5 Things I Learned in Hummingbird Valley

Sometimes I just have to pinch myself.

Is this place real? I rub my eyes and look again. Yeah, it’s real. The volcanoes in the distance. The sparkling waters of Lake Atitlan winking at me. The sound of exotic birds dance in my ears as I vaguely remember that I used to wake up to the sound of the highway outside my window in Somerville MA, or the mechanic humming of the air conditioning unit outside the window at my sister’s place in Exeter NH I was crashing the summer before I got here.

Here, where?

Guatemala, my friends. To a special little valley called Tzununa, which translates in the local Mayan dialect of Kachikel as “the place of the hummingbirds” - or as I like to call it: Hummingbird Valley.

I know, I didn’t expect this either. But I’m so glad it happened, especially since being here I’ve had the chance to learn a few amazing and unbelievably satisfying things I never knew how to do before. Read on to learn my story of how I got here and why I decided to stay…

1. I learned how to herd goats.

The goats are a big part of my story here in Hummingbird Valley. I’ve always had a weird and special love for goats. I love that they are tricksters and they don’t give a shit about the rules. I love their funny faces and googly eyes and the way they have this presence that just makes me happy inside. So the moment I met the ladies at the Granja Tz’ikin permaculture farm, something went off in my heart like fireworks.

In fact, I nearly lost my shit when I learned that the goats go for a walk up the mountain every morning and I could go with them. That’s when I embarked on the most important vocation of my entire life - as a goat-herding apprentice in the mountains of Hummingbird Valley.

*Rosa and the goats of Granja Tz’ikin farm*

I walked each morning at 8 am alongside a sweet Mayan woman named Rosa. We didn’t exchange much more than two or three words, a simple “hola” and “gracias” here and there, but for the work we were embarking on, there was no need. That’s because with goats you can’t use words - you can only use energy. In fact, Rosa had incredible ability and talent for keeping a group of wild and crazy goats together.

Rosa used subtle tools to lead the goats towards where she wanted them to go and avoid where they were not allowed to go using her presence, clicks and whistlings sounds, and occasional pebbles thrown in the brush where she did not want them to go, keeping them following the path up the mountain. A simple wave of her stick as she approached them would keep them moving forward. She never struck them or even touched them. Sometimes she would pull out her machete and pull down some of the juiciest yellow flowers that were out of reach of the goats. Like that, she cared for them and they knew it. So they listened to her, followed her, and above all, the goats respected her.

Watching Rosa’s lead, I developed my own technique of using guttural sounds (het het het!) to get their attention, a precisely thrown pebble to keep them out of the neighbors coffee plants, my outstretched stick to keep them moving up the path, plus my special sauce was to start carrying tortillas and banana peels in my pocket with me in order to gain their attention and affection. In time, the goats learned to recognize my energy and to respect me, and Rosa and I made a stellar team.

The goats taught me many things about how to lead others. They taught me to stand tall in my power, to know the direction I wanted to go yet to be somewhat forgiving about how we get there, to understand what it means to get an energetic feeling of a group, to not take shit from someone who wants to push my boundaries (and steal the tortillas as soon as I’m not looking) and above all, to lead with confidence. I could safely say that this was one of the most powerful lessons in leadership and influence in my life. If you want to learn how to be a good leader, try herding goats with Rosa :)

And funnily enough, it was because of my love for these goats and how much I enjoyed herding them up the mountain that I decided to stay in Hummingbird Valley.

Prior to that, I didn’t really know what I was doing there. I had followed a trail of breadcrumbs to Guatemala on my travels to visit a friend, but prior to the goats, I was feeling really confused about why I was there and if I had made a mistake in coming.

But the bright and joyous ringing of my heart’s delight in being around the goats was enough of a sign for me, so I asked one of the owners of the farm, Jeremy, if there was anywhere nearby I could stay. “Hmmmm, you should meet Luke,” he said, adding with a mischievous smile “he’s crazy like you.”

And that’s how I discovered Karuna, a new artist residency retreat center, just as it was opening its doors. And just like that, by following the compass of my heart’s joy, I became Karuna’s first official artist in residency.

2. I learned how to make to cacao

What’s cacao? Oh, just possibly the best thing you can add to your life. In fact, it’s so important that I measure my life in BC (before Cacao) and AC (after Cacao).

Before I came to Guatemala, I had tried cacao but I never really understood what it was or its power. In fact, I remember when I was in Thailand, my good friend OC gifted me a block of cacao, but honestly, I had no idea what to do with it. Sometimes I would cut up a little bit and add it to a smoothie, but I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea the power and the potential for using Cacao in a really intentional way.

Cacao comes from a plant with a lot of special energy. In fact, it’s where chocolate comes from. It grows these pods that are full of cacao beans, and the beans are processed into a brick which is a mixture of high-quality fats, a bunch of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fiber.

According to WebMD, “Cacao is packed with flavonoids. These nutrients have been shown to help lower blood pressure, improve blood flow to the brain and heart, and aid in preventing blood clots. The flavonoids in cacao powder may help increase insulin sensitivity, reducing your risk of diabetes. Cacao also contains lots of potassium. Potassium has been shown to decrease the risk of heart disease by reducing lower body inflammation and stress on cells.” Holy wow!

