If you haven’t already experienced first hand, cacao is a powerful ally when it comes to processing and moving through powerful emotions like grief. Grief teaches us, through the crucible of experience, a simple truth that is hard to reconcile: everything we love we will lose.
Cacao is a plant medicine with her own intelligence and energy. When we tune in with cacao and ask for support, we can connect with her motherly nurturance and experience being held through the waves of our experience and emotions.
With National Grief Awareness Day coming up on Saturday, we were inspired to share a grief ritual along with a recommended cacao and mushroom powder to help process grief.
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How Cacao + Cordyceps Supports Grief Work
Cacao
Theobromine is a gentle cardiac stimulant (as opposed to caffeine which is a nervous system stimulant). It is the primary boost you feel from cacao, but at the same time, it relaxes blood vessels (vasodilation), together producing an effect of 30-40% higher blood circulation.
This means more blood (life force energy) is moving through your body and nourishing all of your systems. Since emotions are considered “energy in motion”, you can see how, with each sip of cacao, emotional energy can be unblocked and start to circulate, thus making it easier to process old emotions and experience new emotions.
Broadly speaking, creating a meaningful space and time in your daily life, a.k.a. creating a ritual, is helpful to processing emotions. And when combined with cacao, your healing intentions are better supported. In your next cacao ritual, consider setting intentions to move old energy and make way for the new and tune into the ritual below to put this into practice.
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Cordyceps
Cordyceps are known to support energy levels, physical performance, and respiratory health. Cordyceps has been used across Asia for thousands of years as a remedy for fatigue and to support the kidneys which store our Qi, or life force energy, in Chinese Medicine.
Cordyceps’ respiratory properties are especially beneficial to processing grief, as in Chinese Medicine, the lungs are the place of the body that is known to hold grief. In addition to moving the life force energy through the body and aiding in fatigue, cordyceps can help us move through stuck grief in our body. Cordyceps helps balance our system as grief takes immense energy to move through and help facilitate more release.
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Cacao Ritual for Grief
Set the space for ritual by tidying, energetically cleansing, and preparing your cacao lovingly with Cordyceps powder.
For supplies, have a bowl of water and a washcloth nearby plus a sheet of paper.
Reflect on what gifts you’ve received from cacao and what you would like to offer in return, before you ask for support to move through this grief. Examples of offerings could include a song, a nature altar, or a prayer from your heart. Offer your first sip to the earth in gratitude and reciprocity.
Infuse your cup of cacao with your prayers and intentions in your grief work. Name what you are seeking support with and what you are ready to release. You can write this on a piece of paper that you can release to the elements later.
As you drink your cacao, invite in her spirit and the cordyceps to help you move through any stuck emotions in your body related to the grief you are processing.
After completing your cacao, put on an evocative song (we love Heavy by Birdtalker to connect with deep grief and release). Let yourself move, weep, shake, and make noise - following the intuitive and wild movement of your body and spirit.
As this song and catharsis comes to a close, move into closure. Put on a song that helps you regulate and return to homeostasis, and give yourself some love (we love Hold Yourself by Jai Chand + Grayson). Give yourself a long, warm embrace here. Affirm how meaningful it is for you to show up to this sacred grief work and take good care of yourself in the process.
Close by gently washing your face, limbs, hands, and feet with the waters & release the paper to the elements by burning or burying.
Complete with gratitudes to yourself and to these plant and elemental allies for supporting you in this sacred grief work.
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