Bridging Worlds
A 5 month mentorship in embodied leadership & sacred space holding.
with Barbara Manuela
AUGUST 2026 | NOW OPEN FOR REGISTRATION
There comes a moment where the call is no longer subtle.
You feel it in your body.
In the way you listen.
In how people open up around you.
You’re not just here to receive healing anymore.
You’re here to hold it.
But the questions linger…
“Am I ready?”
“Who am I to lead?”
“ Am I good enough?”
This container exists for that exact threshold.
To support you in moving from:
seeking permission → to becoming the woman who leads.
This is about no longer seeking permission.
This is about you beginning to hold yourself, your community, and the spaces you’re called to lead.
The Calling
You may have already felt it…
A pull toward ritual.
A deep connection to cacao.
A knowing that you’re meant to create spaces for others.
And at the same time:
𖦹 fear of getting it wrong
𖦹 questioning your authority
𖦹 waiting for someone to validate you
This is the space between who you’ve been…
and who you’re becoming.
This is the threshold.
This Is Not Just a Training
This is a rite of passage into embodied leadership.
Where your healing and your work stop being separate.
Where you learn:
𖦹 how to hold yourself in real time
𖦹 how to hold others without overgiving or collapsing
𖦹 how to guide experiences rooted in integrity, not performance
This is about becoming someone people can trust in a room.
The Initiation
Inside this container, you won’t stay in the role of the participant.
You’ll be guided into:
𖦹 using your voice
𖦹 leading practices
𖦹 holding real-time spaces
Not perfectly ( but 100% human)
This is where:
𖦹 your nervous system gets stretched
𖦹 your patterns come to the surface
𖦹 your self-trust is built through experience
You don’t learn this work by watching.
You learn it by becoming it.
The Rhythm of the Work
This container moves like ceremony — in cycles of learning, embodiment, and integration.
Each month, we move through three phases:
Teaching & Transmission
Grounded teachings on:
𖦹 working with cacao and tobacco as a plant allies
𖦹 facilitation and space holding
𖦹 nervous system awareness
𖦹 ethics and integrity
𖦹 Andean and Amazonian wisdom
Integration & Mentorship
We slow down to:
𖦹 reflect on your experiences
𖦹 receive feedback and guidance
𖦹 refine your voice and approach
𖦹 deepen your capacity to hold yourself and others
Embodied Practice
(You Leading)
This is where everything shifts.
You will:
𖦹 guide practices and ceremonies
𖦹 be witnessed in your leadership
𖦹 build confidence through real experience
This is not passive.
You will be seen, heard, and supported.
A World beyond Healing
This work goes beyond your personal transformation.
You may find yourself:
𖦹 leading your own cacao ceremonies
𖦹 creating intentional spaces in your community
𖦹 collaborating with other facilitators or elders
𖦹 trusting your intuition in moments that matter
This is where you stop asking:
“Can I do this?”
And start living:
“I am doing this.”
This Is For You If…
This mentorship is for the woman who feels the call to lead even if she hasn’t fully claimed it yet.
The one who is ready to stop being so hard on herself.
To release the need to be perfect, good, or “ready”… and instead choose to show up as she is.
You feel it in your body — that you’re not meant to just participate in spaces like this,
but to hold them.
You’re ready for what’s inside of you to match what you show the world.
Not just to feel strong, grounded, and beautiful —
but to express it, to live it, to lead from it.
You understand that this work isn’t separate from your life.
That your healing, your relationships, your voice, your leadership —
are all woven together.
You may already be working with cacao, or feeling deeply called to it.
And you know there is a deeper level of integrity, embodiment, and responsibility you’re being asked to step into.
You’re ready to:
𖦹 move from participant → facilitator
𖦹 use your voice with honesty and presence
𖦹 stop abandoning yourself in the process of supporting others
𖦹 create spaces rooted in truth, not performance
And more than anything…
You’re ready to take full responsibility for your life, your gifts, and the impact you’re here to have —
in your own way, in your own voice, and in your own time.
Because of the depth and intimacy of this work, the group is limited to 8 participants. An application is required to ensure alignment for everyone in the circle.
If you’re curious but unsure if this is the right path for you, please reach out to hello@barbieenruta.com and Barbara will personally support you in finding clarity.
You Won’t Walk This Alone
This is a space of
You’ll be surrounded by women who are stepping into leadership, learning to trust themselves, and deepening their relationship to this work.
reflection, honesty, accountability, and real support (rooted in sisterhood).
This is not the place for performance or comparison.
Here’s What You’ll Receive:
Bridging Worlds is meant to be experienced as a journey. Over the course of these five months, you’ll be immersed in different teachings, practices, and ways of working that support you in stepping into your voice, your leadership, and your relationship with Spirit.
Bridging Worlds is meant to be experienced as a journey.
This isn’t something you move through quickly or try to “complete.” It’s a space you enter — one that meets you exactly where you are, while gently guiding you into who you’re becoming.
Through our live calls, shared ceremonies, and ongoing integration, this work begins to weave into your everyday life — not as something separate, but as something you live.
This space is deeply trauma-informed, and you’ll always be invited to move at the pace your body is ready for. I will remind you often: take what serves you, and leave what doesn’t. There is no pressure to force or perform here. In many ways, this work is about remembering that less is more, and that you’re allowed to slow down.
You’ll be supported through live monthly calls with me and guest facilitators who are part of my personal healing world, as well as integration spaces where you can be seen, heard, and held in what’s coming up for you.
