Join Soul Lift Cacao founder Nick Meador for a half-day in-person training at Soul Lift's new cacao studio in Portland, Oregon! Advanced registration is required

Have you heard about the heart-opening potential of ceremonial cacao and wonder what it's all about? Or have you experienced it for yourself and want to learn how to share it with others?

Nick has cultivated expertise through 9 years of working with cacao, traveling to cacao farms, working with Mayan spiritual guides and indigenous cacao artisans, researching anthropology and archaeology.

He also spent more years before that training and researching in various spiritual traditions and modalities for emotional healing and personal self-development.

If you'd like to incorporate cacao into your classes, workshops, or conscious parties (practices including yoga, breathwork, ecstatic dance, etc.), or even your massage, Reiki, or legal psilocybin facilitation practice, this will give you the knowledge and skills you need to feel confident and stay ethical as you start to share cacao.

This course is well-suited for those who already have some training and experience with holding sacred space. But it's also great for anyone who just wants to learn more about ceremonial cacao and deepen their own personal connection with it.

TOPICS COVERED

• Cacao lifecycle and sourcing
• Equipment for a cacao event
• Preparing and serving a pot of cacao
  
• Leading a simple cacao ritual
• Ethics and cultural sensitivity

NOTE: This course is about how to serve cacao in modern settings. While we'll likely talk about NIck's extensive experience in Mayan ceremonies, this course doesn't teach Mayan Cosmovision or indigenous rituals.

WHEN AND WHERE

11am-3pm

Sunday, April 6, 2025

1988 SE Ladd Ave

Portland, OR 97214

CONTRIBUTION

Regular rate $75

Social equity option $55 

*If it's within your means, please pay the regular rate to support this offering. The social equity option is intended for people who have cacao heritage and/or people who have gone through a recent hardship. No questions asked.

*Space is limited. Advanced registration required*

ABOUT CEREMONIAL CACAO

Cacao is the natural, unprocessed form of chocolate grown in tropical regions around the world. Most people know cacao as a superfood. It has possibly the highest amount of antioxidants of any food. Cacao contains beneficial minerals like iron and magnesium. It promotes the release of “happy” neurotransmitters in the brain. And the main active compound, theobromine, always appears in higher amounts than the caffeine, resulting in a more grounded, gentle energy.

Yet cacao also has another aspect not spoken about in health food stores. It has been used for ritual and celebratory purposes in Mesoamerica for thousands of years. This more mysterious "plant medicine" side of cacao offers the potential to put you more in touch with your body and your soul. You can gain insights into the best direction moving forward, as well as the focus and motivation to take action towards those goals.

Soul Lift Cacao sources authentic ceremonial cacao through ethical direct trade with historic cacao stewards in Latin America. Many brands import cacao seeds to process in a factory and then call it “ceremonial.” When the cacao is made where it grows, it makes the direct trade a lot more equitable. Currently our model sends an average of 17% the “fair trade” rate back to the source country. The cacao makers send intentions into the cacao for it to be a soul medicine for the world.

However Nick advises against using the term "cacao ceremony," and he'll explain why in this course!

ABOUT NICK

Nick Meador is the founder of Soul Lift Cacao, a social enterprise working with indigenous groups in Latin America who prepare authentic ceremonial cacao using ancient traditions. Nick has also been a transformational facilitator for over a decade, leading experiences ranging from 3-hour cacao journeys, to immersive cacao tours in Guatemala and Mexico.

In 2015, Guatemalan ceremonial cacao changed Nick’s life by helping him overcoming chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). In the years since, Nick has traveled throughout Central America connecting with cacao farms, collectives, and experts. He founded Soul Lift Cacao with the mission to create a positive impact in the world by helping historic cacao stewards share their cacao here in the U.S. 

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We acknowledge that we are gathering on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tumwater, Watlala bands of the Chinook, the Tualatin Kalapuya, and many other indigenous nations of the area that is now called Portland, Oregon.