ruach hakodesh- on qi pt 1

18 shvat 5781 

i have been using the word qi a lot in this blog. i think a lot of it is wishful thinking. i want to think i am perceptive and can sense the energetics of tea. i believe i can to some degree, but any evaluation or judgment of qi in a tea should be balanced with the fact that i am fairly amateurish. i do have a better sense for tea than the average person and i do have an above average sense of plant energetics but i am nowhere near the most experienced or the most perceptive. i want to be. i hope to be, but for now, i just aint there yet.

 

where does my experience with qi come from? it’s a little hodgepodge. i have done a little bit of qi gong and tai chi with a couple different teachers. mainly, when i lived in north Carolina in the black mountains, one of our neighbors just graduated acupuncture school. he was friends with a bunch of us at the farm which he happened to have previously worked at, and he would hang out with us and on tuesdays we’d do qi gong with him. he was very passionate about qi gong and it was really great. the town i live in currently has someone at the YMCA who teaches tai chi and kung fu. he is really into the five elements and incorporates a lot of energetics into his class. he is a fantastic teacher but i haven’t gone since the pandemic. there is someone who has their own school of tai chi and qi gong in town who is highly respected and i do want to take classes with them one day. it is definitely on my post-pandemic to-do-list. 

 

my other exposure with classical qi comes from my readings of Chinese meteria medica and other books about TCM. ive gotten a good amount of acupuncture in my past and besides askig lots of questions about my diagnosis i’d try to pay attention to the qi in my body during the session. acupuncture wasn’t for me though, my constitution didn’t need needle medicine (not warm and tonifying enough).

 

i am a plant nerd before i am a tea nerd. i love plants and i love plant energetics and getting to know them. this is one of the things where i get the most woo. a lot of herbalism nerds like plant meditations. this is where someone takes a drop dose of a tincture (either a mystery tincture or one that is known) and sits quietly with it and tries to feel how they are interacting with the plant. this is how lots of early herbalism was done (Chinese and others) and it was often done with very high doses to really push the limits (extreme!). am i a professional herbalist? no. do i have years of experience making plant medicine and working with it and getting to know it? no. but do i love plants and pay attention to them? yes.   

 

where else do i actively interact with qi? i don’t know if you’ve noticed from this blog, but i am jewish. not only am i jewish but i am a millennial jew who is a little woo and is into esotericism and mysticism. judaism has qi too. the most literal synonym would probably be ‘ruach.’ this word can mean different things including: air, wind, breath, and spirit. jewish mysticism, although it uses different words, cares a lot about ruach. prayer can be seen as an similar  to some Taoist meditations whether it be reflective meditation or energy boosting ecstatic prayer. the jewish mitzvot focus a lot on intention and can be seen as one trying to focus or enhance the qi of themselves or others, including the ‘holy sparks’ contained in non-humans and objects. even the act of torah study is supposed to be a form of meditation and energy building. 

 

again, am i an expert on ‘ruach?’ no. im someone who knows a lil bit about lots of things. i am smart, but i do not tend to hyperfocus or specialize. i have too many interests.

 

do all plants have qi? in my opinion, yes. the same goes for tea in my view. some would say that not all tea contains qi and only very special teas do. i am not going to argue with that. these people know more about tea and Chinese culture than i do and have probably had a lot more experience drinking and feeling tea. 

 

for me, individual teas have a different energetic quality to them. yes, they may all share similar chemical compounds, but there is still uniqueness to each tree based on where it grows, what grows around it, the weather patterns, and how it is treated. the same goes for the leaf. the leaf can be affected by the quality of the tree, the growing conditions, when it was picked, how it was dried, how it was processed, how it was pressed, how it was stored, etc. this all affects the energetics and how the tea presents itself. 

 

then there is the water and the person brewing the tea which also affects the qualities of the tea and how they present themselves. all of this is ‘qi’ in my view. am i an expert? no. but i want to give some context to how i talk about tea on this blog. 

 

this is how i feel for now. hopefully my sense and perception of qi will evolve while writing this blog. maybe one day i will look back on this post and ______. T(ea)BD

 

xoxo,

atzei besamim