Hi, Amy here.

 

I just finished up a 20 day cacao challenge. 

I recently did a cacao ceremony when I was in Mexico because I've been drinking cacao for a long time but I wanted to learn more about the significance of it and the ceremonial aspect of it. I loved that ceremony.

I also gave up coffee in March so drinking cacao has been a great alternative that has provided a really special ritual for me in my life. 

I've been studying a bit about the Mayan culture for a while and I've been loving learning about their culture and so inspired about the way they live. And I've done their cacao challenge once before but last time I mostly just used the daily recipes and didn't attend all of the Zoom calls or anything.

 

This time I really plugged in and I learned a ton and it gave me a new outlook on many things, and especially taught me some ways to live more intentionally.

 

The challenge was based on the Cholq-ij calendar... which is one of the Mayan calendars that marks the cycles of human beings and the energies that influence us each day. It is made up of 260 days (20 energies that have 13 manifestations each).

 

The Cholq'ij Calendar is considered to be one of the most sacred and important calendars in the Mayan Geo-Cosmovision. It is one of the most renowned calendars.

 

Each day during the challenge, we used a different cacao recipe with all kinds of different ingredients (mushrooms, ginger, hot chili pepper, rose petals, star anise, etc) and we would learn the significance of each of the recipes.

 

Then we would do a cacao invocation where we would privately set some intentions and express gratitude to the heart of the sky, the heart if the earth, our ancestors, etc.

 

And then we would learn, in depth, about the energy of the day and how to best work with it in our lives for that given day.

 

We also each learned about our own energy, the one we were born with. On the day of each of the energies we were taught what it meant to be born with that particular energy (we plugged our birth date into their calculator before the challenge to find out what our personal Mayan energy is).

I learned so much during this challenge, about life and myself, and got so much out of it.

 

Enjoy and I hope it serves you as a reminder that we really can live each day with a specific intention, and we can add some powerful rituals into our days to make them more meaningful, for ourselves and others.

 

My experience has me wondering what it would be like if the rest of the world lived with this type of intentionality and love. It's fun to think about that, and inspiring to be able to learn a new way of going about things.

I love you, and please remember that I'm here to help, always.

With love and gratitude,