So it's a superfood, my friends, a very powerful superfood that comes with a ton of health benefits. According to Foodandwine.com “Cacao is also one of the highest sources of magnesium in nature, full of antioxidants, calcium, zinc, copper and selenium. Cacao contains more antioxidants per gram than blueberries, goji berries, red wine, raisins, prunes and even pomegranates.” Nice!

But physical health benefits aside, energetically, this plant is so powerful because it can help you open your heart.

Think of Valentine's Day - what’s the typical gift to offer your loved one on the most romantic day of the year? It’s chocolate, right? Intuitively, we know that there's a connection between chocolate and the feeling of love.

In fact, cacao contains something really special called “Theobromine” which literally translates as the “Food of the Gods”, and for good reason. It’s this active ingredient that creates that sensation of love and an opening in the heart. This compound is also responsible for activating the mind, bringing mental focus, clarity, it helps you tap into your emotions, and much more.

So high-grade 100% cacao will help you access those feelings of love and help you feel happy and open. That's why in the Mayan culture Cacao was revered and always used it as part of celebrations. When families came together to celebrate, they always included Cacao to make the occasion an even more special bonding experience.

When you drink cacao with your friends and family, you’ll notice that you’ll feel more open and connected to each other. You might have some conversations that you wouldn’t normally have. That’s because Cacao engenders more feelings of warmth and connection between people. So in this way, Cacao is a kind of heart medicine.

In fact, Cacao was recognized as being so valuable in the Mayan culture that at one time, the beans were used as a form of currency. How amazing is that?

So when I came to Guatemala, which is the homeland of high-quality ceremonial-grade pure Cacao, I learned so much about this special plant and its benefits.

One of my best friends here in the valley, Mat Chandler, who was living at Karuna with me in the early days, is the founder of Holy Wow Cacao. Through hearing his amazing life story, I learned that Cacao is the reason he relocated his life to Guatemala so he could work to bring this medicine to the world.

His passion and dedication to sharing the magic of this heart medicine really helped me understand the value of this simple yet powerful plant, and he also taught me the basic recipe for making Cacao, which I will link to here.

Want to give it a try? You can also pick up your very own brick of Holy Wow Cacao, plus a handmade Guatemalan beaded hummingbird straight from Lake Atitlan here through this special package just for my friends here: https://www.holywowcacao.com/receive/ericasfriends/

3. I learned how to write a book

I don't know about you, but I had wanted to write a book for over 10 years. However, I was always very daunted by the task - I didn't know where to start, how to do it, what it would be about, or how I would go about writing it. It seemed like a really intimidating and insurmountable challenge.

And most of all, I just felt like I wasn't ready...or so I thought.

But then something shifted inside of me when I arrived in Guatemala: all the pieces just came together. All the lessons I had been learning on my journey of traveling the world the previous six years finally came into focus. And because of the goats, I had just moved into Karuna Atitlan, a writer’s retreat space headed by Author Luke Maguire Armstrong. As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

It was Christmas morning 2019 and I was up the mountain with the goats and Rosa, looking down at the valley and my life from this heightened perspective. A feeling - a knowing in my heart - suddenly came over me. At that moment, I turned to Rosa (who did not speak English) and I said “Rosa, I think I just finished my book.” “Si,” she said back to me.

So finally, I knew: after all these years, it was finally time to write my book. Under some crazy cosmic eclipse on the evening of Dec 25, 2019, I enrolled in an online coaching program and finally took the leap and embarked on the journey to write my story.

It felt like a really big, daunting, and scary project - like a real David vs Goliath scenario. But over the next few months, with the help of my coaching program, and especially with the guidance and support of Luke (see: I cried in his arms a lot), I was able to birth the book that had been inside me out into the world.

The best part about taking something that feels really intimidating, overwhelming, and scary, and breaking it down into pieces, following a program and a schedule to get it done, and having a ton of emotional and creative support along the way, was that it proved to me that I can do anything that I set my heart and my mind to - especially when I put myself in the right container.

You can find my book “Leaving America with Erica” on Amazon here. It basically takes all the lessons I’ve learned about how to follow your heart into the unknown and go on adventures - like I’ve been doing the last 8 years since I quit my job and started living this totally uncommon and absolutely amazing life - and it puts those lessons into a roadmap that other people can follow to discover their own adventure and the treasure waiting for them when they face their fears and follow their heart.

4. I learned how to open a coconut with a machete

One great part about living here in Hummingbird Valley is that there’s a Coconut Man who comes by every Monday afternoon and delivers as many coconuts as you want to your door for 80 cents apiece. Drinking fresh coconuts is super healthy, but opening them can be a challenge.

Now, when I first got to Karuna (www.KarunaAtitlan.com) I could not open a coconut with a machete. I was scared of the machete. I was practically scared of the coconut. I had no confidence.

In fact, I think the fact that I believed that I couldn't do it, made it so I couldn't do it. So I was always asking Luke or Mat Chandler, who also lived at Karuna at the time, to do it for me.

