About 10 years ago, I attended a lecture given by an Indian yogi. He spoke about the benefits of a regular yoga practice and guaranteed it was possible to have anything you want in your life. He was trying to empower the audience to believe that life is like a buffet dinner and all you have to do is pick and choose.
A woman stood up demanding to be heard. She questioned, “How can we sit here talking about our privileged lives becoming more and more amazing when there are people out there really suffering? What about the poverty in India? The violence in Africa? The destruction of our environment?” The reminder of so many people’s despair and hopelessness filled the room.
It’s a good question.
How do you reconcile your desires for yourself and your desires for the collective?
The yogi was firm in his response and asked her, “What do you do?”
She paused, unsure how to respond.
With the preciseness of shooting a bow and arrow to its bulls-eye, he repeated, “WHAT-DO-YOU-DO? FOR WORK? HOW-DO-YOU-MAKE-A-LIVING?”
She replied, “I’m a web designer.”
He further asked, “Any experience in nation building? Distributing aid to foreign countries? Anything like that?”
“No,” she said as she looked down.
The yogi then took a deep breath and began to give her a sacred smack down. “You want to make everyone wrong for not being angry and miserable with you. You have to realize, all you can do is what you can do. Repeat — ALL YOU CAN DO IS WHAT YOU CAN DO. If you feel passionately moved by the troubles of the world, find a non-profit who aligns with your beliefs and offer your services to them or donate a percentage of your profits to their cause. DO WHAT YOU CAN DO.”
What can we do?
What can I do?
What are my natural gifts, talents and abilities?
What brings me the most joy and fulfillment?
What ideas and dreams make my body zing with the vibration of YES?
How can my work be of the greatest service to the collective evolution of humanity?
I was on the road to find out.
I grew up as a dancer. Dance was my refuge and how I learned to transform life’s challenges into opportunities. I realized as a young person that if I was not moving my body, I suffered. If I was moving my body, I felt full of energy, clarity, and joy. Therefore, I structured my life around movement. I studied dance and prepared myself for studies in movement therapy in college. I’ve also had a daily yoga practice for 10+ years.
While studying yoga, I made a realization around movement that changed everything. Dance had always been about how it looked, and while I loved doing it, it was about creating an image of beauty for an observer. Yoga put the focus and attention on how it felt. By focusing on the sensation of my breath, the balance of effort and ease and creating dynamic tension in all my movements, I found myself feeling the best I had in my entire life.
A couple years ago, I found myself working on the front lines of the pleasure revolution at Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts in New York City where I had the honor of watching women transform their lives through pleasure. As the women opened, I saw their bodies yearning for a way to move with as much pleasure and vitality as they were experiencing in their lives.
In 2008, a woman asked the leader of the school, Regena Thomashauer, “You always say, get in your body, but how? I just don’t know how to feel like a woman in my body; nothing seems right for me. The gym is torture. Yoga’s boring. I can’t seem to find the right level dance class. I love pole dancing, but it doesn’t agree with my body. I’m lost and not sure what to do.”
I leapt at the opportunity and said, “I can teach you!” I heard her call for something more than an exercise class. Something more sacred. Something more fun! With a lifetime of movement experience coupled with a passion for women’s empowerment, I knew it was time to share what I had learned. I called on all the things I love: yoga, dance, sensuality, women’s empowerment, building community, philosophy, positive psychology, shamanism, honoring of the divine feminine, sweat, tears, enthusiasm, pleasure, music, more music, creativity, authenticity, play, rose petals — and freedom to create an initiation into enjoying and reveling being in a feminine body.
And that’s how Qoya Movement was born. The result was sold out classes, radiant women, and the most fulfilling experience of my life. The gift of seeing women dance in full remembering of who they are — wise, wild, and free — is a profound honor that I will always cherish.
I eventually realized that Qoya movement is more than an exercise class; it’s a shift in consciousness. As women open up their bodies in Qoya classes, the way they think about exercise transforms from a feeling of obligation and suffering to reveling in the pleasures of being embodied in a feminine way.
In the spirit of the yogi’s encouragement for each of us to find our gifts, our passions, and the place where we can be of the greatest service in the world, to do what we can do, I have created wisewildfree.com, a movement-based blog that gives women from all over the world access to the benefits of Qoya.
Qoya Movement Classes, Workshops, Retreats and Private Sessions.
Drawn from the wisdom of yoga, the creative expression in free dance, and the power of pleasure in sensual movement, Qoya is an initiation for women to learn how to enjoy and revel being in their feminine body.
Fridays for the Future (click here to find out more)
Re-Defining Happy Hour
Fridays for the Future is a simple and revolutionary grassroots approach to our global challenges.
I look forward to dancing together.
Wishing you all the best.
Warmly,
Rochelle
