Working with Ceremonial Cacao

Some ideas to help you get more from sacred chocolate

Ceremonial Cacao is fabulous stuff. It enhances anything that requires your presence: yoga, meditation and mindfulness, lovemaking, hiking in nature, spending time with your kids and many other things. If it’s a right-brain activity that benefits from ‘soft focus’, Ceremonial Cacao can add something to the experience for you and the people you share it with.

Before reading more, please read about why Ceremonial Cacao is different and some important health information that’s worth knowing.

Yoga and meditation
Cacao is great for assisting you with your yoga and meditation practice. This is because it helps you to deepen presence and increase your soft focus. People report having a more connected and profound experience when doing their practice with cacao. It may be worth waiting 20–30 minutes after eating the chocolate before you start, to allow its effects to be felt fully.

Spending time with your kids
Sometimes it’s hard to switch from busy-life-mode to being-with-your-kids mode. This is because kids are really present and in the moment, with little concern for the future and few thoughts about the past. As an adult we have to find our way into that kind of presence rather than just being in it all the time. Ceremonial Cacao can really help you with that.

A great way to do this is to set aside some time to be with your kid(s) and eat a little cacao just before this time starts. A small amount (10g) is usually enough, but of course if you’re going to spend longer together you can always have a bit more.

Be aware that kids can be very sensitive to Ceremonial Cacao as it’s a stimulant. They also probably don’t need it as much, since they’re more present anyway. If you do want to give them a little cacao, start with a tiny amount (5g or less) and see how they get along with it. And be aware that the cacao may keep them (and you) awake if you have too much later in the day.

Dancing
Ceremonial Cacao is great for dancing. It particularly suits expressive sober dance styles like 5 Rhythms, Biodanza and Ecstatic Dance. However it can also be taken on a night out, as an excellent alternative to drugs and alcohol. Remember that cacao doesn’t mix well with either, so please use it instead of rather than as well as other substances.

Sharing circles and intimate conversations
Cacao helps the heart to open and is excellent for sharing circles and intimate conversations. It works well to open the space by sharing some cacao, perhaps using its great aroma and taste to connect people and bring people into presence. This creates common ground upon which to build your space. The cacao also helps you get to the heart of the matter and supports you to express your truth with courage, tenderness and vulnerability.

Attending a personal development workshop
Your experience at a workshop often improves with a little bit of Ceremonial Cacao. The cacao helps you to open up and often brings you to the heart of the matter quicker than you might otherwise get there. However it’s worth checking with the facilitator(s) before taking cacao, in case they have concerns about its compatibility with what they’re planning. (This is particularly true if other medicines will be used at the workshop — for example, ayahuasca, ceremonial tobacco or rapé.)

Singing mantras
Ceremonial Cacao goes beautifully with mantra singing. The cacao helps you to be more embodied and opens your heart, just as the singing does. It’s worth having the cacao a little before the singing starts, so it’s in full effect when the mantras start.

Doing a ritual
Ceremonial Cacao is brilliant for doing rituals. They bring you into deeper presence, which makes the ritual more meaningful and powerful. A great way to use them is to begin the ritual by taking some cacao together. As with sharing circles, this gives you a beautiful way to open the ritual space, creating common ground and connection between those taking part.

If you want to learn more about creating and performing rituals, please join my online course starting on 11th October: The Playful Art of Making Magic.

Lovemaking
Ceremonial Cacao is an aphrodisiac that helps you feel more embodied and increases sensuality. Have a little before lovemaking and you’ll notice a difference in what you experience. You can also incorporate cacao into your erotic play, for example by sensually feeding it to each other at the start.

Other activities
Ceremonial Cacao is great for anything that requires your presence: for example, singing in a choir, a conscious movement practice or a hike in the forest. If it’s something that requires your right-brain more than your left-brain, cacao can help.

Cacao is less good for left-brain activities like number-crunching and project planning. It’s not that the cacao will hurt the process much, it’s just unlikely to add much to it. And it can be that using your left brain after taking cacao can cause you to get a headache.

So that gives you a few ideas about when and where you can use Ceremonial Cacao to deepen and enrich your experience. If you’d like to read more, check out also this article about how much cacao to take and how often to take it.

Explore and discover
I wish you a beautiful time exploring and discovering all that Ceremonial Cacao has to offer you. What’s great about this medicine is that it’s relatively gentle (though at times it can also be quite fierce). This means that you can try it in different contexts, to see how it feels and what you get from it. Many of us who work regularly with Ceremonial Cacao found out what works for us through a process of trial-and-error. I would encourage you to do the same, gently listening to your body and finding what’s right for you.

Like all medicines, Cacao is a gift from the land and it wants you to build your own unique relationship with it over time. So don’t be afraid to try things out, but always apply common sense and caution at first, building up rather than taking a lot at once, until you’re familiar with what the medicine feels like to your body. And remember that it’s OK to make mistakes and that’s a great way to learn too.

I wish you beautiful adventures, journeys and experiences with these magical Charmed Chocolates.

We’d love to hear more about how you work with Ceremonial Cacao. If you feel like it, please share your experiences and ideas in the comments section.