenge, how can the transmutation of fear, doubt, blame, worry, and disappointment alchemize into a force of service, love, and embodied presence?

First, I’m called to name how so many of you reading this are working so hard. With the acceleration of time feeling like a lifetime a day. With the daily tasks to take care of self, the others who you support, and the greater dreams and hopes for the world you are working towards. I honor your heart extending itself and actively engaging in the inquiry of where your greatest joys and passions merge with your unique skills that can have the most beneficial impact on the world.

I invite you to celebrate the places where you are already aligned with work that you love to do that is fulfilling.

I invite you to nourish yourself and set something in place on your calendar to create systems of sustainability for you to continue your path on the road of good work.

I invite you to sincerely ask in some ritualistic way for the light of the full moon to illuminate your best next step.

You could do this in a million different ways. I’m a big fan of movement to come into embodied presence.

Today, I mixed it up. I bought myself some special candles and decided I would be in ceremony as long as the flame was going. It was about an hour after I lit the candle. In that time, I moved my body enough to sweat and release and feel my heart pound, then I got my tea pot and brought it to the creek Gloria. I got naked, drank the tea, and then cleansed myself in the creek. I got my message and now, like all good messages received, the work is to integrate it, to embody it.

For those who are ready to do your ritual, however big or small, I wish you many blessings. And for those who would like to read a little longer, I have a story I’m inspired to share here about my dance with my own work, personally and professionally.

In the midst of the pandemic, cultural reckoning, and inability to do the work that I so loved to do in person, I started to offer online classes under the name of LORE, which is an acronym for lifestyle of reverence every day. Online, we explored movement, ritual, social justice conversations, and community gatherings. One of the bonus offerings was crystal co-working. My dear friend, Becca Kannapell of POUND Jewelry, led us to invoke our relationship with emerald. And during that session, Geraldine Lavelle, who is a Qoya teacher in Ireland, put something in the chat that said, “I welcome you all to the Emerald Isle.” Geraldine and I have known each other for about 10 years and have spoken many times about doing a Qoya Inspired Movement retreat where she lives in Ireland. I private messaged her and said, “Let's do it. Let's make this happen.” She asked, “When?” I said, “Summer Solstice.” She said, “Perfect.” And we were off on our journey.

We had a beautiful itinerary planned, and then this most curious thing happened. Everyone became enchanted by the salt Geraldine had on the table. The salt was really that good. And Geraldine said, "Oh, it's from Achill Island about an hour away; however, you can just get it at the grocery store." Myself and two other women went over to the grocery store to look for the salt, but they were out. We half joked, "Maybe we just need to go to the island to get this salt." It seemed sort of silly to drive an hour plus both ways for salt, and we already had a pretty full schedule. Later on Geraldine said, “You know, I heard there's actually a stone labyrinth there.” If there is one symbol to best express my relationship with Qoya Inspired Movement, it is a labyrinth. We started to make all the arrangements, changed the schedule a little bit, and hired a van to take us there.

We got to the salt factory to learn the salt was being hand-harvested by a family: a mother who had an inspiration and the family that followed her vision. They were gathering buckets of ocean water from the sea, heating it up for the salt to crystallize, putting it in the oven, packaging it, and everyone was having such a strong positive response to what they were doing. And then in this way that I love about Ireland that weaves the magic of storytelling and nature mysticism together, I read the words at their shop on the wall:

“I'm difficult to obtain. When I'm wet, I'm invisible. When I'm dry, you can hold me in your hand. I can fertilize or sterilize. I preserve. I destroy. I am found in water, but I make you thirsty. I'm a rock, but you consume me. Too much of me will kill you. Without me, you will die. I'm a paradox. I am a mystery. I am salt.”

Mind blown. This is part of the good work for me. And this is really the heart of pilgrimage, to follow one's heart to a place of deep resonance. For that resonance to lead you to a place that reflects back the wholeness of life: the blessings, the challenges, the polarity, the duality.

The mythopoetic function of salt to support one’s capacity to absorb water. You can drink a lot of water, but if you don't have the minerals, if you don't have enough salt, it's difficult for the body to absorb. What do we need, like salt, to support us to have the capacity to absorb the experience we are having? And what is needed to clear, another blessing that salt offers in ritual to absorb the negative energy? Under this full moon in Capricorn, I am celebrating the sacredness of practicality. What structure is necessary for the good work of our hands to be done well? Let us be shown in a way that we can see.

On the morning of the pilgrimage to the salt, I asked Geraldine as we looked out across the sea, “Where is Achill Island exactly?” From where we were standing, there were a few different islands, and I wasn't sure. And she said, “Oh, it's right there at the end of the rainbow!” And then she realized, "Oh my gosh, there's a rainbow!" I playfully clarified, “So, you’re saying that Achill Island is at the end of the rainbow?”

