Recipes & Rituals for Community Care: Cacao Circle

Cacao, known as the medicine of the heart, will guide us through gentle ritual and reflection to soften, open, and nourish our inner world.

Together, we’ll learn about the medicine of the cacao tree and the Mayan Cosmovision that honors cacao as “food for the gods” and worked with cacao as a medicine in ritual and in life.

Your Facilitator: Vivian is a Crystal Therapist specializing in Personal & Spiritual Development. Her unique approach integrates mindset, energetics, and spirituality to provide a grounded wholistic approach to personal growth and empowerment.

Photo Courtesey of artist Vivian Arias. Find more about Vivian’s work at https://www.crystallinechrysalis.co/

What does it mean to heal in community? What does it feel like when we extend care to ourselves and the collective? How do plants and our local ecologies care for us? How can we care for the plants and local ecologies in return?

Weave in rituals and recipes into your own self-care and community care practices through weekly explorations in herbal arts, somatic movement in the greenhouse and garden, folk remedies, and other wild-crafts and meditative activities that foster a deeper connection to plants to care for the body, mental health, and the people you move with.

Each week, be guided by a guest herbalist, healing artist, or wellness practitioner who will help you create your own toolkit and apothecary for self and communal care.

Workshops are rain or shine.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at mcraig@thehort.org.