We’re so excited to share our second Cacao Community Highlight with you for the month of August.
Today, you will meet Bre Kali, a cacao ceremony facilitator who joins us at our Weekly Free Virtual Cacao Ceremonies, a Psychospiritual therapist, an Entheogenic Plant Medicine Guide, and a Ceremonialist, and an all around amazing human being who shares so much passion in her word and expression.
Go ahead, get your cup of cacao, and read on for some inspiration for your own cacao journey!
Cacao Community Highlight | Bre Kali
Meeting Cacao
When was your first time meeting cacao, and what was it like?
I went to a sacred toad medicine ceremony in the Hamptons, in NY to hold a safe space.
One of the women that came had the same exact hair as me, at the time my hair was turquoise. She said something to me like “I think we’re soulmates!” And I said, maybe we are!
So, I held space for her ceremony, and afterwards, she invited me to a cacao ceremony. At the moment I didn’t understand what that meant! I wasn’t able to join the ceremony she invited me to but I asked her to explain to me what a cacao ceremony was and she went on to share that cacao is an entheogen. So, I went home and I was running a sacred toad medicine integration circle at the time for the shaman and facilitator I was working with at the time, so I decided to ask the group if they knew of any cacao ceremonies or facilitators in New York City. I was then led to find out about cacao ceremonies that were happening in my area, so I invited a bunch of friends with me to go have this experience.
We were led through a ceremony in which after drinking our cacao, we laid down and they started taking us through a gong bath. My kundalini rose so quickly, and I started feeling such a powerful connection to cacao. I was feeling quite sensitive since I fasted all day to have this first encounter with cacao. I felt like I connected directly to her spirit and she kept helping me come back to my heart; I sensed her saying, “ you have the answers, come back to your heart, your answers are always here, you don’t have to reach out to us for answers, (the plants) we are with you,” and it felt like such a revelation because she connected me to my heart where the answers lie.
After going to a few more ceremonies, I was led to work with cacao on my own at home. I started doing ceremonial cacao doses where I would just make room a few mornings a week and I would just sit with cacao and lay down on my mat, receiving whatever messages cacao was giving me. It was then that the pandemic hit, and when that happened I joined an online community in which we were drinking cacao together every day where we became each other’s family. I feel that cacao being a part of my life in an everyday way was exactly the catalyst that helped me hone in deeply on my own connection to my own heart, on deepening my inner child work, and really softening and giving myself grace more, and getting on my yoga mat every day, deeply engaging in self-care and wellness practices, while it seemed, everyone else was just watching Netflix, and using other forms of distraction and looking outside of themselves, during the lockdowns. Cacao invited me to take all of my spiritual practices to the absolute next level because she integrated everything that I had been learning deep down into my heart.
I think this is why I will always keep cacao in my life, she invites me to take really good care of myself in all of the ways. I’m in love with cacao!
“Cacao calls us to come back home to ourselves”
What are the biggest shifts you’ve noticed in your life and your attitude towards it once you started working with cacao as an ally?
- The amplification of my self-love that spills out in all the other aspects of my life. Self-love is really at the core of my self wellness, helping others learn how to care for themselves more deeply and being able to be in service daily. It has helped me hone in so much on loving myself that that’s what I can put forth into the world.
- Cacao has connected me so much more to the Spirit world, to Mayan time keeping and the Mayan Cosmovision
- Cacao has allowed my dream space activate more. I feel that Cacao was the last key to helping me really open up my third eye, and deepen my intuition.
What led you to become a cacao facilitator and what guidance would you have for someone who feels called to someday facilitate cacao ceremonies?
I immersed myself so much in the cacao world that I couldn’t start and stop with a cup and virtual ceremony. It had to become live ceremony, it had to become studying the Chol’qij (Mayan calendar), it had to become taking courses and learning from the Mayan original peoples whose ancestors were carriers of this medicine, who are deeply educated, and have spent years of their life immersed in this wisdom and knowledge that is connected to the origins of cacao.
I feel incredibly honored that I get to work with cacao everyday, and one thing that became important to me as a white woman working with this medicine, was asking permission from the carriers of this medicine who come directly from the lineage of cacao.
My words for anyone that feels that they want to be a carrier of this medicine is to first cultivate a deep, frequent, and long standing practice with this medicine yourself and learn from the original peoples and the way in which they always connected with this medicine. Create a connection to cacao with your own heart, and when you feel that you are leading from a place of authenticity and not spiritual materialism, bring it forth and let everybody see what you have to offer!
If you could only describe cacao in one sentence, what would you say?
She is the heart mother medicine that brings you back home to yourself over and over again so that you can give forth what you’ve cultivated within yourself.
