A New Year For Cacao Ceremony

Kristin and I traveled a LOT in 2015 and as 2016 drew closer we decided to make our way back towards our home base on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. We stopped in Calgary, Alberta to visit friends and family there over the December holidays. During that time we were invited to host a #cacaoceremony in the home of a lovely friend whom we'd known for many years. We decided that a #ceremony on New Years Eve would be a perfect way of honoring all that had happened in the year gone by as well as help to bring more loving intentions forward into the new year ahead.

Kristin and I had acquired two beautiful new instruments on our travels back to Canada and we were excited to share them with the guests at our new year's eve #cacaoceremony. We had each purchased a quartz crystal singing bowl, one in the key of “F” which is typically associated with the heart chakra and one in the key of ”B” which associates with the crown chakra. We had been experimenting with Tibetan singing bowls for a couple of years and had been working on manifesting crystal singing bowls for quite a while. We felt very blessed to have been given the opportunity to purchase and share these very powerful healing instruments.

The New Year's #cacaoceremony we hosted in 2016 was a huge hit and started a tradition of doing a #cacaoceremony every year at this time. The shifting of the calendar, although it IS just another day, can be a very powerful time to catapult our dreams and desires into reality if choose to make it that. This year we invited a small group to gather at our new home on Gabriola Island where we shared our intentions for what we were wanting to let go of from 2018 and the things we were most excited to manifest in 2019.

Little did we know but the #cacaoceremony in Calgary would kick start a flurry of #cacaoceremonies for us back home on Vancouver Island. When we returned to the island we were invited to share ceremonies in many new and exciting places and venues. Our first #cacaoceremony in Victoria was to celebrate Valentine's Day, what better way to enjoy some 100% pure #ceremonialgradecacao. We co-facilitated with a lovely woman from Victoria, BC whom we'd met during our #cacaoceremony in Sooke, BC, in 2015, named Tanya Devine. She is an amazing didgeridoo player, sound healer and space holder. Together the three of us hosted the largest #ceremony we've every pulled off to date with a whopping 60 people joining us in sacred space.

After we collaborated with Tanya a second time where we hosted a #cacaoceremony for 40 guests in Victoria, BC we began to receive invitations to co-create events with several talented sound healers in the area.

One of our favorite events from the summer of 2016 was a very intimate outdoor #cacaoceremony that we hosted near Victoria with a lovely woman named Tara who had invited us to share our #medicine in the back yard of her home. It's always been a preference of ours to host #cacaoceremonies in nature during the warm summer months here in #Canada, so this was a real treat! We collaborated with her and the amazing collection of alchemy crystal singing bowls she owned to create a magical #ceremony.

Kristin and I also connected with one of our long lost soul sisters in 2016, who also happens to be a very talented sound healer named Astaria Light. Since then we have thoroughly enjoyed co-creating many wonderful gatherings with her. So many people have expressed how much they have loved the #cacaoceremonies and sound journeys that we've co-created with her.

Kristin and I are grateful to have had the opportunity to do some personal growth work in 2014 with an organization called Time To Heal in Duncan, BC who later invited us to host a #cacaoceremony at their newly renovated space in 2016. Through hosting this #cacaoceremony we connected with a woman named Heather who invited us to come and host a #cacaoceremony at her home in Nanaimo, BC. We hosted several gatherings in Nanaimo at Heather's home that summer and we really enjoyed getting to know her and her partner, Andrew.

2016 was the year that Kristin got the message to start hosting women's circles with #cacao. She hosted a series of 7 #womenscircles that year with #keithscacao, each one focused on a different chakra, starting with the root and ending with the crown. Her courage to step into the unknown was inspiring as she was learning as she went regarding the chakras and their many subtle influences in our bodies and lives. The women's circles were a safe place for women in our community to share time together in sacred space, remembering the many commonalities they all shared and helping many to see themselves and each other with more love and compassion. Does it get any better than that?!

One of the other awesome opportunities that showed up in 2016 was that Kristin got invited to share a workshop about #cacaoceremony as a part of the Conscious Goddess Festival which happened in June, 2016. This was the first offer of this type where she had been asked to share her knowledge of this beautiful plant medicine. It was another time when she said "YES" to life and was willing to take center stage after many years of being afraid of speaking publicly.

The more we both put ourselves out there in 2016 the more connections started to spiderweb, helping us to remember why we call our business Cacao Connection. This is one more of many ongoing examples of how when we show up in the world in an authentic way, that life is waiting to conspire with those of us who are courageous enough to follow our dreams! DREAM BIG!!

Canadian Cacao Adventures

We had hoped to be able to share some #cacaoceremonies on our drive back up the West Coast of the United States, however, it wasn’t until we returned to Canada that we hosted our first #ceremony outside of Mexico. A wonderful friend of ours who has a yurt invited us to host a ceremony on his property, which seemed like a sweet spot to host our first Canadian gathering.

