Living Intentionally Under the New Moon in Virgo
Dear Qoya Inspired Movement Community,
My hope in writing these words is that there is some nectar here for you. Some honey. Some nourishing sweetness.
And so, in the spirit of getting to know ourselves better, what would be nectar for you? What would feel like honey? What would nourish you? What is your relationship with sweetness?
For myself, those moments of presence, coherence, alignment, integration, the ability to be with paradox and wholeness, bring a deep sense of embodied aliveness, where I can feel my heart beating and also sense that my own heartbeat is starting to come into sync with the pulse of life itself, feel like nourishing nectar. They feel like a deep remembering, awakening from the forgetfulness.
How does that happen?
For me, it happens when I dance. It happens when I get myself outside, take my shoes off, and walk in the forest. It happens when I can put aside all of my responsibilities of modernity and just be fully present with my son and what he wants to share with me in that moment. I'm so grateful for those moments of sensual pleasure that are like a portal to a place of deep remembering. I also love those conversations where, by some miraculous measure, we've done the calculations and decided it's safe enough to tell the truth. Reflections on ways that my presence has been supportive or of service really does it for me. Connection continues to be my North Star, connection to myself, to others, to nature, to life, to spirit. I also love completing a task, honoring the sweetness of bringing something from an idea into its most aligned expression.
Which makes me think of this new moon in Virgo. I have a stellium in Virgo with my Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all being in Virgo. (A stellium is when you have three or more planets in a particular sign, a concentration of energy.) So the ways I would describe Virgo today are, first and foremost, the priest or the priestess. Having the ability to sense what is aligned with the sacred and what is not. (I realize there are also non-dualistic viewpoints in which we acknowledge all things as sacred).
The challenge for people with a lot of Virgo energy can be navigating alongside a default tendency of being critical, and I loved hearing recently a play on words, shifting from being critical to asking, what is critical? What is essential? Like an emergency room nurse or doctor, the ability to look at a situation and see what is most important, and prioritize what is most important.
In the northern hemisphere, Virgo season is also aligning with the time of the harvest, sifting the wheat from the chaff, the ability to reflect back and see what grew, what didn't.
In addition to the new moon today, Venus is also moving into Scorpio and immediately forming an opposition to Chiron, which to me means there is an invitation to look more deeply at the places where our wounds have been directing our life, perhaps unconsciously, and through the lens of Virgo be able to recognize patterns and discern the best next steps. I would add Virgo is an earth sign and invites us to collaborate with nature in doing this. For example, as I wrote that, a beautiful warm fresh fall breeze just came through the window and I don’t know that I can convey in words what it felt like or meant to me, but it was significant. I invite you to notice the ways you can collaborate with your body, your earth, as well as the natural world around you.
In discerning best next steps, this isn't so much the energy of what is present in a broad expansive way. It’s filled with more practicality. More about small daily goals. More about being realistic with the things that you have the capacity to commit to.
One example: I've devoted my life to the exploration of movement as medicine, of the body as sacred, and worked primarily with women, tracking the correlation of when we deepen our personal relationship with our body, we also naturally start to deepen our personal relationship with nature, and then deepen our personal relationship with the archetypal feminine energies.
One of the main ways I've done this work has been through leading over 140 retreats over the last 17 years, and as much as I love the depth of those experiences and cherish them, at some point I realized that those big retreat experiences are beautiful and they break us open and then the insights that happen on those retreats are seeds that we get the task to see how we can grow into daily life. I realized that those big embodied experiences I had on retreat, I wanted to find a way to experience them every day, not as something special and far away, but how could I find a way back to my body in community every day. The pandemic stretched my imagination alongside the technology capacity of zoom and so for over six years now, I have taught almost every single day online, around 11 a.m. We offered it as a monthly membership and called it LORE: Lifestyle of Reverence Everyday.
Side note: You are also invited to show up and sign up to dance any day you like if the monthly membership doesn’t work for you and you can see our schedule here. So, if there’s ever a day, where you wake up and want to dance together, we can make that happen.
I'm so curious. What are the ways that you have come to integrate what is most important into your own daily rituals?
How do your daily rituals organize the living energy inside of you and in your life?
From my experiences with the Q'ero, I have received invitations to look at all the different energies that are present, and instead of my job being to judge them, my job is to put them in their right place. For myself, when I experience intensity and heavy energy, I like to move to metabolize and digest what I can, and then offer back to the earth what is simply too much for my body to hold, to live in collaboration with nature, knowing I don't need to do it alone, and to celebrate that I get to do it together with people I trust and with the elements and energies that make and sustain life.
