9am
Sooz Hammond of Being Tea will lead a weekly morning Tea Meditation focused on mindfulness training, and how tea selections can help to support well being.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://uic.zoom.us/j/86241081765?pwd=dTRRaExoUDdlQVM3Z0MxUUE1OWdNQT09
Meeting ID: 862 4108 1765
Passcode: 4zVg+tim
Guided Tea Meditation
If you’ve ever felt soothed by the warmth of a cup of tea, you have felt the power of what tea can do for your wellbeing. Tea calms a choppy mind, grounds our body, and connects us to our senses. This November, come sit with us and take refuge in guided tea meditation. A highly adaptable, easy to approach practice that you can do anywhere you can have tea and breathe. Trauma informed instruction and very friendly for beginners of tea or mindfulness.
Teacher bio:
Suzette Hammond (Sooz) is an award-winning teacher, sensory skills trainer, and tea spiritual practitioner with nearly two decades of tea industry and training experience. She is the founder of Being Tea, offering customized workshops and interactive online learning, as well as a teacher training program. Her education style centers on fundamentals of sensory-supportive adult learning, addressing accessibility issues, and promoting psychologically sensitive teaching methods. Suzette is also a certified trauma informed yoga and meditation teacher, blends these modalities into her tea meditation offerings. Suzette was honored for her dedication to tea education through Being Tea with a World Tea Award for Best Educator. You can follow her on BeingTea.com.
Suggested equipment:
In this class, we’ll be preparing tea together in real time. In addition to having a comfortable place to sit quietly and comfortably for the hour, you’ll need a few items:
- An electric kettle to heat your water. Stovetop is fine, too; you’ll just need to be near your kitchen to practice.
- Loose leaf tea of your choice. Ideally unflavored, single ingredient tea.
- Small bowl or mug for brewing your tea. This could be a mug 10-12oz, or a rice bowl or ice cream bowl. (or a matcha bowl, if you have one of those!) Something round that feels comfortable to hold. We’ll be drinking our tea loose in the mug.
- You may wish to have a journal for personal meditations or thoughts (we don’t share them in session).
About the tea:
You can actually use any tea that you have available on hand for this practice! Particularly good teas for this time of year include slightly roasted oolong teas, lighter black teas, and white teas. Note we are specifically working with traditional teas from the tea plant for this practice, not herbal or medicinal teas. If you would like to explore tea options, please reach out to Sooz at sooz@beingtea.com and she can recommend easy-to-find teas online for you.
Additionally, Being Tea also offers a seasonal tea meditation box kit, including samples of 4 teas, each good for several servings. Each tea is also described with both taste notes as well as felt sensory/energetic quality, to help guide your choice for a session. This kit is available for $30, including shipping. Tea meditation boxes are in limited quantity, so please reach out to Sooz directly if you’re interested! They are available anytime during our November sessions.
As 2020 begins to draw to a close, there are many potential major shifts on the horizon, on top of the many changes and challenges that this year already presented. As a college we understand that this November emotions could run high, feelings of anxiety and fears around so many unknowns will only be natural, and that in this moment of unrest and uncertainty we need to support one another.
Through our Critical Care initiative we will be launching a series of weekly programs and virtual spaces to help support each other through the month of November and beyond. These are offerings of care, of community and collectivity, and hope.