You’ll also receive guided practices, rituals, and resources that you can return to in your own time, along with a private WhatsApp space for ongoing connection and support.
Everything inside of this mentorship is designed to support you not only in learning, but in becoming — in building a relationship with your practice, your intuition, and the way you move through the world.
And beyond the live experience, you’ll have lifetime access to the materials, including additional teachings like the Dream World course, so you can continue deepening your connection to your inner world and the spirit realm long after our time together.
Choose Your Path
For the woman who is ready to begin her journey into space holding and facilitation.
$3200
Pay in Full
$295
12 month payment plan
*Afterpay, Affirm, and Klarna are available options with full pay
*schedules will change at times throughout the year due to travel, sick days, knowing that life will life in a long container. If you are not comfortable with that. This will not be a good fit.
*All calls will be recorded, should you not be able to join live.
Testimonial to be added here.
CHANEA
Testimonial to be added here.
CRYSTLE
Testimonial to be added here.
CLAIRE
Bridging Worlds Retreat: Level Two
There is only so much you can understand through a screen.
And then there’s the moment where you step into it fully.
This retreat is not separate from the work —
it is the embodiment of everything you’ve been becoming.
What We Actually Move Through
This isn’t a retreat where you escape your life.
It’s where you meet it — fully.
We speak about:
𖦹 motherhood and identity
𖦹 financial fears and responsibility
𖦹 heartbreak and love
𖦹 the parts of you that are still learning to be held
We sit for hours at the dinner table.
We write. We walk. We listen.
Not just to each other —
but to something deeper within ourselves.
MEET YOUR GUIDE
Barbara Manuela is an entrepreneur, women’s mentor, and artist who guides people back to their heart and spirit through cacao, tobacco, and sound.
Raised between New York and Ecuador, she bridges cultures and draws wisdom from both ancient traditions and modern practices. Rooted in her Indigenous lineage from the Ecuadorian Andes, she trained with elders of the Sapara Nation in the Amazon and with cacao teachers including Brenden Durell and Florencia Fridman.
She has led cacao and tobacco ceremonies for people of all ages, in Ecuador and the U.S., creating spaces for healing, self-discovery, and remembrance.
After helping build two six-figure spiritual businesses, Barbara founded her own work blending ceremony, embodiment, and creativity with entrepreneurship.
Today, she leads retreats and mentorships that empower people to reconnect with themselves, their culture, and their inner power.
A Note on Mentorship & Integrity
This apprenticeship is both a mentorship and initiation. It is not a certification, so it does not hand you a title or certification. Instead, this mentorship teaches you how to hold space, lead cacao sessions, and facilitate healing experiences whether this is your first tool in the journey or an addition to the work you already do. These 9 months provide the foundation and the path continues as you integrate, practice, and grow in your service. This is a commitment to learning, exploration, and embodiment.
Throughout the mentorship, you’ll be guided by Barbara and guest teachers across different modalities from energy healers to color theory stylists weaving body, spirit, and earth-based practices together. Healing and wisdom happen in the whole being, not just in energy.
This path is deeply rooted in Indigenous traditions, which are earth-based, lineage-based, and community-based. Most of these traditions cannot be “certified,” and to try would risk stripping them of their sacredness and replicating colonial patterns. Instead, you’ll receive teachings directly from the lineage and guest teachers, always honoring the cultures, medicines, and practices from which they come.
You’ll commune with cacao and other plant medicines, walk through the four elements, and remember your place as part of the Earth.
This mentorship is a doorway — the beginning of a lifelong journey of learning, service, and sacred practice.
WHAT FOLKS ARE SAYING…
“Barbara created a space during our time with the Sapara that felt sacred, real, and deeply respectful. Her relationships within the community aren’t performative — they’re built on years of trust, reciprocity, and presence.
I was able to soften into the experience because she had already done the work to ensure we were entering in a good way.
With Barbara, I didn’t just attend a retreat — I experienced a reclamation.
return to the Earth, to spirit, and to my own knowing. If you’re being called to this retreat, trust the call. You’ll be held.”
MISHA, RETREAT PARTICIPANT & PSYCHOLOGIST
What it means to be a bridge between two worlds…
For many of us, there’s a hesitation when it comes to working with plant medicine. We tell ourselves stories: “I’m not Indigenous enough.” “This isn’t for me because of the color of my skin.” “Do I even belong here?”
I know this feeling well. Growing up between New York City and Ecuador, I often felt like I didn’t belong — not from here, not from there, ni de aqui ni de alla. I carried the weight of feeling “not Indigenous enough.”
But over time, I began to see these doubts for what they are: stories. Stories that keep us small, that separate us from our roots, and that disconnect us from the sacred medicines our ancestors once knew and shared.
The truth is: many of us are in a journey of remembering. Of reclaiming our roots. Of healing not just ourselves, but the collective. And part of that healing happens when we allow these stories to be heard and still choose to honor our truth and our calling.
I now understand that being a bridge between worlds is my medicine. It is the gift I carry. And I trust that the people who are meant to walk this path with me will find me, just as I know those meant to walk with you will find you.
So I invite you: quiet the voices of doubt and walk in integrity. People may always have opinions, but this journey isn’t about them. If you feel called to work with cacao, to receive Andean teachings, and to weave them with your own roots and gifts then this space is for you.
Have any questions? Schedule a FREE 30 minute call with Barbara.