Strolling barefoot throughout the cool tile flooring, her silver face gems twinkling within the daylight, sound bathtub practitioner and vitality healer Maya Andreeva distributed paper cups stuffed with brown liquid to the 20 principally youngish adults seated on yoga mats and blankets on the bottom.
That they had gathered this Saturday morning on Abbot Kinney Boulevard within the courtyard behind the Japanese skincare retailer Albion Backyard to attend Echoes of the Coronary heart, a two-hour cacao, breathwork and sound bathtub workshop that promised to information contributors towards “deep self-exploration, energetic healing and profound relaxation.”
“Just allow yourself to feel the intention within you,” stated Greta Ruljevaite, founding father of the wellness model Xpansion who co-led the workshop with Andreeva. “Speak it into the cacao, your intention, your wisdom, what you choose to let go of. Anything and everything: Speak it into the cacao.”
Maya Andreeva and Greta Ruljevaite, co-leaders of the Echoes of the Coronary heart workshop, put their intentions into cups of cacao.
(Jean Marc Bertolet)
Across the room, contributors gazed reverently into their paper cups, a few of them mouthing phrases silently.
“Now bring it up to your heartspace, connecting to your heart,” she continued, as ambient music droned within the background. “Bring it down to the earth for grounding, and then back to your heartspace. … One more inhale together … and drink your cacao.”
With nice gravity, they drank.
Over the following two hours the group was first led by Ruljevaite by way of a breathwork sequence, after which a sound therapeutic session facilitated by Andreeva. The cacao a part of the workshop could have been minimal, however afterward, attendee Saim Alam stated the nice and cozy, barely bitter beverage deepened his expertise of the occasion.
“I was genuinely in such a state of bliss the whole time,” he stated.
Cacao, the primary ingredient in chocolate, has been exhibiting up at an growing variety of wellness occasions within the L.A. space in recent times. In March alone, Angelenos can attend a Ladies’s Circle and Cacao Ceremony in Hollywood, a Ladies’s Day Goddess Circle and Cacao Ceremony on the Grove, a New Moon Cacao Renewal Ceremony at Yoga NoHo Heart and the Somos Cacao Ceremony at an undisclosed location in Woodland Hills.
Small edible flowers float on the floor of a cup of cacao at a latest cacao, breathwork and sound therapeutic workshop in Venice.
(Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Instances)
If you wish to make the drink your self, Holy Cacao sells Ecuadorean cacao at farmers markets in Hollywood, Mar Vista, Malibu and Marina del Rey. Native farmers market vendor Arcana Apothecary sells a $60, one-pound block of cacao that’s made fully by girls in Guatemala, and pure natural cacao powder is on the market at Erewhon.
“People hosting cacao experiences continues to grow,” stated Nick Meador, who sells ceremonial-grade cacao (an unofficial designation that implies minimal processing) on-line by way of Soul Elevate Cacao, the corporate he based in 2018. “People want something that gives them a sense of embodied spirituality and cacao is so gentle, you can’t even say there are side effects.”
Practitioners declare that consuming cacao opens the guts, serving to drinkers really feel extra compassionate, blissful, energized and loving. And since it doesn’t have psychedelic properties like different substances labeled “plant medicines,” it’s a protected and straightforward strategy to experiment with consciousness-altering pure compounds. Contemplate it ayahuasca lite.
“I was genuinely in such a state of bliss the whole time.”
— Saim Alam, cacao ceremony attendee
“It’s not like any drug I’ve ever taken,” stated Kat Ho, who began main cacao ceremonies in 2021 after being launched to the drink throughout the pandemic by an influencer on YouTube. “It’s so mild. Your mind feels a little more loose and you feel a little more clear in the things you want to do.”
When folklorist Taylor Burby was researching cacao ceremonies for her latest graduate thesis, she discovered that greater than 89% of the 118 contributors she interviewed stated they wish to eat cacao as a result of it’s a authorized, extra accessible plant drugs.
Attendees of a cacao, breathwork and sound therapeutic workshop maintain cups of cacao at their coronary heart heart.
(Jean Marc Bertolet)
“If you take mushrooms you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Burby stated. “With cacao you might feel yourself getting warmer or giddy or peaceful, but you have more control over your experience.”
The bodily results of cacao haven’t been studied as a lot as espresso, however analysis means that chemical compounds current in cacao can have an effect on temper by growing each alertness and cognition, and in addition enhance cardiovascular well being by reducing blood stress. And since cacao has a lot much less caffeine than espresso, followers say it provides them an brisk increase with out making them jumpy.
