Lifestyle
Ayahuasca-lite? Why cacao ceremonies are showing up all over L.A.
Walking barefoot across the cool tile floor, her silver face gems twinkling in the sunlight, sound bath practitioner and energy healer Maya Andreeva distributed paper cups filled with brown liquid to the 20 mostly youngish adults seated on yoga mats and blankets on the ground.
They had gathered this Saturday morning on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in the courtyard behind the Japanese skincare store Albion Garden to attend Echoes of the Heart, a two-hour cacao, breathwork and sound bath workshop that promised to guide participants toward “deep self-exploration, energetic healing and profound relaxation.”
“Just allow yourself to feel the intention within you,” said Greta Ruljevaite, founder of the wellness brand Xpansion who co-led the workshop with Andreeva. “Speak it into the cacao, your intention, your wisdom, what you choose to let go of. Anything and everything: Speak it into the cacao.”
Maya Andreeva and Greta Ruljevaite, co-leaders of the Echoes of the Heart workshop, put their intentions into cups of cacao.
(Jean Marc Bertolet)
Around the room, participants gazed reverently into their paper cups, some of them mouthing words silently.
“Now bring it up to your heartspace, connecting to your heart,” she continued, as ambient music droned in the background. “Bring it down to the earth for grounding, and then back to your heartspace. … One more inhale together … and drink your cacao.”
With great gravity, they drank.
Over the next two hours the group was first led by Ruljevaite through a breathwork series, and then a sound healing session facilitated by Andreeva. The cacao part of the workshop may have been minimal, but afterward, attendee Saim Alam said the warm, slightly bitter beverage deepened his experience of the event.
“I was genuinely in such a state of bliss the whole time,” he said.
Cacao, the main ingredient in chocolate, has been showing up at an increasing number of wellness events in the L.A. area in recent years. In March alone, Angelenos can attend a Women’s Circle and Cacao Ceremony in Hollywood, a Women’s Day Goddess Circle and Cacao Ceremony at the Grove, a New Moon Cacao Renewal Ceremony at Yoga NoHo Center and the Somos Cacao Ceremony at an undisclosed location in Woodland Hills.
Small edible flowers float on the surface of a cup of cacao at a recent cacao, breathwork and sound healing workshop in Venice.
(Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Times)
If you want to make the drink yourself, Holy Cacao sells Ecuadorean cacao at farmers markets in Hollywood, Mar Vista, Malibu and Marina del Rey. Local farmers market vendor Arcana Apothecary sells a $60, one-pound block of cacao that is made entirely by women in Guatemala, and pure organic cacao powder is available at Erewhon.
“People hosting cacao experiences continues to grow,” said Nick Meador, who sells ceremonial-grade cacao (an unofficial designation that suggests minimal processing) online through Soul Lift Cacao, the company he founded in 2018. “People want something that gives them a sense of embodied spirituality and cacao is so gentle, you can’t even say there are side effects.”
Practitioners claim that consuming cacao opens the heart, helping drinkers feel more compassionate, blissful, energized and loving. And because it does not have psychedelic properties like other substances labeled “plant medicines,” it is a safe and easy way to experiment with consciousness-altering natural compounds. Consider it ayahuasca lite.
“I was genuinely in such a state of bliss the whole time.”
— Saim Alam, cacao ceremony attendee
“It’s not like any drug I’ve ever taken,” said Kat Ho, who started leading cacao ceremonies in 2021 after being introduced to the drink during the pandemic by an influencer on YouTube. “It’s so mild. Your mind feels a little more loose and you feel a little more clear in the things you want to do.”
When folklorist Taylor Burby was researching cacao ceremonies for her recent graduate thesis, she found that more than 89% of the 118 participants she interviewed said they like to consume cacao because it is a legal, more accessible plant medicine.
Attendees of a cacao, breathwork and sound healing workshop hold cups of cacao at their heart center.
(Jean Marc Bertolet)
“If you take mushrooms you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Burby said. “With cacao you might feel yourself getting warmer or giddy or peaceful, but you have more control over your experience.”
The physical effects of cacao have not been studied as much as coffee, but research suggests that chemical compounds present in cacao can affect mood by increasing both alertness and cognition, and also improve cardiovascular health by lowering blood pressure. And because cacao has much less caffeine than coffee, fans say it gives them an energetic boost without making them jumpy.
“I can feel my shoulders drop, my chest opens,” Andreeva said. “I have felt the energy running through my body like little tingles in spaces where I don’t usually feel that.”
Making ceremonial cacao is a multistep process that traditionally begins with fermenting the seeds of the cacao fruit in their own pulp, drying them in the sun, roasting them over an open fire and then grinding them until they form a paste, which gets poured into a mold to harden.