After visiting the salt factory and store, then we were off to look for the labyrinth. While it was raining and cloudy where we were staying, as we drove up to the labyrinth, it was the most clear, sunny, beautiful day. There was a beautiful waterfall turning into a stream going towards the ocean. There was so much beauty, one really had to slow down to be with it. We spread out for a few hours and followed the call inside us to the labyrinth, hiking up the hills with sheep, meditating with the magic of the land, and swimming in the sea. It was one of those experiences that's very difficult to transmit with words. Each person has their own story around the healing that they received. For myself, it was painfully precise and profound.

An energy I was really working with was truly grieving that I don't have a relationship with my father. I met him once when I went to knock on his door when I was 35. The painful part is tracking how the themes of disappointment, judgment, and heartbreak around the masculine in my life have been repeated. I could feel the aspects inside myself that are mine to heal. The reclamation to become a more conscious chooser.

There was a tombstone near the labyrinth, and I didn't want anything to do with it. My plan was to avoid it. Then my dear friend Becca called me over. When I got closer, I saw the tombstone said “To dad with love.” She then started to offer a ceremony for me to really consciously see this unconscious pattern, choose something different, and to bury the old energy here, with love. It was one of those moments where there was an honest willingness to let something go. And I wonder if that's one of the gifts of the solstice, of the illumination of the brightest, longest day of the year: to call on the element of the sun for transformation, for alchemy, for clear seeing.

Have you had an experience like that recently? Are you feeling the quantum reflection of what is up for you in your internal experience being given opportunities to be reflected and played out through lived experience in a more conscious way?

Perhaps this is the good work. To have and provide experiences that deeply nourish the heart of your heart. To feel your sovereign self awaken, to reclaim choice. To honor the collaborative interconnection of all of us, our lives and destinies woven together. To cultivate your soulful, embodied, expanded capacity to meet the life you are living.

Whatever is calling you forward, whatever the thing that is like the salt, that may not make linear sense but awakens something inside you, I invite you to do an experiment of following it. It can be the smallest thing right now. For me today, it was time to do this ceremony. It really felt like a stretch with 300 unread text messages, God knows how many emails, Instagram messages, WhatsApp threads. (So many ways to communicate!) For my brain, it’s so easy to be overwhelmed and yet, as soon as I completed the ceremony, I was genuinely excited to get to work!

I do understand that making time for rituals, classes, retreats, etc. can feel indulgent at times. I know that most of us intellectually understand that there is a higher level of self-care and community care needed to meet these moments of intensity we are living in. I think one of the Capricorn mysteries being revealed to me now is the nurturing that is needed to continue to do the good work. When I got back from Ireland, it was like all hands on deck in my personal and professional life. It seemed like there were so many places that needed me and gratefully, I was so full from my trip, I was able to show up resourced, where the giving was a joy. I also realized this was an evolution in my morning prayer that I would offer each day on the trip:

To the water, please help me flow with life, so that I may be able to support others to flow with theirs.

To the earth, please help me receive the nourishment and strength you offer, so that I may be able to support others to reconnect and deepen their personal relationship with nature around them.

To the sun, please bring your fire of transformation to alchemize my perspectives of life through love’s lens, so that my essence may shine as yours does, and so I might be able to hold space for others in the midst of their own transformational process of feeling their own essence shine more in this world.

To the cycles of the moon, please help me embrace the cycle of life that I am in, so that I might be able to support others to honor the cycle of life they are in.

To the winds, with this inhale and exhale breath, please help me remember what it feels like to be carried by the breeze, to fly! May I be able to hold a vision for others I am with of their own sense of soaring.

If you'd like to try this salt before heading out to Achill Island, you can order some online here!

If you'd like to join me for an upcoming adventure, there are still spots available for Upstate New York in two weeks, Menla in September, and Peru in November!

With love,
Rochelle

P.S. Rochelle means little rock, so here I am in a moss rock garden cherishing the magic and the moments I am awake enough to be with it!

Embodied Astrology: Capricorn

Whether you’re new to astrology or want to take your studies to a deeper level, this course will help you embody Capricorn not on an intellectual level, but in your cells. A movement ritual will guide you into an embodied experience of Capricorn, then an integration exercise and worksheets will help you ground that energy into your life.

Learn More

UPCOMING RETREATS

July 16 - 20, 2023: Notice What Nourishes You in Lanesville, New York

August 12 - 19, 2023: Embodying Ancient Wisdom in Costa Rica at Blue Spirit

September 22 - 24, 2023: Upstate New York at Menla Retreat Center

November 20 - 29, 2023: Peru Retreat

January 7 - 12, 2024: Costa Rica Retreat at Imiloa

April 6 - 13, 2024: Costa Rica Retreat at Blue Spirit

April 27 - May 3, 2024: Ireland Retreat

UPCOMING INITIATION TEACHER TRAININGS

July 16 - 19, 2023: Dorset, England with Sonja Lockyer

July 29 - 30, 2023: Greenville, South Carolina with Sara Ballard