“I can feel my shoulders drop, my chest opens,” Andreeva stated. “I have felt the energy running through my body like little tingles in spaces where I don’t usually feel that.”
Making ceremonial cacao is a multistep course of that historically begins with fermenting the seeds of the cacao fruit in their very own pulp, drying them within the solar, roasting them over an open fireplace after which grinding them till they type a paste, which will get poured right into a mildew to harden.
To arrange the cacao for the Echoes of the Coronary heart workshop, Ruljevaite used a ball of cacao that she had bought on a latest journey to Guatemala. The night time earlier than she meditated over the darkish brown sphere, filling it with intentions, after which shaved it into small items; combined it with heat water, oat milk, somewhat manuka honey and vanilla; after which frothed it. She introduced it to the occasion in an electrical Crock-Pot. Simply earlier than serving, she and Andreeva whistled over it for a number of moments, infusing it with “light language” to provide it extra efficiency. Then they ladled the liquid into small cups.
In South and Central America cacao is commonly served combined simply with water, however with none sweeteners it’s very bitter.
“Our Western tastebuds are not really ready for the traditional experience of cacao,” Andreeva stated. “Anywhere I’ve gone in L.A. to drink cacao, it’s never just been raw.”
Archaeological proof means that cacao has been cultivated in Mesoamerica for not less than 5,000 years. It was served at betrothals and different celebrations and was a favourite drink of Maya and Aztec the Aristocracy, particularly in locations the place it needed to be imported, stated Rosemary Joyce, a not too long ago retired professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley and an skilled on the historical past of cacao. Texts from the sixteenth century present the plant was utilized by Indigenous folks medicinally to deal with an array of illnesses and cacao was consumed in rituals and ceremonies, principally to restore relationships between the human and spirit worlds, she stated.
Joyce has been supplied conventional cacao whereas doing fieldwork in Honduras.
Maya Andreeva, a sound bathtub practitioner and yoga instructor, ladles cacao from a pot right into a paper cup.
(Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Instances)
“It tastes like medicine — there’s no way around it,” she stated.
Regardless of its storied historical past, her analysis means that historic makes use of of cacao in Mesoamerica bear little resemblance to the rituals many Westerners are crafting as we speak.
“It’s a tricky area,” she stated. “The ceremonies they did required cacao, but the purpose of the ceremony was not to commune with the spirit of cacao or have it come down and take over your body. That’s a very Western notion.”
Newest-day cacao ceremonies hint their origin to Keith Wilson, a geologist, adventurer and founding father of Keith’s Cacao, who turned referred to as the “Chocolate Shaman.” Wilson, who died final yr at his house in Guatemala, claims he was contacted by the cacao spirit in 2003 and given the mission of reintroducing ceremonial cacao to a world that had principally forgotten about it. He started serving cacao to guests on his porch, and buddies began calling them “cacao ceremonies.” Over time, the world round Lake Atitlán the place he settled turned recognized for its cacao ceremonies. Guests introduced the follow again to their house nations.
Meador prefers to label his cacao occasions “cacao experiences” or “modern cacao ceremonies” to make it clear they don’t seem to be derived from historic Indigenous rituals.
“I don’t want to be like a policeman,” he stated, “but I teach people to be careful with the words we choose. There are many voices in the conversation and there are people in the U.S. who don’t really actually know that much about it.”
At the moment in L.A., cacao ceremonies are sometimes paired with different therapeutic modalities akin to breathwork, yoga, meditation and dance. Some facilitators will evoke the spirit of cacao, who is meant to be loving, nurturing and even a bit promiscuous. Burby, the folklorist, as soon as heard it described as “the grandmother that still has sex, rather than the grandma who is over and done and retired.” A facilitator may remind attendees that cacao is a coronary heart opener, that after consuming it one may really feel heat, clear and extra alert. However after that, something goes.
“There are just as many ways to practice as people practicing,” Burby stated.
Again at Echoes of the Coronary heart, Andreeva and Ruljevaite make it clear they’re removed from cacao consultants. However that they had each had constructive experiences with the drink and needed to share it with those that attended their workshop.
“I see it as this beautiful welcoming bridge back to yourself,” Ruljevaite stated. “And with a lot of prayers and intention infused in it, and the power and reverence of the community, it heightens and amplifies its benefits.”