teakkurim

16 adar II 5782 i am excited that my relationship to qi continues to evolve ( past posts on qi ). just with any practice or activity, the more i relate to chaqi, the more i gain. this does not hold to the isolated activity of ‘gong fu cha.’ the more we experience life, the more we can relate the world we are encountering and it’s generative lessons to any practice and vice versa. the more i consciously interact with chaqi, the more i learn to interact with qi in my other encounters. qi is not a one way street. yes, a tea has qi, but we as the tea drinkers can change how the qi interacts with us. one aspect of this is the classic example of how your mood can alter your experience. if i am having a grumpy day and feeling rushed and stressed out, i may interpret the tea as ‘energizing.’ but if i am calm, relaxed, and intentional when drinking my tea, i might feel the tea as more calming and not energizing at all. but here’s where the kicker comes in ‘hey, teakkurim, if one’s mood is what ...

21 shvat 5781 camellia sinensis is not the only ‘tea’ i drink. every morning i drink herbal tea when i wake up. depending on what time of year or how i am feeling i will drink different things. in the winter i like things that are warming and spicy to help generate some heat and give some fire to my digestion. during the summer, i usually wake up with my anxiety at an 11. boom, im awake, time to be anxious. when this happens, i like to start my mornings with some serious downer tea to help me calm down. i like to make my own blends but i also will drink bag tea, especially this time of year when i feel more ‘blah’ and want something convenient. when i go backpacking or camping i love spending my morning by walking around and finding some things to make tea with. i will boil water, make my ‘forest tea’ and sit by some water and pray or sing while i drink my tea.   i love tea because it is a plant. i love interacting with plants. i especially love plants i can eat, drink, or make me...

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 wi...