What’s offered in a Qoya Inspired Movement Class?
Qoya Inspired Movement is an embodiment practice that weaves together thirteen different pillars to welcome all aspects of ourselves, bringing mind, body, heart and soul into awareness. Qoya classes are a place to strengthen our inherent resilience, rest in our essence and remember we are wise, wild and free.
In these times of accelerated transformation and change, each of us is being asked to find the ways that we can best meet this moment. In class, we explore healing and nourishing ourselves in community so that we can bring our best selves to our daily lives in service to the co-creation of a more just and equitable world.
13 Pillars of a Qoya Class
— PILLAR ONE —
SETTING SACRED SPACE
Each Qoya Inspired Movement class begins with the invocation of sacred space. Prayers and amends are made to honor the land that holds us and the stewards of that land: past, present and emerging. A psychic seed is planted that each person may receive nourishment towards what called them into the space.
— PILLAR TWO —
INTRODUCING QOYA, THE THEME OF CLASS AND PULLING AN ORACLE CARD
Authenticity nourishes trust, which builds a bridge to openness. Qoya teachers offer a theme for each class inspired by the honesty of their own life experience and then invite you to dance your relationship to the theme. An oracle card is offered to invoke synchronicity and encourage curiosity to hear the message that is unique to each person.
— PILLAR THREE —
BREATHWORK + INTENTION SETTING
Deepen the intimacy between each breath, your body and the present moment. Choose an intention for your movement experience and plant it like a seed into your heart, the shared space of the circle and into the world we all share.
— PILLAR FOUR —
CIRCLING
We explore our potential to soften into the fluidity of our body by flowing from one movement to the next. We invite releasing the conditioning of concern for what the movement looks like and prioritizing our perception to stay attuned to what it feels like. Practicing deep listening to the sensation of our bodies, we honor what we hear by choosing ways of moving that feel nourishing to us in the moment.
— PILLAR FIVE —
HEART OPENING
Whatever is going on in your life, are you willing to open your heart to it? Explore movement as a way to release resistance to what is and meet it with an open heart. Listen to the beat of the music and the beat of your own heart. Find the place where they merge and ask your heart to guide you.
— PILLAR SIX —
HIP OPENING
Slow down and drop into the innate power and sensuality that lives in our hips. This creative space offers the wisdom that there is no way to do the movement wrong and the way you know you’re doing it right is that it feels good to you. Give your hips more voice in the conversation of your body.
— PILLAR SEVEN —
DANCING YOGA AS PRAYER
If movement could be prayer, how would you lift your arms up to the sky? Beyond speaking our intention with words, we remember how to speak our most sacred wishes, desires, prayers, hopes and longings through our bones, muscles, breath and skin.
— PILLAR EIGHT —
SHADOW CONTRAST DANCE
We embrace our wholeness and honor the range of our daily lived experiences by dancing with the opposite of the theme of class. We strengthen our willingness to look and notice what it feels like in our body, observing that sensation with curiosity and presence. We bring our exploration to a close offering compassion and loving kindness to our experience.
— PILLAR NINE —
SHAKING
We ask, “Through movement, can I come back to myself?” We shake to assist the body’s natural cycles of letting go of what is ready to be released. We also shake to reclaim our essence through wild uninhibited expression.
— PILLAR TEN —
CHOREOGRAPHED DANCE
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. We invite our inner child to play with our adult selves. We heal the old stories that we “can’t dance”. Somewhere in between an experiment with conscious aerobics and a late night dance party, we find ourselves imagining what dance can be when joy is the teacher.
— PILLAR ELEVEN –
FREE DANCE
Let your intuition, not your inhibition, lead this dance. We practice moving in a way that feels congruent, inspired, and in integrity by deeply listening to our bodies and honoring our lived experience. We strengthen the sensation of truth and authenticity in our body in class to stay connected to this sensation while dancing with our daily lives.
— PILLAR TWELVE —
COMMUNITY SHARING
In every class, there are opportunities to share with a partner about your experience and hold space to listen to another’s. This practice of speaking authentically and being heard strengthens our felt sense of connection in the community.
— PILLAR THIRTEEN –
INTEGRATIVE STRETCHING & RELAXATION
Offering our breath and awareness to the sensation of stretching, we integrate our experiences of class by nourishing our bodies with stabilizing stretches and spaciousness to rest. Shifting from the medicine of movement and doing, we restore ourselves with the medicine of stillness and being.
QOYA IS A MOVEMENT SYSTEM BASED ON THE IDEA THAT THROUGH MOVEMENT, WE REMEMBER.
WE REMEMBER OUR ESSENCE IS WISE, WILD AND FREE.
THROUGH MOVEMENT, RITUAL, COMMUNITY CONNECTION, AND PILGRIMAGES, WE LEARN TO TRUST THE PHYSICAL SENSATION OF TRUTH IN OUR BODIES.
Essences of a Qoya Class
– ESSENCE ONE —
Focus less on how it looks and more ON how it feels
In a Qoya Inspired Movement class, there are no corrections and no praise. Instead, there is a deep respect for each being in class to develop their own skill to listen to their own body and make choices that are in right relationship for them. Many people have been taught to move in a way that bypasses their intuitive body intelligence to focus on how something looks. While many fitness trends come and go, we can’t imagine a time in the future where we say to ourselves, “I really wish I had never put all that time and energy into honoring how my body felt.”
Stepping away from a hierarchical paradigm, a Qoya teacher presents a theme and then offers the invitation for each student to explore their own relationship to it. Everything the teacher says and does not say intends to reflect each person’s capacity to access their embodied wisdom and nourish their courage to follow that inner knowing.
– ESSENCE TWO —
everything is within
– ESSENCE THREE —
embrace that life is a dance
In these times of great blessings, challenges and opportunities, a Qoya Inspired Movement class invites us to honor all of our life experiences and their imprint on our bodies. We gift ourselves space for fewer mental interpretations and more sensation of our bodies in the present moment. We believe our bodies are a guide worthy of our trust and embrace the human journey itself as a dance.
Dear Dancer,
As the founder of Qoya Inspired Movement, I’m honored to welcome you here. I often feel that more than me creating Qoya, the consciousness of Qoya has been creating me. When I move in the container of a Qoya class, there is a powerful subtle awareness that I feel as sensation in my body that reconnects me to the present moment. When I move through the sequence of the pillars, I begin to feel more and more like my true self. At the end of class, I feel more interconnected with the world around me than I did before.
You know those moments where you see the spark in someone’s eyes or feel the radiance of someone’s being shining through their body? I have guided this sequence thousands of times and seen tens of thousands of people emerge from a Qoya class with more vibrancy and aliveness than when they began. My prayer is that if you choose to do a Qoya Inspired Movement class that these movements awaken the most honest embodied experience of You. May the body wisdom that led you to this moment, lead you through your Qoya class and beyond.
​
Stay Wise, Wild and Free,
Rochelle
What's possible when you reconnect wtih your body?
The intention of a Qoya class is to remember how to trust the feeling of resonance in your body.
More than feeling good, what if the movement you did felt aligned? In a Qoya Inspired Movement class, we practice embodying the experience of resonance, so that when you leave class you have a deeper sense of relationship with your body as you navigate your life.
