We are so excited to introduce our friend Alison Love! We asked her a few questions about her experience with Qoya and how the practice has impacted her.
Q: What is Qoya?
A: Qoya is an embodiment practice that allows women to connect and feel themselves as wise, wild and free. The movement form comes from a combination of yoga, dance and sensual movement.
A: Each class is designed based on a theme like dancing your dreams into reality, gratitude, belonging or balance. The list is endless of what you can walk into on any given day. Typically the classes are all women and sometimes co-ed.
Classes last 60-90 minutes and are an experience of deep sacred space, dance party and a girls slumber party!
Q: How has this practice made a difference in your life?
A: I found Qoya in 2013 and went to one class in LA with the founder Rochelle Schieck then attended the Costa Rica retreat just a few months later. When I found Qoya I had already been dancing on my own behind closed doors -that was cathartic and healing. So when I found Qoya I just knew it was what I needed and the fact that I could express myself in a safe container with other woman literally changed my life. I’ve found so much safety and connection within my body. I began to understand how we are cyclical and powerful within our own right. How each of our bodies has the wisdom already built in that awaits us. I have learned that we need community and to share the journeys we carry as women. Because of Qoya I found community locally and internationally that I’ve been able to share and connect with through dance.
Through Qoya I also began dancing Ecstatic dance, Honeyroot Community, Open Floor and other barefoot boogies that let you shake a tail.
To Move is to Remember, and Qoya reminds us that being in our bodies is so so good.
Q: How do you recommend someone gets involved in dance?
A: It’s easy now to download classes and find local classes and retreats. Click here to find local classes on the Qoya website.
We have someone in Nashville, Hope Browning, that teaches in her home monthly and I’ll teach an upcoming Summer Solstice class.
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She has dedicated herself to the discovery of beauty & love through the lens and beyond.
Alison has been teaching yoga, meditation, women's circles and Qoya for two decades.
Whether through yoga, meditation or photographing, Alison finds the essence of Beauty in people and in the world that longs to be seen, and beyond what we know as beautiful. It is in the remembrance of slowing down to our true nature, deep permission to be ourself, and to be healed 'that the Beauty is found'.