The first time I held a cacao ceremony was in 2007, in the mountains above Carate, before Luna Lodge had its current form. A local elder had given me a block of raw ceremonial cacao — nothing like the processed chocolate I had grown up with — and walked me through the preparation. She spoke to the plant as she ground it. She thanked it before the first cup was poured. She was not performing ritual. She was continuing a conversation that had been going on, in her family, for generations.
That ceremony changed something in me. Not because of the cacao's physiological effects — though those are real and significant — but because of what it felt like to be invited to receive a plant with that quality of attention. I was used to consuming things. I was not used to being received by them.
Fifteen years later, cacao has become a global wellness phenomenon. There are cacao ceremony facilitators on every continent. The word is on Instagram with millions of posts. And I have watched this with mixed feelings — mostly gratitude that more people are encountering this plant, and some concern about what gets lost when something sacred is stripped of its context and offered as a product.
"The question I ask before any ceremony is not 'what is cacao?' but 'what is this person bringing to the cacao?' The plant meets us where we are, which means preparation matters enormously."
What Ceremonial Cacao Actually Is
Ceremonial-grade cacao is raw, minimally processed cacao — the paste made from whole cacao beans that have been fermented, dried, and stone-ground without removing the cacao butter. It is not cocoa powder. It is not dark chocolate. The difference is chemical and energetic: ceremonial cacao retains theobromine (a gentle, sustained stimulant), anandamide (sometimes called the bliss molecule), and a complex of compounds that together produce what practitioners describe as a heart-opening effect.
Theobromine is structurally similar to caffeine but works differently in the body — it dilates blood vessels, increases heart rate mildly, and produces a gentle, expansive alertness rather than the spike-and-crash of caffeine. Anandamide — named for the Sanskrit word for bliss — binds to the same receptors as THC but is endogenously produced and much milder. Together, these compounds create a physiological state of openness and warmth that, when held in the right container, can allow access to emotional territory that is otherwise guarded.
This is not magic. But it is medicine.
The Container Is Everything — Why Intention Matters
I have drunk the same cacao in many different contexts — alone in the morning as a practice, in large group ceremonies with fifty people, in intimate one-on-one sessions with clients in deep grief. The physiological effect is consistent. What varies enormously is what happens to that effect depending on what surrounds it.
In a large, social setting without careful holding, the cacao tends to produce a pleasant warmth and mild euphoria. Nothing wrong with that. But in a held ceremonial space — with intention, with silence, with breathwork, with music that has been chosen to support the body's own process — the same plant can open access to grief that has been held for decades, to love that has been waiting for a safe container, to a quality of clarity about one's own life that is hard to access in ordinary consciousness.
The elder who taught me used to say that the cacao itself is only half the ceremony. The other half is the preparation of the space and the preparation of the participants. She would spend hours before any ceremony in prayer, setting her own inner space so that she could hold what arose in others without being moved off-center by it. I have followed this practice ever since.
"The cacao itself is only half the ceremony. The other half is the preparation of the space — and the preparation of the person who holds it."
How I Work with Cacao in a Private Session
When I offer cacao as part of a private immersion at Luna Lodge, I begin the conversation about intention the day before. What is this person carrying? What are they hoping to release, or encounter, or understand? Not so that I can direct the experience — cacao is not a guided tour — but so that the intention can be set consciously before the cup is even prepared.
We drink together, in silence, after a period of breathwork that has already shifted the body into a more receptive state. I often begin with voice — toning, sometimes song — to activate the energy of the heart space before the cacao arrives there. Then we sit. I watch. I follow what arises. Sometimes tears come quickly. Sometimes deep laughter. Sometimes someone goes into a profound stillness and stays there for an hour. I have learned not to have an agenda for what healing looks like.
The cacao, at its best, shows people something they already knew but could not access. It does not give you new information. It gives you access to information that was already there, waiting for you to be quiet enough to receive it. In this way it is perhaps the most honest medicine I have ever worked with. It shows you what you are ready to see. No more, no less.
If you are considering working with ceremonial cacao, I offer this: find a practitioner whose relationship with the plant goes back years, not weeks. Find someone who respects both the tradition and the individual. Bring a real question — not a vague wish for transformation, but something specific you are sitting with, some territory in yourself you have been afraid to enter. The cacao will not take you there without your consent. But it will hold the door open and wait, with extraordinary patience, for you to walk through.
