How to lead
A Cacao Ceremony
Cacao Ceremony: Recipe, Ritual and Q&A
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hey guys, it is challenging times for all of us, so I thought that the best
offering I could give you right now is share with you the daily practice
that helps me ground helps me connect deeper to my heart, helps me be in a
positive state of mind and that is my daily cacao practice.
I'm having my channel's first guess, this is going to be Florencia Fridman; she is
the queen of all things cacao in New York and she's amazing! I didn't want to
do this video by myself as I have personally grown a relationship with
cacao but I haven't practiced with any elders, I don't know how to hold cacao
ceremonies and I believe that it's quite important to work with a native
community that has been working with cacao for the longest time and Florencia
works with a community in Guatemala. I hope you guys enjoy this video I
hope this video finds you in great health with calm spirits and I hope you enjoy!
Hi I'm Florencia Fridman, I'm here with caro sharing some cacao, we're gonna do
a little ritual and explore the different aspects of cacao, get to
understand this beautiful plant and get to know a little bit about ourselves as well.
Today we will be doing a cacao, rose and blue lotus recipe; rose is
used as a heart opener and also as a connection with our feminine side.
Blue Lotus is used as an intuition flower.
A meditation dose is about 1oz of cacao -28 grams and it allows us
to really receive all the benefits from cacao, and with a ceremonial dose it's
about 45 grams so it's a much deeper dose and it really allows you to sit in
meditation for a longer period of time so if you have a long day where you want
to create or meditate, even do some movements, or if you're working with
a partner and you want to go deep into the practice a ceremonial dose is such a
beautiful experience. Awesome, and what do you recommend to someone who is just
starting to work with cacao? I would say starting with a meditation dose, 1 oz
is the perfect amount, you still receive all of the benefits and since
your body is getting used to the experience it's nice to start gentle
because you can always have more.
It's always nice to also bring in the
vibration of songs into the cacao. Cacao is all about intention and it opens our
hearts, it opens us for possibilities
but it's also up to us on what frequency and what intention we bring into it.
Todo cura, todo sana
Todo lleva medicina adentro
Cura cura, sana sana,
Cacaocita medicina del amor
Cura cura, sana sana,
Cacaocita medicina del amor
Todo cura todo sana,
Todo lleva medicina adento
I love this, I've never smudged my cacao
My teacher always uses Copal in Guatemala. So in Guatemala they use Copal.
And before she serves it she always puts the incense on.
Oh it smells so good!
Todo cura, todo sana,
Todo lleva medicina adentro,
Cura cura, sana sana,
Cacaocita, medicina del amor.
Todo cura todo sana,
Todo lleva medicina adentro
Cura cura, sana sana,
Cacaocita, medicina del amor.
I think it's important to find the things make us fall in love and add them into the cacao
Thank you for this honor -Thank you for coming, this is such a dream!
So let's bring the cacao into the heart space and just close the eyes.
Let's tune into the breath
As we know many indigenous communities
all of our meso and South America have been working with this
plant, they understand the sacredness of this beautiful plant and they're saying
that it allows us to come back to the heart space and come back to our truth
they also understand that the elements of nature are something sacred that move
within us and outside of us so these energies are an extension of
ourselves and the moment that we be in honoring and respecting these energies
we can remember to honor and respect our own being. So we have thanks to
the element of Earth; for allowing us the stability. the foundation. the structure,
the nourishment. Thank you for allowing us to rest our roots, explore the
darkness, the shadow work, the mysteries of the unknown. It is through this
exploration that we allow ourselves to move closer and closer towards the light.
We give things to the element of Water; for the fluidity, the connections,
the relationships. the change, the creativity. Thank you for allowing us to
flow in the rhythm of change, letting a swim in the unlimited
possibilities of creation, finding the wisdom, the stillness when the waters are
teemed knowing that this is just a play it's a practice for when the waters get
rough and even then we continue finding that wisdom, that stillness because we
know that the clarity is waiting on the other side of the wave. Thank you to the
element of Fire; for the passion, the courage. the strength, the transformation.
Thank you for allowing us to burn all the toxins that lay in the physical body,
the emotional body and the mental body so we can transcend to the spiritual
body and as we move through the smoke we connect deeper with the confidence that lays within.
