When you walk into the Bucky Dome at Aspen Meadows Resort, what’s waiting is much more than a cup of hot chocolate.

It’s a plant medicine that was offered to warriors before battle and women after birth, a superfood that’s been crafted into an alchemic blend by residents of the Amazon and offered to Aspen locals and visitors in a heart-opening ceremony intended for both internal guidance and community building.

“It’s a heart-opening medicine that is the vibration of love,” said Nicole Lindstrom — founder of GLDMND, yoga and meditation teacher and retreat facilitator who offers cacao ceremonies throughout the Roaring Fork Valley. “I always talk about how us drinking this is an invitation for us to find our own relationship to nature … We can get so disconnected from our own inherent relations to the nature world. This is just a gateway reminder, a reverence.”

Lindstrom, who’s originally from Evergreen, moved from Colorado to New York to work for Wanderlust Festival, where she co-authored the book “Wanderlust: A Modern Yogi’s Guide to Becoming Your Best Self” and produced a lecture series that brought her to Snowmass. After meeting local Gina Murdock, founder of Lead with Love (previously Aspen Yoga Society) and a columnist for The Aspen Times, Lindstrom was encouraged to move out here — she quit her job and two weeks later came to Aspen.

“We are surrounded and held by nature, and it’s already such an easy access point to talk about how nature has intrinsic wisdom or intelligence,” she said of the area.

After helping Murdock with Lead with Love, Lindstrom started GLDMND in 2021. After spending time hosting events globally, she decided to focus on the Roaring Fork Valley, turning to a connection she’d made in 2019 while hosting a conference at the Aspen Institute with the founders of Legacy Cacao.

“That was the first time I’d ever heard about a cacao ceremony,” she said. “I could not have imagined at that time that it would have had as huge of an impact that it had on me.”

Since 2019, Lindstrom used cacao personally to guide her inward when she was going through a hard time or coming up against challenges, which ultimately inspired her to begin integrating it into her offerings as a meditation and yoga instructor.

“It is a really powerful catalyst for sitting with yourself and opening your heart, listening to heart wisdom,” she said. “I wanted to bring that into what I was already doing as a motive for fostering heart center connection.”

A cup of Legacy Cacao.Trevor Triano/Courtesy photo

Now, with the blessing of the founders from Legacy Cacao, she hosts three to four ceremonies a month, from Aspen Meadows Resort and the MOLLIE Aspen down to True Nature in Carbondale. She told The Aspen Times that it’s all about choosing to drink cacao consciously as a way to unlock the intelligence of the plant medicine and bring it out into the world to use.

“We create a relationship, or communion, with the intellect of cacao,” she said. “After people go through the experience, their hearts are wide open.”

Those who attend her ceremonies — which include both returning participants and new faces — can expect to be part of something inspired by Indigenous practice and grounded in the Western experience.

“As a white person serving a very traditional plant medicine, it’s an honor, it’s a privilege, it’s a way for us as Westerners to find our own connection with nature, to honor the stewards who provide this and be inspired to also be a steward,” she said.

Ceremony inside a dome.Trevor Triano/Courtesy photo

Lindstrom begins each ceremony with a meditation, bringing up the inner callings or yearnings that many neglect on a day-to-day basis. She ties her ceremonies to the moon cycles — the most recent ceremony occurred after a full moon in Capricorn, during a waning moon in Pisces.

“Guided by ceremonial cacao and the timeless rhythm of the moon, we gather to cultivate the conditions where clarity, creativity, wisdom, and insight can naturally emerge,” her website states. “Each ceremony is inspired by the current lunar phase and zodiac sign, using their archetypal themes as a framework for self-inquiry. Through breathwork, movement, meditation, sound, journaling, and ceremonial cacao, we create space to quiet the noise and reconnect to the gold within.”

Sound healing integration.Trevor Triano/Courtesy photo

Because the moon, and every individual, constantly changes, the website emphasizes that “no two ceremonies are ever the same.”

Participants are given the opportunity to set their own intentions for the ceremony and are encouraged to allow the heart wisdom to act as a guide for finding one’s own answers.

“Once we have the intention really clear, we prepare ourselves for drinking the cacao — our bodies are a channel for a higher intelligence to come through,” Lindstrom said. “When you sit to drink cacao, you’re awake, you’re open, you’re in a state to receive this medicine and guidance and to hold this higher vibration.”

Participants are able to take 10 minutes to drink the cacao in a place of choice outside, returning to the dome and to the group to integrate through sound healing.

“For every single person, it’s really really different,” she said of the experience. “But there’s a really beautiful thing that happens in those ceremonies where people understand the other people in the room had a similar feel. There’s a likeminded quality among different people. Together, they create this connection that’s really intimate, and it’s people that wouldn’t have become friends in a different way.”

Lindstrom noted this is a particularly powerful way to bridge the gap between visitors and locals, allowing them to connect in a shared and meaningful experience.

“It’s a sweet way to connect visitors and locals with each other because of its intimate and genuine nature,” she said.

Those who are interested in participating in one of GLDMND’s cacao ceremonies can learn more and see the schedule of offerings at gldmnd.co/cacao#upcoming. Lindstrom also offers private ceremonies for special occasions that include bridal showers, wedding days, baby blessings, home/new business blessings, intentional transitions and celebrations of life.