To prepare the cacao for the Echoes of the Heart workshop, Ruljevaite used a ball of cacao that she had purchased on a recent trip to Guatemala. The night before she meditated over the dark brown sphere, filling it with intentions, and then shaved it into small pieces; mixed it with warm water, oat milk, a little manuka honey and vanilla; and then frothed it. She brought it to the event in an electric Crock-Pot. Just before serving, she and Andreeva whistled over it for a few moments, infusing it with “light language” to give it more potency. Then they ladled the liquid into small cups.
In South and Central America cacao is often served mixed just with water, but without any sweeteners it’s very bitter.
“Our Western tastebuds are not really ready for the traditional experience of cacao,” Andreeva said. “Anywhere I’ve gone in L.A. to drink cacao, it’s never just been raw.”
Archaeological evidence suggests that cacao has been cultivated in Mesoamerica for at least 5,000 years. It was served at betrothals and other celebrations and was a favorite drink of Maya and Aztec nobility, especially in places where it had to be imported, said Rosemary Joyce, a recently retired professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley and an expert on the history of cacao. Texts from the 16th century show the plant was used by Indigenous people medicinally to treat an array of ailments and cacao was consumed in rituals and ceremonies, mostly to repair relationships between the human and spirit worlds, she said.
Joyce has been offered traditional cacao while doing fieldwork in Honduras.
Maya Andreeva, a sound bath practitioner and yoga teacher, ladles cacao from a pot into a paper cup.
(Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Times)
“It tastes like medicine — there’s no way around it,” she said.
Despite its storied history, her research suggests that ancient uses of cacao in Mesoamerica bear little resemblance to the rituals many Westerners are crafting today.
“It’s a tricky area,” she said. “The ceremonies they did required cacao, but the purpose of the ceremony was not to commune with the spirit of cacao or have it come down and take over your body. That’s a very Western notion.”
Most modern-day cacao ceremonies trace their origin to Keith Wilson, a geologist, adventurer and founder of Keith’s Cacao, who became known as the “Chocolate Shaman.” Wilson, who died last year at his home in Guatemala, claims he was contacted by the cacao spirit in 2003 and given the mission of reintroducing ceremonial cacao to a world that had mostly forgotten about it. He began serving cacao to visitors on his porch, and friends started calling them “cacao ceremonies.” Over time, the area around Lake Atitlán where he settled became known for its cacao ceremonies. Visitors brought the practice back to their home countries.
Meador prefers to label his cacao events “cacao experiences” or “modern cacao ceremonies” to make it clear they are not derived from ancient Indigenous rituals.
“I don’t want to be like a policeman,” he said, “but I teach people to be careful with the words we choose. There are many voices in the conversation and there are people in the U.S. who don’t really actually know that much about it.”
Today in L.A., cacao ceremonies are often paired with other healing modalities such as breathwork, yoga, meditation and dance. Some facilitators will evoke the spirit of cacao, who is supposed to be loving, nurturing and even a bit promiscuous. Burby, the folklorist, once heard it described as “the grandmother that still has sex, rather than the grandma who is over and done and retired.” A facilitator might remind attendees that cacao is a heart opener, that after drinking it one might feel warm, clear and more alert. But after that, anything goes.
“There are just as many ways to practice as people practicing,” Burby said.
Back at Echoes of the Heart, Andreeva and Ruljevaite make it clear they are far from cacao experts. But they had both had positive experiences with the drink and wanted to share it with those who attended their workshop.
“I see it as this beautiful welcoming bridge back to yourself,” Ruljevaite said. “And with a lot of prayers and intention infused in it, and the power and reverence of the community, it heightens and amplifies its benefits.”
Lonnie Bunch III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian. He’s pictured above in September 2017.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
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J. Scott Applewhite/AP
In a memo addressed to staffers sent Tuesday, the secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie G. Bunch III, defended the institution after the White House issued a 162-page report that characterizes the National Museum of American History as a place which has become “subject to institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”
In his email, which NPR has obtained, Bunch wrote in part: “While there will always be room for improvement, this report is not a fair characterization of the work and totality of the National Museum of American History. At the Smithsonian, our work is driven by scholarship, accuracy and an uncompromising commitment to tell the fullness of America’s story. As public servants and the keepers of this institution, we are charged with helping a nation find understanding, hope and clarity and as part of that duty, we are dedicated to excellence, reflection and growth.”
He continued: “We remain focused on what grounds us: a steadfast commitment to scholarship, nonpartisanship, independence, accuracy and integrity. For nearly 180 years, the Smithsonian has worked alongside partners across government — from the White House to Congress to our governing Board of Regents — guided by our enduring mission to increase and diffuse knowledge. That purpose remains: to pursue knowledge with rigor and to serve the American public with clarity and care.”
The White House report was issued on July 4 by the Domestic Policy Council under the title “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage.”