Thank you to the element of Air; for the openness, the vulnerability
to trust, that acceptance. As we take a deep breath in together. let's find
another breath nourishes each and every cell of the body and as we exhale
finding all that space that's created within us. It is through that space that we open
our wings and let me take flight. We take flight into those desires that
we have for ourselves knowing that these desires will bring us closer to the
mission that we have in the here and now.
Thank you to the essence, the spirit of cacao.
Thank you for allowing us to dissolve all the barriers that we have
set against ourselves, so we can remember the language of the heart and begin to
listen but also speak from that space. thank you to Nana Mariana and Tata Pedro
and all the elders, all the ancestors that have passed on this
wisdom from generation to generation, letting us take in the knowledge, along
with the experience so we too can share this wisdom with the rest of the world
becoming the leaders that we were born to be. Thank you to all the guardians and
protectors of the sacred lands and those who have been protecting the fruit of
cacao so we can enjoy it this morning
Thank you.
Aho.
I want to send a blessing to you, for being here, for sharing this of me and I want
to send a blessing for your beautiful work to grow even deeper, for you to dive
with it even deeper, for your journey to keep on being magical and blessed.
And I also want to send a blessing for the world right now. For all of us to be able
to use this time, this period, as a time to love ourselves, to get to know ourselves
even deeper, to share with the members of our household, to really
listen and open our hearts to understand the needs of mama earth.
She's talking to us in so many ways and I deeply believe we are ready to leap towards love.
And thank you for being such a powerful channel for so many of us such a
beautiful vehicle to connect back to our creativity which is our truth and expression.
mmm it's so yummy! even without sweetner.
you can taste the love
I feel that whenever I started doing my own cacao morning ritual I was still too
shy to speak out loud some days I feel it's not a day to speak out loud either,
so I just journal, I journal with it and it's also such a powerful tool, I feel
it's such a great way to connect with it when we're just starting and we might now know
where to start instead of maybe talking out loud at first we can
write about it right? Yeah I love that for me it was when I first started
sharing cacao it was very difficult because I was working with the mind and
I wasn't moving into the heart space and it was very difficult for me to find
my voice because I felt like I needed to fit in a box and journaling was one of
the first steps that allowed me to like express myself yeah. "The artist way it"
was like my biggest teacher, yes, because it allows you to just be, nobody is
judging you it's just you in the paper and then I started realizing that it
translates to ceremony as well because people are there to open their hearts
they're not there to be in their ego and judge and when we all open
ourselves in that space you can feel how the shift happens and we all become
channels it's not just the person that serving like a cacao.
finding the different connections and it guides
you in understanding how to play
that's one of the biggest messages from a cacao it's like: start just start, take the
first step, you don't need to have it all figured out just trust in the next step.
And doing it playful
And I feel like that's the message that cacao is bringing and as well like not just
cacao but I'll plant medicines. I got this weird theory and some people might have
a challenge understanding it but I feel like what is happening right now is like
the earth is speaking needing to rest. So when we're sick we need just to be able
to rest so our bodies can heal on their own. Because like we were saying; the medicine
is within. Our bodies have everything that's necessary and sometimes we utilize
external tools to emphasize the healing that's already within us and
First the plant started asking right, and speaking to us, there's so many
plants that are coming from the jungle and coming to the main society to give
us these messages and we weren't listening so the indigenous communities
example coming out right now and speaking out and then
the children started speaking because the activism needed to happen and we
still weren't listening so this came out and the world needs to stop. And if you
see in China now people can actually see the sky and there's so much less
pollution yeah that is happening and now the land
can actually have space to heal and we're also allowing ourselves to come
back and rest and be able to heal and understand, come back to alignment and
then that process also understand; Am I living my truth? and that's a lot of what
these plant medicines are guiding us to understand coming back to our truth;
Why are we here? what is our purpose? it's so interesting because I think a lot about
and this is one of the reasons why I love cacao so much, I think a lot about
how we have so many different tools to connect to... we can call it the universe,
god, great spirit; we all have different ways to see what the divine or grand
master mind is, but I I'm just in awe about how we can just connect to it
through different mediums. Some people prefer reiki, some others
do psychedelics, others drink cacao, you know? so there's so much of it
And I love that we can give ourselves the time and space to just connect and dive
deeper on each of them at the time, whatever the time is right you know so
I love how the message comes clear whenever we open, we are open
to listening and that's one of the many ways why cacao
became so important to me because I feel it allows me to be more
open. I totally agree I feel like it creates so much space within us and
even physically right? it brings more oxygen to the brain and the heart so
it's literally creating space for us and opening up our blood vessels so
stimulating the blood, so it means that it's physically preparing us for this
connection right? this awakening you know and I feel like there's certain master
teacher plans that especially with psychedelic that ar putting us in a
situation that maybe we're afraid to explore but with cacao it's not a
psychoactive plant you're still very much present in your experience but it's
still creating this awakening and integration as well of other experiences
I love the you know you've created a morning ritual that you can sit with and
explore what's coming up for me when I'm connecting with this plant and it's an
invitation for us to really show up the best humanity in that different way
because we start with a cup of cacao but then we realize that we need to be aware
of other things that are moving through our day and we start creating this
ripple effect but I feel like the the plant is really coming out to the
mainstream right now and it's important for us to understand that it is a sacred
food just because it's so gentle doesn't mean that it's something and we should
just drink and then go on with our day right and also I noticed the difference
when I just drink it and go with my day I don't feel I'm really open to
receiving what cacao has to offer to me so it just passes through and when I do
sit down at least for five minutes with it the experience
changes and shifts completely it as if I would have even had a different drink.