I feel like I'm having a very quintessential new moon in Virgo experience, as my son is with his dad this week and I've been going through and clearing things out in my home. For example, I went through my office and took every single thing out of it, did a meditation on how I want to feel, and then only put back the things that align with that frequency of energy.
Very inspired by a nature offering I did recently with clearing things from the pantry, I decided to make two nature offerings with things from the office. One was to honor what I was releasing and one what I was calling in. I let each object tell me which side it belonged on. Underneath all the individual pieces, the same few prayers kept resurfacing: grief for what didn't get to bloom, discernment about what's actually ready to go versus what just looks like it should be, and a wish for more ease and simplicity on the other side of all this releasing. I offered up scarcity and asked to trade it for generosity. I offered up the next onion layer of guilt and shame and not being enough in any of these and felt the seed of compassionate mercy. I felt a genuine appreciation for the past that led me here. And a reckoning with this life cycle I’m in. I'm closing out my 40s now, not my 20s or my 30s, and the energy of this season is significantly different. I wanted to catch up with myself and feel the place I am now as the place I want to create from. On top of papers from the past and drawings of the future, I placed beautiful flowers to bless all that has been, is and will be.
Then, I placed the offerings in the fireplace and something deep and profound shifted in me.
Virgo is intentional.
Ritualistically and ceremonially intentional.
Precise.
What if you/me/we were intentional?
Ritualistically and ceremonially.
I wonder what sort of magic we might make.
Thank you for reading this far.
As we come to the end of this new moon newsletter, what questions and answers are we leaving with?
I am honored to be part of the Soul-Making School led by Sil Read exploring Marion Woodman’s work and offering embodied experiences of the different teachings and themes. Yesterday was the culmination of our summer semester exploring the virgin archetype. Conscious Virgin. Whole onto oneself. The virgin forest. And one Marion quote we explored was,
“Once the question is in consciousness, the answer is constellated in the unconscious... the answer often lies in the unconscious waiting for the question to be consciously asked.”
To integrate all that was shared, what sounds the most resonant for you?
1 ~ Move the earth of your body. Sign up to join a LORE session here.
2 ~ Feel the liminal in-between. As we approach the equinox, this new moon invites a practice of discernment: what is for me, and what is not for me? What am I ready to ritualize letting go of, and what am I ready to ritualize calling in?
3 ~ Journal with some of the questions from this post. Sense the answers constellating.
What is your relationship to the Virgo archetype? How do you relate to the energy of the new moon?
What would be nectar for me right now? What would feel like honey? What would nourish me?
How does that happen for me — those moments of presence, coherence, alignment?
What is critical? What is essential?
Looking back on this season, what grew? What didn't?
Where have my wounds been quietly directing my life, perhaps unconsciously? What conscious choices am I wanting to make?
What are the ways I've come to integrate what's most important into my own daily rituals?
What is for me, and what is not for me?
What am I ready to ritualize letting go of? What am I ready to ritualize calling in?
What questions and answers am I leaving with?
4 ~ Put something in its right place. It could be clearing a room in your house. A clearing conversation. Notice the feeling in your body when you feel a sense of alignment and something is in a place that feels aligned to you.
5 ~ Name one small daily thing you already do or want to recommit to. Collaborate with the natural world and decide to do it!
6~ Virgo explores the Virgin archetype. You do you.
As for me, I’m going to integrate by getting back to cleaning, now. Next stop is going through my clothes in my closet.
Before I go, a blessing.
May we each be supported.
May the support we receive nourish us in ways that we are able to be in service to others.
Like the Earth, may we live in adaptive, reciprocal ways and remember what alignment with the sacred feels like in our bones as we navigate a lifestyle of reverence everyday.
More Ways to Dance & Nourish Ourselves Together
I also want to invite you to explore joining us for any of our LORE sessions.
As a reminder, LORE is your willingness to practice cultivating embodied presence together through Qoya Inspired Movement, deepening our personal relationship with nature by making offerings, giving to and receiving the wisdom of the circle with our connections and exploring our relationship to living a lifestyle of reverence everyday.
Woven Together Seasonal Support Circles
I invite you to explore my new offering of Seasonal Support called Woven Together, which gathers a small group of 8 women every week during each season. Together we will explore cultivating embodied presence, tracking and nourishing our nervous system, practicing relational skills and intentionally orienting ourselves to harvest the collective wisdom of the circle. This approach is not passive; it is participatory!
For many of us, it offers an opportunity, a container and a template to connect and collaborate in ways that help us move forward in our lives. What seems overwhelming alone, feels more doable when we do it together. This is what so much neuroscience, nervous system awareness, somatic practice and trauma therapy show us, we are wired to move towards presence and connection.
Woven Together is a small group seasonal support circle designed to accompany you through a meaningful stretch of time with intention, presence, and connection.