The council faults the National Museum of American History on a multitude of fronts, saying it underemphasized the Founding Fathers and early colonial and Revolutionary history; was not sufficiently celebratory of the country’s 250th anniversary; and that it engaged in “anti-white,” “illegal alien” and transgender activism.
It also accuses the museum of trying to “indoctrinate” teachers and students through its exhibitions, programming and teaching resources.
In the report, the council also specifically criticizes museum director Anthea Hartig, who has led the National Museum of American History since 2019 and is concurrently the president of the Organization of American Historians, calling her “an activist advancing an ideological agenda contradictory to the museum’s founding purpose of fostering patriotism.”
The Trump administration has made the Smithsonian museums one of its primary targets in its efforts to reshape cultural narratives to align with its viewpoints. In August 2025, the White House requested a “comprehensive internal review” of eight Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of American History, following an executive order issued by President Trump in March 2025 in which he called for the removal of “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian’s offerings.
According to the Smithsonian’s charter, all of its 21 museums, 14 education and research centers, and the National Zoo are meant to be run independently of the federal government. The Smithsonian is overseen by Bunch and a board of regents, which includes Vice President Vance, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and other members appointed by Congress.
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Bunch spoke about the Smithsonian’s 250th anniversary special exhibition at the Smithsonian Castle, which is called “American Aspirations.”
He told NBC: “It’s really important for people to understand that America is much an ideal as it is a place, that it’s a series of aspirations that have really shaped who this country is. And so for me, what is so powerful is to say, ‘Let us honor the words of Thomas Jefferson and the founders, but let us use those to challenge us to be better.’”
Jennifer Vanasco edited this story.
It was after the death of her son, Laith, that Esme Saleh decided to become a folk artist.
She had always been creative, experimenting with watercolors and learning to sew and embroider at a young age.
“I had a creative inkling,” she said, “but I never pursued it.”
Everything changed on Aug. 17, 2013.
In this series, we highlight independent makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who are creating original products in and around Los Angeles.
When Saleh was nine months pregnant, she woke up with stomach pains and presumed she was in labor. She and her husband, Nasim, immediately went to the hospital, where doctors checked her and put the baby on a heart monitor. Saleh’s blood pressure was high, however, and the baby’s heart rate kept dropping. After about an hour, his heartbeat stopped. Doctors rushed her in for an emergency C-section, but it was too late. Laith did not survive.
Saleh lost a tremendous amount of blood and developed postpartum HELLP syndrome, a dangerous form of preeclampsia, but doctors were able to stabilize her.
When she woke up, the first thing she asked was, “How’s my baby?”
After losing her son in 2013, Esme Saleh left her job as a television producer. Since then, she has sold her hand-painted candles to local designers in Los Angeles and to LVMH in Paris.
“Aug. 17, 2013, was the most difficult day of my life, and Aug. 22 was the second most difficult, the day we drove home with an empty car seat,” she said of her and her husband’s new reality.
They named their son Laith Finn Saleh.
“His first name means ‘lion’ in Arabic. His middle name is an ode to Huckleberry Finn — sharp wit, kind heart, strong moral compass — all the attributes he’s imparted on us in spirit,” said Saleh, 45.
After such a devastating loss, she found it difficult to trust the world again. “It was hard to trust anything,” she said. “The medical system. Myself. It made me realize the fragility of bringing anything to life. We take so much for granted.”
So after years of working as a television producer, Saleh left broadcast journalism and leaned into her creative spirit.
She grew up in San Diego. Her mother was raised on a farm in Mexico, and her father moved from Tijuana to Los Angeles to be near her mother, who started working for a family in Sherman Oaks at 16. They eventually settled in San Diego, where Saleh’s father, now a church deacon, worked as a car salesman.
“The word Mystic has also become a driving force of what this journey means to me,” Saleh says. “A magical, otherworldly journey that has led me to some beautiful friendships, projects and unlimited well of curiosity. When I paint each pair of candles, it feels like I’m imparting a piece of that magic.”
“He always wanted to be a weatherman on TV,” she said, explaining how he hoped to get his big break on television by doing a weather report from the car lot.
Saleh wanted to be a broadcast journalist as her father had. After graduating from San Diego State, she interned in the sports department at CBS affiliate KFMB-TV although she didn’t know much about sports. She enjoyed sharing information with people, learned how to write plays of the week and felt she had found the right career.
But during a summer class at Mesa College, she started to think journalism might not be for her.
Saleh’s home is filled with her artwork. “My home expresses a lot of the things that I do,” she says. “If it works here, then I feel like I can put it out in the world.”
“I’m an empath — a sensitive soul — so when I was reading news about death and destruction, my eyes could not lie,” she said. Her professor told her, “This may not be your thing.” But when she arranged flowers on camera, she really came alive. She decided to work behind the scenes as a producer.
Her professor helped her get her first network news job in 2003, and she moved to Los Angeles, working on hard news and entertainment coverage.