I feel there's so much about the intention that goes to it.
so is it okay to drink cacao every day?
I think it depends on each person. I drink it every day but you
know, some people work well with like having it a few times a week if you're
going to drink it every day doing like a meditation dose it's best especially
when you're just starting out and just seeing how the body moves
through with you. it's important to not drink caffeine if you're having cacao
like not mixing yet because they could becoming really stimulating
So cacao going to be utilized in the morning it could be utilized in the
evening. If you're having it at the evening having less amount is good it
doesn't have caffeine it's theobroma that's the active component, so if you
have a good quality cacao it won't be simulating and it does help with lucid
dreaming like we were saying so it is something really nice to have at the evening.
My brother and I go directly to Ecuador and connect with the farmers so
We started a company called Cacao Lab. -Which is amazing!
When I first started working with cacao it was such a new thing in the States
and I wanted to be able to find the good quality here and share it with my
community so we started doing a lot of research on farms and you know started
going to Ecuador and Guatemala. There's a lot of genetically modified
cacao now that's known as CCN 51 and it's mixed with the Criollo beans,
the ancestral trees so it's really important to work with a company that is you know
focusing on understanding that connection to the farmers and
understanding the quality so; Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala all have really good cacao and Mexico as well
have really beautiful cacao from ancestral trees and it's important to
work with those because they have deeper roots so if you're focusing on a
physical level they have less heavy metals.
That's a beautiful question and thank you for bringing this up because it's
something that a lot of our society is struggling with; going back to
the understanding of respect you know when we're working deeply into the
education of a career where you go and study for a certain
period of time it doesn't mean that your interest in that particular subject
can't be honored because you haven't studied it so I think what you're doing
is the most amazing thing of really sitting with the plant yourself and
hearing the messages that she's providing for you and getting to
understand and that being said also understanding the communities that are
working with cacao and getting to know their ways of connecting with it.
We made a short documentary that tells a little bit about the ways
of how to connect whit cacao and the way that the Tzutujil community
the Mayan community that we work with, works with cacao.
The Tzutujil community is one of the 22 ethnic groups of Guatemala and
they've been known as the guardians and protectors of cacao for thousands of
years through oral tradition and also by working directly with the plants that
their grandparents and grandparents and their grandparents have been working
with so I feel like the first step is getting to know the plant yourself and
feeling the connection that you have and then you know we do an immersive as well
it's an eight-week immersive that allows you to dive deeper into how to hold
space and really get to know the community and I feel like it's also that;
building a community that starts asking questions so we don't need to have all
the answers right away but really understanding how do I honor this
plant you know, what comes up for you when you work with them that's one
thing I think, and to understand that we can sit in
ceremony and it's very profound but we can also just make a little bit of time
in the morning for ourselves or even if we have to go into a meeting you know
offering cacao we're gonna speak to each other in a different way because we're
not up here so much when we come back to the heart space.
Where can people find you
and where can they find cacao lab and what if they want to sit in ceremony with you?
So www.cacaolaboratory.com is our website
and that has all of the information about ceremony, we also do virtual
circles and you can find more information on our website
Thank you so much.
Thank you!
It's such an honor to be here and to share.
I'm so happy this happened!
