… I would like to share with you some of the trainings and practices that have influenced me over the years and that inform my work.
I have been apprenticed over the last few years to a plant spirit medicine shaman in the art of facilitating cacao ceremonies and learning to become a Cacaoista.
A Cacaoista is someone who creates ceremonial space so that participants may make a connection to the spirit of the cacao plant through drinking a beverage made from cacao liquor.
Working in this way is pure pleasure for me!
My Mission
To help people re-connect with their heart energy,
& the energy of mother earth.
I have always felt a deep connection with the Earth and with the plant and animal spirits, valuing what they have to share with us and teach us as humans through our communion with them. I have had a life long curiosity about the universe, natural phenomena and how everything works.
So I have always been a Biologist by nature, and was fortunate enough to grow up with parents who were, in their own way, also deeply connected to nature and with a deep love for plants and animals. Perhaps it is this that contributed to my choice to study Zoology at university, and my intuitive interest as a teenager in quantum physics, which I was to discover much later on in life, fits in with what the medicine people of indigenous cultures have always known. It appears to me that scientific enquiry about the nature of existence - a construct of human research, imagination and deduction - is coming full circle to meet and corroborate what has been known to shamans from original societies for millennia.
Although my studies as a child and young adult were very much embedded in the scientific framework of reasoning and reference, they helped to deepen my connection with our animal relations as I learned about all of their vast array of form, function, behaviour, evolution and ecology.
So in part my work stems from my embodied understanding of the importance of these connections to Nature - largely lost in Western culture, and of re-finding them within ourselves - and also from my love of ritual and creating sacred and ceremonial space for myself and others.
This passion, over the years, has encompassed working as a childbirth doula, shamanic practitioner, psychospiritual counsellor and addiction counsellor as well as deeply transformational personal work with other master plant spirit teacher medicines and shamanic apprenticeships with many inspired teachers.
“I hold a down-to-earth, practical space for you to make your own connection with the cacao.”
My role in ceremony is to listen to the guidance I receive from the cacao about how best to serve your healing intention for the work, and to guide you to meet with Ixcacao - the spirit of the cacao plant - so that you can ask for messages and healing from her.
I had been accustomed to connecting with plant spirits through my relationships with trees as a small child; some of these friendships still continue to this day- This beautiful old Sycamore watered by the Thames and fed by the Buckinghamshire sunshine has been a friend for half a century!
As an adult, the connection widened to include using herbs for easing passage through the women’s blood mysteries- moon time, pregnancy and childbirth, postpartum and menopause. Receiving teachings and making practical use of knowledge about nutritional and medicinal herbs have become entwined in the way that I look after myself physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Hormones work in mysterious ways in the peri-menopause! I am sure there are many women who can relate to this. A few years ago, I found that I needed to release rivers of tears- a not uncommon experience -and that these tears weren’t attached to a particular story about any past sadness or loss, but almost that they were just a way in which my body was releasing energetic memories. I wondered about a way to help myself flow through this process.
The spirit of the Ayahuasca, with which I had done a lot of work previously, told me that I must work with the cacao. By way of helpful coincidences I connected with a plant medicine shaman who had been working with cacao as a sacred medicine for a number of years. I was able to enjoy cacao ceremonies on a regular basis and experience their gentle, ecstatic, transformative nature, and benefit by integrating the messages from the cacao into my everyday life.
All plant spirit medicines have a purge, and with cacao this release of energy happens with tears- not from the perspective of a victim of life, but from the eagle’s eye viewpoint of an observer of one’s life events. This enables a more objective stance, not complicated by emotional attachments- and the tears can come simply as our body’s natural way of relieving stress and allowing stuck-in-the-past energy to flow.
During these ceremonies, the message from the cacao was that I needed to be using with her in my work with others as well as with myself. From this grew my choice to take an apprenticeship as a facilitator for ceremonies to help others’ connection with the cacao’s medicine. I had also substituted a morning cup of cacao (half of a ceremonial dose or less) for the cup of coffee that I might have had on most mornings, and noticed that this helped me to feel better when coffee became an occasional ritual and cacao a regular one.
I have participated in and run many ceremonies since, and I am constantly delighted and amazed by the transformation that I have experienced in myself and watched happening for others using this beautiful heart opening plant spirit medicine. I have noticed also that people who don’t have a belief in or experience of plant spirits, are totally new to the idea of shamanic journeying, or are coming to a ceremony purely out of curiosity, are still able to enjoy a cacao ceremony or to find it helpful in some way!
Wishing you love & sunbeams,
Jax
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