Each seasonal circle gathers for approximately 12 weeks. A container to move through seasonal transitions in community. Each circle begins with four sessions of foundational skill-building in relational skills, cultivating embodied presence, nourishing our nervous system and deepening our personal relationship with nature. Those foundational skills will be the basis of what we practice moving through the season together.
We ask everyone to feel into what their seasonal intention/goal/prayer/wish/desire/commitment is and invite people to hold that as a north star from the Fall Equinox to the Winter Solstice.
After our first four sessions beginning with foundational training in relational skills, cultivating embodied presence, deepening our personal relationship with nature and nourishing our nervous system, we then commit to continuing to practice these as we move into our group process, where each person receives a week to bring forward what is present in their life that they want to work with this season and ask for the support that they may need or want. This process is person-centered and an opportunity for the group to uniquely relate to the person's needs, wants and desires. We lean into the wisdom of the circle and the intelligence of the field and trust that what we need is here and our job is to open ourselves up to listen deeply to ourselves and to each other.
Some people's sessions were deeply intimate and vulnerable. Some were more practical and focused on accountability. Some people focused on one aspect; others had a wide spectrum. Together we practiced being who we are and where we are. In listening to someone's request, we feel into our hearts and offer suggestions and check in with them to see if that is supportive in a way that is collaborative and emergent through relating in conversation.
In so many ways, so much of my work has focused on creating containers and boundaries that support the initiation of the heart. I've seen time and again that when given an invitation that resonates, people can step more fully into their essence. The hope is that, by practicing these relational skills, cultivating embodied presence, nourishing your nervous system and deepening your personal relationship with nature each week this season, you will receive inspiration into how you want to integrate them into your daily life and work. Many people have leaned into the Woven Together Seasonal Circle container as a way to practice the work that is calling them forward. I invite you to notice and feel whether this format meets you where you are in your desire to consciously participate in giving and receiving in a way that nourishes the circle.
“The seasonal support in spring of 2026 was so beyond what I anticipated. It gave me some real tangible tools of relating, not just within the circle, but in my everyday life. The circle helped me strengthen my purpose by co-collaborating each week to lift one another up and exercise my clarity of what specifically I need while deeply listening to the needs of the group. I'm so grateful for the time that we all got to spend together. Rochelle is a mater facilitator”
-Krissy Shields, Creative/Facilitator/Advocate https://krissyshields.com/
If this circle is calling to you, the next step is to complete the intake survey below. The survey offers an opportunity to learn a little more about you and your intentions for the season. After reviewing responses, we will send a registration link.
I recently taught a class in LORE called Pep Talk and found myself really loving this way of being in conversation together. I’m excited to now offer 30-minute and 60-minute Pep Talk sessions.
This is a space for you to come exactly as you are.
The call goes like this. You share where you are. I follow.
You name what you want or need a pep talk around, and I reflect back what I’m hearing to make sure I’m understanding you in the way you want to be understood. From there, I offer a pep talk. Bringing what I have with my whole heart, meeting you right where you are, and holding you with unconditional positive regard.
This is not about fixing, saving, advising, or helping.
It’s an opportunity for you to speak what’s true and important to your heart and to be encouraged as you move in the direction you feel called to go.
Sign up here for a 30-minute session or 60-minute session.
I also offer one-on-one sessions as a space to meet yourself in the fullness of where you are and to listen more deeply to the wisdom of your body, your life, and your path.
For those who feel called to explore more deeply with me, this work can unfold within a yearlong mentorship container. An ongoing, relational space of support, reflection, and integration as you move through change and into new ways of being.
Together, we co-create a personalized approach that may include movement, earth-based practices, and reflection to support clarity, healing, and the return of life force.
This is a space where you are met exactly where you are and invited to deepen your connection to your body, nature, and your own inner knowing. Learn more about a yearlong mentorship here.
There is an upcoming Hybrid Initiation Online or In-Person in Napponach, NY. Please share your name and email here if you are interested in attending, and we will share more information regarding dates and registration with you.
I will also be offering an Online Intensive November 15-21, 2026 with sessions from 11am to 3pm EST each day. You can share your name and email here to be on the list to receive registration updates for this training.
Gather among the Giant Sequoias to create spaciousness for deep listening, honor what has been navigated, and tend the thresholds of re-emergence. Through movement, ritual, nature, and community, we remember that what feels overwhelming alone often becomes more possible together.
I am also delighted to share that next Spring we will be returning to Blue Spirit, a place that has been a soul home for nearly two decades, for a week of movement, nature, community, and deep restoration. Join the interest list to be the first to hear when registration opens.
I would love to adventure together.
With gratitude and heart,
Rochelle
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