Welcome back Kambo Warrior, it's Jon here for Planet Kambo, it's good to see
you again. In today's video I'm going to talk about cacao. Now cacao as we know it in the West is chocolate and cacao is the base ingredient of chocolate but most chocolate that you buy in the shops has had sugar and milk and different things added to it to enhance the flavour.
Chocolate actually has a very interesting flavour on its own. Raw cacao has a very interesting flavour, it's not sweet it's actually quite bitter. It's an acquired taste but I myself personally really like it.
Cacao has been used for centuries by indigenous cultures as a sacrament so now I'm just going to read you an excerpt from a website on the history of cacao - "Cacao ceremonies have been performed for thousands of years by the indigenous tribes of Central America and cacao was considered to be the food of the gods, an association that gave rise to the scientific name of the cacao tree Theobroma cacao from the Greek word ‘Theo’ meaning God and ‘Broma’ meaning drink. It was also so valuable to be used as a currency. According to both archaeologists and Mayan spiritual elders the cacao spirit was one of the most powerful deities in ancient Mayan cosmology. While the ancient Mayans and Aztecs of southern Mexico and Guatemala are best known, there are contemporary indigenous cultures in Central and South America who continue cacao use in shamanic ceremony preferring it to locally available psychedelics."
So cacao, as you can see, is actually a medicine. If you take large doses of cacao, and I've done this myself, I've done it in ceremony where you take about 2 ounces, which is 56 grams of ceremonial grade cacao. They make it into a hot chocolate and you drink it. Cacao is very subtle, it's not like ayahuasca or one of these other plant medicines, it's not particularly visual and it's not particularly strong but cacao is a heart-opening medicine so you drink this cacao and then you really need to sit and just be quiet and meditate with it.
Let's say you drank the cacao and then you had a crisis to deal with, you'd forget that you’d taken it. You could drive a car, you could go and deal with stuff and you wouldn't even feel it. It's only when you really sit and go inside and meditate on it that you can actually feel the cacao working. It's very gentle, it's a very relaxing, heart-opening medicine. It's also a stimulant so the times that I did a cacao ceremony we did it at night and afterwards I had a lot of trouble sleeping. The ceremony finished, I went home to bed and then I spent the whole night tossing and turning. Cacao contains theobromine which is a strong stimulant.
Ceremonial Grade Cacao Ceremony
The powerful physical and energetic effects of ceremonial grade cacao is gaining increasing popularity among a mainstream audience. In a unique group bonding experience, Planet Kambo founder Jonathan Gold leads a bursting sold-out webinar on a deep inner personal journey of grounding and discovery using the delicious healing powers of raw Cacao.
This full-house online guided meditation and Q&A session covers in deep-dive detail:
Is cacao and cocoa the same thing? Which is healthier cocoa or cacao?
Cacao vs Cocoa: What's the Difference?
What is the benefits of cacao?
Is Cacao a Superfood?
Does raw cacao have caffeine?
Is cacao powder healthy?
How to pronounce Cacao?
Is it OK to eat cacao every day?
I received my package today of ceremonial grade cacao from a company called "Forever Cacao". I've got half a kilo here of ceremonial grade cacao. You can get it ground up like powder or you can get it in chunks. I personally prefer the chunks and I like to just eat it as it is. I just break it into pieces and I eat it. I really like it but as I said it's an acquired taste. It is very bitter, it's not like commercial chocolate at all. It's not sweet and it's got a very strong flavour and what's interesting is you only have to eat a tiny bit and it instantly wakes you up, the stimulant effect of it is quite powerful.
I'll occasionally make a hot chocolate with it although I won't do the huge dose that you would take if you were going to take it in ceremony or I just eat chunks of it. It is quite addictive though. We all know chocolate is addictive so there is that aspect to it that it's quite easy to just eat a lot of it and not realize how much you're eating.
Sometimes when I've eaten a lot of it or even just dark chocolate that's not ceremonial grade I have problems sleeping. I'm lying in bed and I'm wide awake and my heart's pounding and I'm wondering why I can't sleep and then I realise - “okay I've had too much cacao”. If you want to try it, "Forever Cacao" is a good place to order and go ahead and get the ceremonial grade.
To start you don't have to get half a kilo, you get can get a smaller amount just to try and see if you like it, I think you'll be surprised. If you're somebody like me, I don't have a crazy sweet tooth, I don't really eat sweet things that much I mostly do a ketogenic diet which I'm going to talk about in another video and that follows on from my fasting video but cacao is a great treat for a ketogenic diet because it's all fibre and it's very low in carbohydrates. I will leave it there for this video and I will see you in the next one
Talk soon!
Jon