And you know what, I do not like relying on a man to do something for me. I don't like relying on a man to open a jar for me, and I don't like relying on a man to open a coconut for me.

I tried many times to do it myself but it wasn’t working; I was making all these claw marks with the machete and if you saw the coconut you might have felt bad for it because it really looked like I was hurting it, but without getting inside. I was very frustrated, and I felt like a helpless codependent every time I had to ask one of the men to do it for me.

Until finally one day - it was actually during my first silent retreat led by Luke - I had a coconut and I was about to ask Mat to open it for me (silently, of course) but he was doing something, so I had to wait. So at that moment, I decided just to play with it.

Previously, I had been trying to do it from this space of fear, frustration, doubt, and all these weird disempowered feelings. But in that moment of waiting, I didn’t take myself so seriously and I just started playing around. I played with different angles and ways of holding it, and suddenly, it worked! I was opening the coconut!

Opening a coconut with a machete comes down to a few things: one, going for it with focused confidence, rooted in the belief that you can do it, trusting that you can do it, and not letting the fear of cutting off your hand make your waver in your confidence. And two: coming at the surface with the appropriate angle to the blade - not coming down straight at it, but coming at it from a slight angle. Easy.

Also, be careful, because you might cut off your hand.

5. I learned how to meditate for one hour

I've been meditating for the past couple of years. In fact, I learned it was vitally important for me to meditate because I've had a history of depression and anxiety, and it’s pretty much the most important thing I can do to help myself feel better. When people tell me they are challenged by depression and anxiety, and that they want my advice on what to do about it, my first question to them is always “Are you meditating?”

There’s so much scientific research to back the fact that mediation is so good for you that it’s mind-boggling. According to “12 Science-Based Benefits of Meditation” scientific research shows that meditation can help reduce stress, manage anxiety, enhance emotional wellbeing, promote self-awareness, improve your attention span, reduce memory loss, fight addiction, improve sleep, decrease blood pressure, and control pain. Wow!

For me, it was many years ago in a dark bout of depression when one of the wisest women in my life who I really looked up to turned me on to a free app called Insight Timer, known as the “#1 app for sleep, anxiety, and stress.” At the time, I was in such a dark place and I was desperate to feel better, so I took her advice, downloaded the app and started meditating.

In the beginning, I could only sit for 20 minutes at a time. I would do 20 minutes in the morning, and even that felt pretty difficult - but I definitely noticed over time that I was starting to feel better emotionally. In fact, I could look at the little graphs on the app and I noticed that the weeks and months where I meditated consistently, I felt noticeably better than the times when I stopped.

So I was able to do 20 mins in the morning, but I couldn't do much more than that. But for where I was on my journey then, that was enough. If there’s one truth about meditation, it’s that some is better than none. Meditating for only 5 mins a day is still vastly better than no minutes per day.

For people early on their journey into their own meditation practice, I definitely recommend you start small, do what you can, and most importantly - do it consistently. Like showering.

By the time I arrived at Karuna, I was at a much different place on my journey - mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and Karuna provided me the container to give myself what I needed to take the next step.

Over a period of a year and a half, I attended Luke's Silent Retreat three times (I’m one of their frequent fliers, in fact). In the silent retreats, we meditated a lot. And we learned about Vipassana meditation techniques, about recognizing the way the mind is addicted to distracting itself, and about sitting through the discomfort of meditating for longer and longer periods of time. And because of what I learned and practiced at these retreats, I was able to expand the amount of time that I meditate.

I attended it in person, but you can check out his online self-guided version here.

Since then, I don't even think about it anymore - a short meditation for me is 30 to 45 minutes, and a normal meditation that feels really good for me is one hour - which feels so amazing to say because I know and remember so clearly how much I struggled at the beginning.

And you want to know what? I’ve definitely noticed a direct correlation between meditation and my general sense of happiness and wellbeing in my life today. That’s not a coincidence, friends.

Above all, I’ve learned that training my mind through meditation and cultivating the mindfulness that it teaches is so important to me and for me because the thoughts in my mind are the building blocks of my life.

If I am constantly thinking about things that make me feel bad, and I’m not even aware that I’m doing it, then then I’m going to keep feeling bad and finding more things to focus on to make me feel bad merely as a matter of habit.

Meditation helps me break these mental habits by learning to bring more conscious awareness to my thoughts. It’s a practice to help me recognize that I have a choice around how I use my mind, that I’m not a victim of my thoughts, and that I get to choose what I focus my attention and energy on.

And that, my friends, is a turning point in my story because it’s a key step in the process by which I shift away from being a victim towards being the conscious creator of my reality.

...

Hummingbird Valley is a very unique place on earth, and I never even knew this place existed until I found myself here - and I do mean that - I found myself here.

I had to go on an incredible journey all around the world to find a place, so simple and so close to the United States.

In fact, it's funny that it's so close and yet it feels like it's such a different world - a different world where I've found the lessons I needed on my soul’s path in exactly the right way at exactly the right time - goats, coconuts, machetes, meditation, best friends, and bestselling books included.