Water — A Guided Shamanic Cacao and Gong Journey (Cacao Optional)
TThis is the fourth ceremony in a five-part series in which I guide you through a shamanic cacao and gong journey to meet each of the five elements. If you haven't yet worked with Earth, Air or Fire, I'd invite you to begin there. Today, we journey to meet Water.
Water is everywhere. It makes up roughly 70% of the human body, and 70% of the surface of our planet. We are, in the most literal sense, a mirror of the Earth's water. When we poison her waters — and we have, in so many ways — we feel that in our own bodies. And when we tend our relationship with water consciously, that too moves through us in every direction.
Across every culture that has mapped the sacred, water is treated with reverence. The River Ganges in India, the River Nile in Egypt — sources of life, sites of ceremony, conduits of the divine. Ancient Greece gave us Poseidon; Rome gave us Neptune. The Inuit have Sedna, the goddess of the underworld, who lives in the ocean. Water holds mystery, power, and the capacity to both nourish and overwhelm.
What Is the Water Element?
In the Mayan medicine wheel, Water lives in the South direction — the place of flow, the warmth of the noon sun, the passion to do our work, and the spirit of Snake, who is considered the mother of all waters and the source of all life. Snake teaches us how to shed our old ways as she sheds her skin, to cleanse, to evolve, to move with the rhythms of the Earth.
Water is the element of feeling — the realm of emotion, of what moves through us, of what we have the capacity to hold or let go. It represents our adaptability, our ability to flow. When our water element is in balance, we move through life with ease and grace, responsive to what arises, neither forcing nor resisting. We are like a healthy, clear-running spring.
Water In Balance and Out of Balance
One of the most helpful ways to understand where your water element sits right now is to ask: what quality of water am I?
A healthy, bubbling spring — clear, moving, vital, nourishing everything it touches
A stagnant pond — still, heavy, perhaps murky with things that have not been able to flow or release
Ice — rigid, locked, unable to move or be moved
Boiling steam — overheated, pressurised, energy bubbling over without direction
None of these states is a failure — they are simply information. If you recognise yourself in one of them right now, that recognition itself is the beginning of the healing.
Water in the Body
We are water. Our blood, our lymph, the fluid that cushions our joints and carries nutrients to every cell — all of it is water. When we are well-hydrated, our cells communicate clearly, our bodies detoxify efficiently, and we feel literally more fluid in our physical experience. When we are dehydrated, everything becomes a little more stuck, a little heavier, a little less responsive.
The gongs in this ceremony are particularly powerful for shaking up and shifting water within the body — loosening what has become stagnant and creating the conditions for a deeper cleanse. I always recommend drinking plenty of water after a water ceremony, to flush through anything that has been mobilised.
Some questions to sit with as you come to this ceremony: How well are you hydrating — not just with water, but with rest, nourishment, and things that genuinely replenish you? Where in your body do you feel flow, and where do you feel stuck? Are your emotions moving freely, or are you holding something that needs to be released? What would it feel like to let yourself be more like water — soft, adaptive, responsive?
Water as Sacred: Cleansing, Ceremony, and Reciprocity
Human beings have used water for spiritual cleansing since the beginning of recorded history. Baptism, blessing, holy water, ritual bathing — the instinct to bring water into ceremony is universal because water does something to us that goes beyond the physical. It cleanses the energy field as well as the body. It carries away what we are ready to release. It blesses, and it renews.
Part of our work with the Water elemental is to explore our reciprocal relationship with water — not only what we can receive from it, but what we can offer in return. The question I hold in this part of the journey is: how can I support the cleansing process that water needs right now, both within me and within our planet? This might look like a practical action — reducing plastic use, conserving water, choosing cleaner products. Or it might be a spiritual offering, a change in how you consciously relate to the water in your life. Let water show you what it needs.
The Ceremony: Meeting the Water Elemental
After cleansing our energy field and calling in the seven directions, I guide you into the lower realm — our inner landscape — through a real place in nature you already feel connected to. We travel there as a tiny light of consciousness, carried by a golden mist, before descending through a portal into the lower world.
At the bottom of that descent, the five Elementals are sitting together around a fire, waiting. Water steps forward — perhaps appearing symbolically in a form that means something to you personally — and leads you to a private space within the cave to commune. This is your time to have a real conversation: to ask for healing, clarity, advice, or transformation. Or simply to experience the quality of water's presence and receive whatever it wishes to offer.
Water may manifest differently for everyone — some will experience something very visual, others more kinaesthetic or emotional. Simply allow whatever wants to come through, without analysing it in the moment. Your left brain can make sense of it later. During the journey, let your shamanic brain — the feeling, sensing, perceiving part of you — lead.
The Role of Cacao and Gong
Ceremonial cacao is optional, and genuinely safe for almost everyone — the main exception is a cacao allergy. The general Western standard is a fairly strong cup, somewhere between 28 and 42 grams, though as little as 10 grams is enough to get an effect and begin journeying with Mama Cacao. If you're on high doses of certain medications, particularly antidepressants that work with serotonin and dopamine, keep your dose on the lower end — cacao supports those same neurotransmitters, which is where the caution comes from. My own first cup was a small one, around 15 grams, and I was blissed out for three weeks afterwards — there's genuinely no need to go big to feel her effect. If you feel full partway through your cup, trust that and stop.
Cacao helps expand the heart, physically and spiritually, supports blood flow to the heart and brain, and often brings on those small 'aha' moments as the neurons connect more freely. If you're not working with cacao today, that's entirely fine too — we're simply calling on her spirit as part of the ceremony, and the journey works fully without her.
How to Prepare for the Ceremony
Drink plenty of water before and especially after this ceremony — the gongs will shift water within the body, and you'll want to flush through anything that's mobilised
Prepare your ceremonial cacao before we begin, so you're ready to drink as we call in the directions. If cacao isn't right for you, plain water or tea works well
Choose your place in nature beforehand — a real place you feel connected to, somewhere peaceful
Create a comfortable, supported space and have a blanket nearby
Use good headphones or speakers to receive the full depth of the gong frequencies
Have a journal to hand — write as soon as you return, before the experience fades
Hold your intention lightly — come with a question if you have one, or simply an openness to receive
Continue the Five-Element Journey
This Water ceremony is the fourth in the series, with Ether to complete it. Catch up with the earlier ceremonies or continue with the full journey:
We can heal our world, one heart at a time. Let us begin with our own.
