I get out of my car where I spent the last two hours observing the wildlife in front of Cabaret Mado, the drag performers, the white rastas and the addicts to artificial paradises, while eating a granola bar forgotten in the glove compartment. An almost perfect dinner. I’m wiping up the runny mascara, the planets are all out of alignment, the granola bar was stale, it’s Friday night and I’m expected to join in an experience of ceremonial cocoa and ecstatic dancing. I want that as much as having a molar extracted by a tooth puller who tells the truth.
This evening, I meet Véronique Chagnon, an ex-colleague who is kind enough to introduce me to her dance trances. Everyone goes barefoot in this discreet room. There is incense, subdued light: an urban cocoon. We are expecting 70 people for this sober weekly mass, descendants of hippies, but in leggings or shorts.
Downtempo and afrohouse, drums and birdcalls meet fair trade spiced cocoa on special at Costco. You have to drink it shooter of thick cocoa with an intention, warns us the tattooed barista and all. It would be worth a guided tour, these body frescoes.
In these semi-sacred pagan places, Buddhist imagery, astrology, etc. are happily mixed.sound healing, intuitive movement and group healing. The girls in chest and ambiguous boys are welcome.
I like the cozy atmosphere, despite the usual scenes of hugs endless between regulars. They make you feel like you might end up naked in a cult worthy of going viral thanks to an infiltration of the show Investigation. I absorb the mood benevolent and soothing, even if the theater of spirituality tires me, the same as in the 1970s.
It’s the big comeback, 50 years later. Not just in Quebec, everywhere! This staging is no worse than any other, and it has the advantage of leaving the tie and shoes in the cloakroom. Peace and love ; we really need it.
This is the serious problem of this society: it is full of desires to consume and to appear, but there is very little desire to be
Living your spirituality in motion
Véronique arrives with her bottle of water and her frank smile. She doesn’t look like a mother of a one-year-old baby who shot cocoa at childbirth, not the look of a Libra ascendant Rabbit either. She worked for several years at Dutya thorough careerist — she says it —, deputy director of information, the kind of job where the news leaves you no respite. It broke. She got defrocked too. The curious 36-year-old jack-of-all-trades even gave herself permission to try out the shaman, the yogic retreat in Guatemala and the initiatory journey in India, ayahuasca in Lanaudière, to draw her sky map by seeking support from Ganesh.
At the point where she was, burnoutmedicated, as well as crawling on tribal rhythms with the reincarnation of Alan Watts and embracing the counterculture between soul reading and sound therapy.
An ecstatic dance with Mayan cocoa for $34 is totally 2024. The guest DJs, specialists in spiritual flight, are masters of this type of ceremony and slowly increase the tension. We get caught up in the game, we give in and we forget everything, even a crappy day. The energy of the group adds a lot to this experience worthy of a Burning Man in the Nevada desert. This is not my first contact with éso cocoa nor with intuitive dance, but in this urban context, yes. Do it again!
I found Véronique the following week at the charming Café des Habitudes, in La Petite-Patrie, right in the vibration of neo-spirituality. I wanted to chat with her about her recent essay On the other side of the world, a reflection on the revolutionary potential of spirituality at a time of multiple global crises. She writes: “Spirituality can be an act of radical rebellion, which asks us to settle down when everything around us would like us to get agitated, which reminds us of the intrinsic value of our lives, and of life in general, in outside of performance, which restores the sacred where few things last longer than the news cycle. »
To the sound of their drums, the invisible storm breaks out, bare feet beat time, and the air conditioning is no longer enough to temper us, a group of Westerners on the path to remission
Reborn for yourself
I am quite familiar with the condescension of the journalistic community towards this not very rational avenue which consists of relying on occult forces. “The media crisis has contributed to my crisis of meaning,” Véronique whispers to me over her matcha tea. Do you have to give up to be yourself? “For me, it was — a little — that. » And she gave herself permission to fall into the magic potion of awakening and the path to consciousness. It’s a whole other “job,” she admits. “We cultivate this impression that we have to choose between spirituality and rationality. » And yet, curiosity and the desire to “heal” guide her, tarot and crystals too.
“We sometimes like to laugh at them and roll our eyes, but the truth is that they open a window onto a body of knowledge and practice that has the potential to do a lot of good,” she writes in her lucid book and courageous.
She talks about all the practices, outside of religions and dogmas, that she has tackled in a few years. I point out to him that mystical retreats all over the world have a heavy GHG footprint. “Yes, it’s inconsistent. And word of mouth directs us to these exotic places. »
The climate crisis is however central to this spiritual renewal, as if all these young and old cocoa people who participate in drum festivals in nature and bathe naked in rivers in gang summer rediscovered the need for connection.
“It helps to understand your place in the world, what you do for yourself, others, coherence, the planet. The pace in which we live has a greater impact than mental health; it affects social connections. There’s something sick about it. »
Without legitimizing all the practices of the spiritual buffet, Véronique put aside her fears and tried to create links between two worlds. And it is a necessary reconciliation in which more and more people are participating. I copied this sentence from his book: “It’s not because we think we have everything that we have what is good for us. »
Instagram: josee.blanchette