We invited some friends and family members, and in the end there were 7 of us who shared that first #ceremony. Kristin and I learned a lot about ourselves in that first #Canadian #cacaoceremony and how important is is to be properly prepared, with more than enough time, and also what it means to be a solid facilitator. Some of the most challenging experiences we’ve had as facilitators has made us that much stronger and more resilient as we continue to walk this path into the unknown.

We had been approached by a good friend of ours to participate in a full-day event that was being held in a beautiful community near us that is right on the ocean's edge. We weren’t sure what it would be like, but it sounded exciting, so we agreed to host a #cacaoceremony for a large group there that day. We had never met the owners of the home that the event was being hosted in, however we had heard lovely things about them and the types of events they had hosted in the past.

When we arrived in the morning to get prepared we were told that there would be 38 guests for the #cacaoceremony! Wow! This was more than double the size of the largest group we’d ever facilitated for. Luckily for us we had the help of one of our biggest supporters and mentors, my mom, Cori. We had heard that the couple who was hosting the event loved #cacao and were huge advocates for its use as an addition to a vibrant lifestyle. We certainly knew some of the nutritional benefits of using #cacao as an everyday super-food dietary supplement, so it was exciting to meet other people who had similar knowledge.

I had ground 4 pounds of #keithscacao for the #ceremony that day and thankfully we had mom’s help with getting things prepared in the kitchen. The hosts were almost overly helpful in the kitchen arena. We later reflected on this situation with the understanding that she didn’t have a clue who we were or what we knew about #cacao or ceremonies, so they were committed to seeing that the #cacaoceremony would be loved and appreciated by all who attended.

The #cacaoceremony was a huge hit with the guests and afterword we had #Keithscacao for sale from the 150 pounds we had brought back with us in the trunk of our car from Guatemala. We must’ve sold 30 or 40 pounds that day and when all of the guests who were interested had bought some, the hosts told us that they would buy whatever we had left over!! Wow, this was beyond what we had imagined and truly blew our minds wide open to the possibility of these events being a integral part of our lives.

Kristin Allan, Tanner Ellingson, Keith's Cacao Canada, Keith's Cacao Source Canada, Cacao Connection, Cacao Canada, Cacao Ceremony Canada, Ceremonial Cacao canada, cacao canada, cacao BC, cacao alberta, cacao saskatchewan, cacao manitoba, cacao ontario, cacao quebec, cacao nova scotia, cacao new brunswick, cacao prince edward island, cacao newfoundland, ceremonial cacao vancouver, ceremonial cacao toronto, ceremonial cacao montreal, ceremonial cacao edmonton, ceremonial cacao calgary

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Kristin Allan, Tanner Ellingson, Keith's Cacao Canada, Keith's Cacao Source Canada, Cacao Connection, Cacao Canada, Cacao Ceremony Canada, Ceremonial Cacao canada, cacao canada, cacao BC, cacao alberta, cacao saskatchewan, cacao manitoba, cacao ontario, cacao quebec, cacao nova scotia, cacao new brunswick, cacao prince edward island, cacao newfoundland, ceremonial cacao vancouver, ceremonial cacao toronto, ceremonial cacao montreal, ceremonial cacao edmonton, ceremonial cacao calgary

Kristin Allan, Tanner Ellingson, Keith's Cacao Canada, Keith's Cacao Source Canada, Cacao Connection, Cacao Canada, Cacao Ceremony Canada, Ceremonial Cacao canada, cacao canada, cacao BC, cacao alberta, cacao saskatchewan, cacao manitoba, cacao ontario, cacao quebec, cacao nova scotia, cacao new brunswick, cacao prince edward island, cacao newfoundland, ceremonial cacao vancouver, ceremonial cacao toronto, ceremonial cacao montreal, ceremonial cacao edmonton, ceremonial cacao calgary

We made so many wonderful new friends that day and we still continue to meet people who attended that #cacaoceremony that we never met who’ve thanked us for doing it. We recently hosted a small and very intimate full day gathering at this same lovely home in Sooke, BC. The couple had decided to sell their beautiful home and we thought it would be nice to have one last gathering there to share a #cacaoceremony as well as to say our goodbyes to this most wonderful gathering space. A short time after we hosted the #cacaoceremony at their house this summer, the woman of the house passed on from this life. What an honor to have known her and to have been invited to share our #medicine in her home.

Kristin and I had agreed to take another road trip, this being late summer of 2015. After we came back to Canada for just 6 short weeks, we hit the open road, headed for Houston, Texas to spend some time with one of Kristin’s oldest friends who was expecting her first child. We put our suitcase back into the trunk of our trusty VW Jetta and headed back to the United States, not really fully understanding of the magnitude of the next leg of the journey we were embarking on.