Tea Ceremony
New Mexico
"By working with tea, I started to be able to taste and feel deeply through all of my senses. Through that transformational process within myself, I realised that all I can do now is pour this back and learn how to be in service [to the divine] by serving others."
What are you offering right now?
I find that there's the digestible and the not as digestible, but I would say my most seen, tangible offering to the world currently is through the ceremony of tea. Though, if I had to really distill it, I'm always working with and for Spirit. My core mission and intention is in service to the pathway of Self cultivation, helping others to merge deeper with the Divine and remembering our true nature as vessels for the Elementals and Source Consciousness.
How does tea support that intention?
Tea transformed my life personally. It gave me the compass to begin to understand what a subtle relationship to the Divine, to the Elemental world, and to the unseen forces feels like. As a server, you're the catalyst, creating all the connections between the Elements so the tea can be brewed. That's your influence, so wherever your mind is, that's the tea you're brewing. It is a direct transmission from nature. By working with tea, I started to taste and feel deeply through all of my senses. Through that transformational process within myself, I realized that all I could do moving forward is pour that reflection back out and learn how to be in service to this awakening by serving others.
What do you love about tea?
For the fact that it is this simple, beautiful, and subtle, but yet also a very strong and powerful teacher.
What were you doing before?
I was working in Hollywood in the entertainment industry and just moving through those illusory realms. I started doing Yoga and was lucky to find this beautiful configuration of teachers with classes that were imbibed with a lot of spirit. I felt like in that space I could feel this dormant part of me starting to wake up, the part that has always felt very connected to something bigger, but it was hard to hear. As a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in inner city LA, learning to survive, I had a lot of thick armor. When I started to turn more toward this whispering of spirit, I felt this softening happening in my cellular body, and I realized the entertainment industry was not nurturing for me. - Then I spent some time curating this vintage and fine jewelry store, which was fun, but I was still so drained… as if Spirit kept letting me try on different shoes and was asking, “How much do you truly like this? Is this what you want to be doing with your time?”
How did this path find you?
That is truly a deep question… so many layers to the unfolding - where to even begin. But practically, I lived near friends who had just returned from Asia and started sharing tea they had brought back from their travels. One weekend months later they decided to host the tea teacher they had met in Taiwan, and I joined them, sitting for tea with a little group. I found there I was just swept into the abyss of my own heart - it was like finding a deep well that I didn't even realize was there and yearning to be filled. When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Tea. It turned out there had been a cancellation for the workshop that weekend, and I was invited to take it. So, I dropped all my plans, didn’t open my shop, abandoned all my responsibilities, jumped on my bike and rode there as fast as I could. From that moment on, I just started to fall so deeply in love with tea and the practice.
What happened after that?
I started to sit and become more attuned to quietude and to my stillness, and then the softening started happening. And through that, my work with women started to unfold in a very clear and strong way. I just kept following the threads because it was unfolding so naturally. This path has taught me not to push, to sit back and trust, to keep following the signs that have the fingerprints of God everywhere and lean into the whisperings of the subtle and the unseen.
How does tea affect us outside of the practice?
Hopefully any practices that we're engaging in and making space to have in our lives are influencing the way we get up off the cushion and go out into the world. Hopefully they are inspiring us to be more compassionate and awake, more in tune with harmony and the notes of the instrument we are playing in this grand orchestra of life.
How does this kind of work support us collectively?
There’s so much suffering in the world, it's very loud, so we need to learn to cultivate moments of peace, quietude, compassion and understanding - especially when understanding can be one of the hardest things to bestow? How do we bring that into our community, into our close knit families, into the places that we can have influence amidst all the noise. It’s like dropping a pebble into the still lake and seeing the ripples of the water move all the way to the shore. I'm an individual here and I'm working on myself, but because I'm part of a whole, that work that I am providing for my own consciousness is also changing the fabric and the nature of consciousness itself.
What are some of your daily practices?
Before I get up, I stretch and do really simple Qigong exercises, just waking up my meridians and presenting myself in my body, mostly intuitive movements based on how I slept and how I am feeling that morning. Then I’ll sit and meditate for a while, dropping into my baseline state. And from there if I’m home, I’ll start tending all the altars, where my deities reside with offerings at their feet. Tending the kitchen and resetting things. Putting energy into beautifying things, just simple like that. Then I put on water and sit for tea…
How can people work with you?
I don’t promote much and trust people who want to work with me will just find their way but following my newsletter is the best way to stay current on my offerings.
I have a 6-month virtual group mentorship that is specifically for “The Way of Tea” and nurturing at home daily practice, which I offer twice a year, in the Fall and Spring. I travel and serve in other communities and often create collaborative immersive retreats with other teachers and peers from my internal community. Currently right now I am pouring my energy into setting up my Temple space in Taos, New Mexico, readying it to become a sanctuary space to hold small groups of students for study and ritual weekends.
What are your favorite words of wisdom?
Truly ask yourself, “Is it worth it? Is whatever I am holding onto worth the price of my freedom?" This is not meant to disregard your experience, but to fully acknowledge it and free yourself from all the content and stories created in the mind. I am always reminding myself of two things my teacher says -“I don’t know” and “The universe exists in a myriad of ways other that it appears to me”.
What do you keep next to your bed?
I have selenite on both sides of my bed, and then at night I usually have a glass of Magnesium and often a dream oil. I have all kinds of essences I love from Stargazer Lee, and some beautiful Rose and Blue Lotus glycerin.
What is on your altar?
I have altars all over my house, they often have dried roses, fresh flowers, tea, rice, water and incense. Right now I have owl feathers and snake skins that have been left on my porch by the Great Horned Owl and the Serpents living out back on the land.
What books do you love?
Old Path White Clouds by Thich Nhat Hanh (Always reignites my deep desire to dedicate myself as much as possible to my practice)
The Mysticism of Sound and Music (It’s one of those that you can read one page and be chewing on the wisdom that exists in that paragraph for a week)
Tantra Supreme Understanding by Osho
The Way of Tea by my teacher Wude
Photos by Koa Kalish