After losing Laith a decade later, she couldn’t keep doing red-carpet interviews and acting like everything was fine. “It all felt so different, superficial and hard,” she said. “I felt like there was a bigger purpose out there for me. It’s in the small things that we find the big things.”
She started by painting folk art-inspired invitations for a friend’s baby shower. She painted delicate flowers, oranges and leaves on glass, leather and even lampshades. She created a logo. “I was just trying to say yes to things that were really scary,” she said. “Laith gave me the courage to do that.”
“I was just trying to get out of hole,” Saleh says of taking up painting after her son died.
Her first son, she said, became “a catalyst for painting.”
Then, at the first Thanksgiving during the COVID-19 pandemic when people could gather again, she had a light-bulb moment. “I was setting the table and didn’t have flowers or anything to add to decorate, so I thought, ‘I have these candles. I’m going to paint them and make them fancy,’ ” she said.
Her guests were impressed.
As time went on, painting taper candles helped her find joy again, and others noticed too.
“The one thing I hear when people pick up a pair of my candles is, ‘This makes me so happy. It makes me feel like there’s life here,’ ” she said.
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1. Saleh sometimes leads painting workshops where participants can decorate items like ornaments and lampshades.
2. Leather napkin rings Saleh has painted for Nathan Turner. 3. Saleh’s hand-painted candles retail for approximately $42 to $50.
One of the hardest parts of losing a child “is that you’re not just grieving the person, you’re grieving the future you imagined with them,” said Chicago-based grief specialist Carla Harvey. “A lifetime of love suddenly has nowhere to go. Creating art doesn’t erase grief, but it can become a way to carry it.”
Saleh created her brand Mystic by Esme in 2021, but it took her some time before she could gather the courage to try to sell them.
When she brought a shoebox full of samples to Nickey Kehoe, the L.A. store agreed to carry her candles. “I was beside myself,” Saleh said.
“Her candles were absolutely beautiful, and she had a fantastic spirit that made selling them a no-brainer,” said interior designer Todd Nickey, co-founder of Nickey Kehoe.
Saleh gets a surprise kiss from her dog Olive while painting candles at her dining room table.
Saleh viewed her new side project as a way to earn extra money for piano lessons for her 11-year-old son Linus, who is an entrepreneur like his mother. “I felt proud painting the candles while he was in lessons in the next room,” she said. “It became this circular economy, and it led to bigger opportunities for me.”
Last year, luxury conglomerate LVMH commissioned Saleh to paint 465 pairs of candles, or 930 candles in total, for its Chaumet jewelry brand. The collection was unveiled at an elaborate event at the Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay, just outside Paris.
“It was fun,” Saleh said about the process, which took six months from conception to delivery. “I felt like I was dressing my candles up for a party.”
Always a hard worker, which she attributes to being a first-generation child of immigrant parents, Saleh has now created a candle collection for Pierce and Ward in Los Feliz, leather napkin holders for interior designer Nathan Turner and pomegranate wrapping paper for Olive Ateliers. The candles retail between $42 to $50 for a pair, and recently, she developed a handsome pewter candle shaver that will be released in the winter.
Her dining room can sometimes feel like “an assembly line,” Saleh says.
Saleh holds a pair of candles she has embellished with florals.
Occasionally, she leads painting workshops, and she loves helping others tap into their creativity. The most meaningful one for her was an ornament workshop attended by several victims of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. “Without saying anything, we understood each other,” she said. “I understood that they were trying to create memories.”
Saleh knows what it means for things not to last — “impermanence,” she calls it — whether it is homes, candles or life itself.
She paints every day in the art-filled dining room of her home (unless it’s Little League season), surrounded by her family, candles and her two dogs, Lennon and Olive. ”Painting is like meditation,” she said. “You can sit in your dining room and tune everything out and just be in the moment.”
Even the family’s summer bucket list receives an artistic flourish.
An arch inside Saleh’s home receives a personalized touch.
She knows painting candles isn’t new, but she believes her motivation and the care she puts into each candle makes them special beyond their looks.
She has learned to look at the world that way, that painting in her dining room has offered her healing and joy, that she can trust herself and her body, that continuing to be inspired by her two boys — “one in spirit and the other here on Earth” — means that Laith will always be with her.
Many people think healing means moving on, said grief specialist Harvey, but “it’s really about finding ways to move forward while keeping the people we love woven into our lives. That’s what I see in her candles, not an ending, but an ongoing relationship with her son.”
“I feel like my son is channeling through this medium,” Saleh said, her voice breaking as she painted a taper. “He’s whispering to me, ‘Mom, this is your path.’ That has been my driving force. We’re going to grow this together.”
Lifestyle
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To this day, Terry’s writing always reorients me towards what is good, what is beautiful, and what is true. Her newest book is called “The Glorians.”
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