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The Beauty Way is an English interpretation of Hózhó, a foundational concept within traditional Diné (Navajo) cosmology. Hózhó speaks to a way of living in beauty, balance, harmony, right relationship, peace, and wellbeing. It is both a state of being and a lived practice, not something to simply admire, but something to walk each day.
In the Diné tradition, the notion of “The Beauty Way” refers to both a specific Diné Blessingway (Hózhóójí) ceremony, and more broadly, to a life lived in alignment with nature, community, spirit, and the inner self. In both contexts, “beauty” points not to surface aesthetics, but to cosmic order and sacred harmony.
There is a quiet drought that often settles over the modern soul - a parched feeling that comes from living too much in the "doing" and not enough in the "being." In a world that moves quickly and often asks so much of us, it’s easy to lose touch with our own inner rhythms and the beauty that is abundant around us. We can spend so much of our days navigating demands, responsibilities, and constant stimulation, often living more in our heads than in our hearts.
How can the intentional use of cacao help return us to the present moment and reconnect us with a more creative, connected way of being? To access and live the Beauty Way?
The Beauty Way is to live in harmony, balance, and respect - with yourself, others, and nature. It’s anchored in choosing kindness, mindfulness, and integrity - and finding meaning in simplicity and presence.
The Beauty Way is not a destination or an ideal.
It’s a manner of perceiving, a way of meeting life that restores harmony, connection, and balance. To walk in beauty is to live in relationship with what is here, rather than standing apart from it.
Yet much of contemporary life pulls awareness in the opposite direction. Attention becomes dominated by analysis, categorisation, and separation. The world is experienced in fragments; tasks to complete, problems to solve, resources to manage. When pressure or uncertainty arises, this narrowing intensifies, and the nervous system shifts toward protection, and perception contracts. Disconnection becomes a default response.
Beauty offers a countermovement.
It turns out that beauty is not just a luxury, it is a physiological necessity.
Encounters with beauty do more than please the senses. Something profound happens in our neural pathways when we encounter something that takes our breath away. Beauty naturally activates right-hemisphere awareness. This is the domain of presence, pattern, feeling, intuition, and connection. In contrast to the left brain’s tendency toward separation and control, the right brain perceives wholeness and relationship. When beauty is perceived, the mind is drawn into the present moment and balance begins to return. This balancing effect is deeply restorative.
Research in neurobiology suggests that the left brain can become dominant when we feel threatened or unsafe. This leads to a sense of isolation and a tendency to view the natural world as not connected to ourselves. However, beauty can act as a corrective medicine.
As noted in the article Beauty: Yes! Wow! Thanks! "Beauty does act like an opening to something more real, like a door to expanded understanding, like the experience of an expanded heart. Like truth." (1)
When we engage with beauty, we invite a balancing influence. The brain hemispheres begin to dance in harmony, moving us into "whole brain functioning." In this integrated state, the sense of threat recedes, and we can finally see the world not as a series of disconnected parts, but as a vast, breathing whole.
As right-hemisphere awareness comes online, the habitual responses of withdrawal, shutting down, or dissociation soften. The body feels safer and attention widens. Life is no longer approached solely through defence or urgency. But through receptivity. When both hemispheres are functioning in harmony, there is a lived sense of interconnectedness. This gives an experience of being part of, rather than apart from, the world.
To find our way back to this neurological equilibrium, we often need a bridge. This is where Ceremonial Cacao becomes a quiet ally to walking the Beauty Way.
The ritual of Cacao serves as a warm, golden key that unlocks the door to the right brain. Through its warmth and heart-centred qualities, cacao supports a shift out of mental overdrive and into embodied presence. When used intentionally, it can gently interrupt habitual left-brain dominance, to encourage sensation and feeling to take the lead. In this softened state, beauty becomes easier to notice. Not because it has increased, but because perception has opened.
In a culture that prioritises the "treadmill chatter" of the mind, Cacao can be utilised as an intentional act of carving out space dedicated to "dropping in". As the medicine moves through the system, it brings one from the surface-level noise of daily stress into the deeper currents of the heart, softening the sharp, analytical edges of the mind. "The mind ceases its treadmill chatter, time stops, everything is held in the present moment of wonder and awe. Beauty changes the world because it changes perception, alters the mind" (2)
By gently quieting the left brain’s need to control, Cacao awakens an innate capacity for "presencing”. The capacity to stay with what is, without retreating into numbness or reactivity. It allows grief to be felt without collapse, anxiety to be met without contraction and uncertainty to be held with awareness rather than avoidance.
Cacao allows us to connect with the beauty alive and available in each moment. The warmth of the mug in our hands, the birdsong between sounds, the rhythm of a heartbeat. This is the essence of whole-brain balance: using the grounding of the earth to hold space for the vast, creative wonder of the soul.
Beauty, in this sense, is not an escape from the world’s troubles, but a remedial influence, an antidote to shutting down in the face of them.
Within the framework of the Beauty Way, being present matters deeply.
The Beauty Way is also the practice of becoming a "witness to the wonderful". When we use Cacao to anchor ourselves, we begin to see that beauty is not a rare event to be hunted, but a constant presence to be acknowledged. This isn't about ignoring the "troubled times" we live in; it is about becoming strong enough to face them.
These are times that call for wakefulness rather than withdrawal. For sensitivity rather than separation. For the ability to sense what is needed and to respond appropriately, rather than react from fear.
Beauty keeps perception open. Presence keeps awareness alive.
Together, they restore the capacity to meet the moment with intelligence, care, and responsiveness. Cacao does not manufacture this state - it supports the conditions in which it can emerge.
For the sake of our world, we cannot afford to shut down. We need to stay receptive. This is why this practice is so vital today.
Beauty is the frequency that allows us to stay open.
When we commit to the Beauty Way, our life becomes a memory of moments - not of tasks completed, but of connections made.
As the Cacao warms us from the inside out, the disconnect is healed and we move from being isolated observers of life to active participants in its symphony.
Each cup becomes a small act of alignment and an invitation to slow, to listen, and to re-enter relationship with the living world.
We realise that beauty is not a destination we are walking toward, but the very path beneath our feet. In these wild times on Mother Earth, staying present to that beauty is perhaps the most radical and loving act of all.
And so the invitation to notice what is beautiful continues - to allow it to restore balance, and to remember - again and again - that beauty is not peripheral to life.
Beauty is The Way.
1) & 2) Beauty. Yes! Wow! Thanks! – Yasodhara Ashram
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