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ALL OF LIFE BEGINS IN WATER
Before form, there is water—holding, gestating, remembering.
This 13-day cacao relational study is a deep immersion with the waters.
To work with water is to work with the subtle body—the energetic field through which emotion, memory, and consciousness move. By entering relationship with water, we learn how this generator of life slowly and deliberately moves from the unseen into the physical world.
Throughout these 13 days, we work alongside Plant Master Cacao and the sacred Cholq’ij calendrical system, allowing cacao to support the heart while the rhythm of time guides our study.
Guided by the trecena of Imox, we gather as a community to study water as:
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the generator of life
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the carrier of ancestral memory
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the medium of emotion, psyche, and consciousness
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A master of purification
Cacao accompanies us daily as a heart-opening, grounding medicine—helping us soften, slow down, and remain present with what the waters reveal.
IMOX
Imox is the primordial water.
The undifferentiated field from which all things emerge.
In many Mesoamerican timekeeping traditions, Imox governs:
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the waters of creation
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the unconscious and dream realms
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emotional tides
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psychic sensitivity
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ancestral and prenatal memory
To walk with Imox is to study how water lives within us—
in our blood, our emotions, our intuition, our capacity to feel.
This is a Communal Study
This relational immersion is to purify our waters so they may move again.
Together, we will:
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explore the language of water
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reflect on how water shapes our inner worlds
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sit with cleansing as emotional, psychic, and energetic clarity
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engage cacao as a daily companion for reflection and integration
This is a self-study held in community—
a space to speak, listen, feel, and metabolize together.
Our Live Practice
13 consecutive days
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Daily live sessions (~1 hour)
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Guided reflection, dialogue, and cacao practice
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Space for personal journaling and inner listening
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Communal container held throughout the trecena
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Guided Practices with water
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3 Sessions with Wisdom Keepers
This is not a passive program: It is a lived, felt, relational experience.
From our Past Relational Immersions
In the physical realm, this experience ritualized much of my day-to-day practices so it doesn't feel like la Dieta 'ended', rather, continued in more intimate stewardship. In the Spirit realms, my soul now feels rooted with the cosmos, sharing an ancestral vision that I believe will carry my vessel to wherever healing for myself and all relations is needed.
La Dieta del Toj was experienced as a divinely curated and necessary alchemization of my connection with time, matter, and the cosmos (inevitably, myself) - all in reciprocal relationship with Mother Earth, Mama Cacao, and all nations seen and unseen.
I now see cacao completely differently. I always felt it was sacred; but didn't really understand why or how. I am now looking at various resources to integrate the nahuales in my daily practices, and deepen my knowledge about the mayan calendar.
Meet your Guides
Charlotte Nieuwenhuis
Charlotte is an Earth guardian, regenerative systems designer, and biocultural philanthropist, as well as the founder of Heart to Earth.
Mariana Bandera
Mariana is the founder of Passages, a collective dedicated to bridging ancestral wisdom with contemporary life. Her work is an offering to culture, ceremony, and the sacred connections that unite humanity across generations.
With Guest Speakers
Alheli Yirama
Aline Yurama is a medicine keeper and teacher of Indigenous medicine from the lineage of Pies Descalzos (Barefoot lineage). Her work is rooted in direct relationship with Peyote, water, and ancestral memory.
In this gathering, she will share teachings on Tate Haramara, the Grandmother Waters—offering a Mesoamerican perspective on water as origin, wisdom keeper, and living consciousness.
WHAIA
Wahia is a water speaker and sonic weaver from the Māori lands. She works in deep relationship with water through sound, vibration, and listening, and is known for her connection with whales as carriers of ancestral and oceanic memory. Her presence invites us into a more-than-human dialogue with water—where sound becomes a bridge between body, ocean, and consciousness.
TBD- To be Announced!
Our Plant Teacher
Springs Cacao
From Cacao Source
Springs Cacao was named in a moment of astonishment. We were standing there, in a valley covered with a lush variety of trees: coffee, zapotillos, bananas, and many others. An agroforestry dream. By our side, Juan, grandfather in the family, told us there are 4 springs there, embedded in the delicious curves of this mountain jungle, at 400 m of altitude facing the Pacific coast.
Water Reclimation
Water for Life
Supporting our Local nonprofit for the right to clean water
Lake Atitlán, one of Guatemala’s most vital freshwater sources, is rapidly deteriorating. Livelihoods, health, and biodiversity are at serious risk :
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over 80% of its wastewater remains untreated
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more than 20% of the population suffer from waterborne illnesses
The lake is far more than a water source for the local community, it is sacred, deeply intertwined with their culture, identity, and way of life.
Water for life life collaborates with communities in Guatemala to cultivate social and environmental health.
Through empowerment, education and accessible water solutions, we co-create sustainable ways of living, fostering progress while regenerating the ecosystem.
Focused on adding depth to your Dieta
Featured Add-on's
Our Weekend Study
The Primordial Waters We Carry
Ancestral Memory, Currents & the Living Psyche
Across Mesoamerican cosmology, depth psychology, and biological science, water is understood not as a passive element, but as a carrier of memory, movement, and relationship. In this session, we explore Imox deeper as the primordial waters where ancestral memory circulates — shaping emotion, perception, and the unconscious through currents rather than fixed narratives.
We will examine ancestry through a hydrological lens: how emotions move like rivers through lineage, where currents become stagnant or diverted, and what allows memory to mature rather than repeat. Drawing from river systems, watershed logic, and the molecular structure of water, we explore how coherence, flow, and disruption operate both in the natural world and within the psyche.
This workshop also introduces water-based reflective practices that support emotional circulation — not to bypass grief or difficult feeling, but to allow movement where there has been holding, freezing, or accumulation across generations. These practices are offered as contemplative and ancestral technologies, not therapeutic techniques.
This is a study space for those ready to engage ancestry as a living system — one that moves through blood, memory, and emotion, and requires care, discernment, and responsibility to tend.
Our Collaboration with Heart to Earth
Heart to Earth is rooted in reciprocity, honoring the cycles of nature and the wisdom of those who have safeguarded it for generations. Passages Earth School aligns with their values of Reciprocity, Biocultural Heritage, regenerative practices and is excited to join forces!
Charlotte Nieuwenhuis
Founder of Heart to Earth
Charlotte is an Earth guardian, regenerative systems designer, and biocultural philanthropist, as well as the founder of Heart to Earth.
She has dedicated her life to bridging the ancient with the emerging, cultivating a deeper bond with the Earth, and reestablishing the sacredness of life through reciprocity, integrity, and responsibility.
Over the past decade, Charlotte has journeyed across four continents, living among Indigenous communities whose wisdom and ways of life have profoundly shaped her. These experiences have led her to embrace a worldview rooted in animism — where all of life is seen as sentient, interconnected, and worthy of reverence.
She holds a deep reverence for plant spirits, and through Heart to Earth, she upholds a vision where the biocultural heritage of cacao is preserved and its ancestral seeds honored and celebrated.
She brings this pilgrimage to light as a way to share the deep heritage of cacao, in the hope of inspiring greater respect for this plantcestor and honoring the cultures and peoples who have shaped her path.