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Tending the
Living Web
A 13-Day Relational Study with the weaving of your life
A communal study of with Cacao through the wisdom of K’at and Ancestral Cosomvisions
13 Days, 3 Wisdom Keepers, Cacao, Community, all gathered in the name of our relations to Life
In collaboration with Cacao Source
Percentage of Proceeds funds our research within our Kaqchikel women’s collective: needs + health + care
June 15th -June 27th
8:30 am Guatemalan Time
LIFE IS CONSTANTLY WEAVING
This 13-day cacao relational study is a deep immersion into the living web of creation through the wisdom of K’at.
To work with K’at is to work with the relationship itself—the visible and invisible threads that bind people, memory, ecology, ancestry, emotion, reciprocity, and vitality together.
K’at teaches us that nothing exists independently.
Life is woven through participation.
Throughout these 13 days, we work alongside Cacao as a Plant Master 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 K’at, we gather as a community to study:
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the web of creation
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relationship and reciprocity
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abundance and interdependence
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ancestral and communal weaving
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attachment and entanglement
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the threads between ecology, psyche, and community
K’at is associated with cords, nets, bundles, weaving, fertility, and abundance. It is the force that gathers people, thoughts, resources, emotions, and possibilities together into relationship. In many teachings, K’at multiplies what it touches. Like one seed of maize becoming hundreds more, K’at reminds us that every thread we place into the world continues weaving beyond us.
K'AT
To walk with K’at is to study how relationship lives within us:
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through our emotional bonds,
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our dependencies,
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our longing for connection,
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our participation in community,
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and our responsibility to the living systems we are part of.
To walk with K’at is to study the web we are constantly weaving.
What are we gathering into our lives?
What relationships nourish vitality?
What threads create reciprocity and abundance?
What attachments leave us ensnared?
K’at teaches that life itself is relational. Nothing exists independently. Every exchange creates thread.
Cacao accompanies us daily as a grounding and heart-opening companion—helping us slow down, listen more carefully, and become present to the threads moving through our lives.
This is a Communal Study
K’at teaches that life itself is relational. Nothing exists independently. Every exchange creates thread.
Through this relational immersion with Cacao, we explore cacao as part of this living web: a plant rooted in ecology, ancestry, trade, labor, memory, emotion, and communal care.
This is a study of the weaving of your life.
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
Mariana Bandera
Mariana is the founder of Passages, a living Earth School 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.
Konradomir
Konradomir is originally from Poland and has spent years studying and walking under the guidance of Tata Tomás as a practitioner and keeper of the sacred Cholq’ij calendar. Through this path, he has dedicated himself to deepening his understanding of Maya cosmology, ceremony, and timekeeping traditions. With humility and devotion, Konradomir shares these teachings as a way of fostering connection, awareness, and right relationship, supporting individuals and communities in remembering their place within the living rhythms of creation.
With Guest Speakers
Tata Thomas
Walther Thomas Mendoza Cholotio is a Tz’utujil Maya spiritual guide (Ajq’ij) from San Juan La Laguna, Sololá, Guatemala. Descended from generations of healers and spiritual guides, he was raised within the ceremonial traditions, prophecies, and healing practices of his ancestors. Today, he carries forward this lineage with devotion and service, sharing Maya ancestral wisdom through ceremony, timekeeping, and spiritual guidance. He is also an acupuncturist and practitioner of holistic health, working with medicinal plants and alternative healing modalities.
Unle Kirk
Uncle Kirk is a Diné elder who has devoted much of his life to walking and sharing the Holy Path through peyote and teepee ceremonies within his community and with communities around the world. Rooted in the teachings of peace, harmony, and right relationship, he offers guidance through story, prayer, and lived wisdom. Through his encouraging presence and teachings, participants are invited to deepen their understanding of what it means to live in balance with oneself, with others, and with the living world from a Diné perspective.
Nana Jessica & Tata Jerico
Nana Jessica and Tata Jerico are wisdom keepers from the K’iche’ Maya lineage, rooted in San Juan Sololá, where they serve as respected teachers and pillars of their community. Working in partnership, they carry ancestral knowledge of the Cholq’ij—the sacred Maya calendrical system—and its teachings on the nawales, ceremonial time, and relational cosmology. Their work is deeply grounded in the ancestral use of cacao and corn as living medicines that sustain life, memory, and community continuity.
Our Plant Teacher
From Cacao Source
For thousands of years, Cacao has been cultivated, prepared, exchanged, and ritualized throughout Mesoamerica as more than a food source. Within many Indigenous traditions, cacao has been understood as a plant teacher: a living intelligence that accompanies processes of relationship, emotional awareness, reciprocity, community, and remembrance.
Unlike plants associated with force or rupture, cacao often teaches through subtlety. Through softening. Through presence. Through the slow unveiling of what lives within the heart and the relational field around us.
To enter into a "dieta" with cacao is to intentionally deepen relationship with the plant beyond consumption. It is to spend sustained time listening. Observing. Reflecting. Studying how cacao moves through the body, emotions, dreams, patterns, memories, and daily rhythms of life.
During these 13 days guided by the trecena of K’at, cacao becomes a companion for exploring the living web of connection that binds ecology, ancestry, community, labor, spirit, and psyche together. This is not simply a study of cacao itself, but a study of relationship through cacao.
Threads of Reciprocity
Community Research Initiative with Kaqchikel Cacao Workers
A portion of proceeds from this relational study will directly support ongoing community-based research connected to the development of a future cultural and educational center in collaboration with Cacao Source.
At the heart of this initiative are more than forty Kaqchikel women who peel cacao entirely by hand for every block that is shared. Each seed passes through their hands. This work provides important supplemental income for many households, including several single mothers within the community.
As we continue dreaming and building toward this cultural center, we are taking time to move slowly and responsibly by first listening more deeply to the community itself. Rather than imposing outside ideas of what support should look like, we are currently funding ethnographic and community-centered research to better understand the women’s lived realities, needs, visions, health concerns, care structures, and desires for the future of the project.
This relational study helps directly support that process of listening, relationship-building, and long-term reciprocity.