Chadao as Eco-Ritual

Tea offers a path of return—again and again—to deepen our relationship with the Earth and the sacred embedded in the natural world and everyday life.

It may surprise you to learn that for roughly 90% of humanity’s relationship with the tea plant—a bond stretching back centuries, if not millennia—tea was regarded not as a casual beverage, but as a hallowed substance. Only in the most recent sliver of this long history has tea become primarily a recreational drink. For our ancestors, who lived in closer harmony with the rhythms of nature, the infusion of Camellia sinensis facilitated a sacred communion—a bridge between the human spirit and the natural world.

If you've ever attended one of my offerings, you've likely heard me speak about how the four major spiritual traditions of ancient China—the shamans, Confucians, Taoists, and Buddhists—each embraced tea as a medium for spiritual practice. They developed rituals, much like the one I engage in daily and am honored to share with my community, that moved beyond a single ceremonial act and blossomed into an entire way of life known as Chadao, the Way of Tea.

Chadao as ritual is a cultivated art of presence, stillness and connection, akin to a martial art of the spirit. It offers a path of return—again and again—to deepen our relationship with the Earth and the sacred embedded in the natural world and everyday life. In this ritual, tea becomes both teacher and translator, helping us dissolve the boundaries our modern world has constructed and reawakening our innate sense of interconnectedness—not only with each other, but with the trees, the wind, the birdsong, the stones, and the stars. It’s a practice of reverence for the divine woven through all life.

If you’ve ever sat quietly outdoors with a truly intentional, earth-centered tea, allowing yourself to melt into the stillness, you may have been surprised by how effortlessly you could tune into the subtle voices of nature—messages that emerge, unbidden, from your own deep inner well of wisdom. A well, perhaps, you didn’t even know was there until that moment. This experience, to me, is best described as shamanic. The beauty is that it is accessible to us all, not exclusively through tea but tea does provide a uniquely potent and magical vessel through which such encounters naturally unfold.

As a Chadao practitioner deeply rooted in Taoism and the wisdom of the Five Elements, my path has continued to evolve. These elemental teachings bring a beautiful language of archetypes and metaphors, further enriching both my ritual and my relationship with the world around me. Taoism, after all, is one of the world’s oldest and most profound ecological philosophies. Whether practicing alone or in community, what I offer through tea is an eco-ritual grounded in eco-spirituality - an exploration of elemental embodiment and inner alchemy, guided by our plant ally, tea.

This ritual sharpens the senses and softens the heart. It invites us, through reverence respect, and reciprocity, to return to right relationship with the Earth. As we enter into this communion—through presence, listening, and deep humility—we begin to restore our inner ecology, and with it, a deep remembrance of our place within the web of life.

There has never been a more essential time to engage in such work. Healing ourselves and our world cannot come from a place of self-centered striving alone. True healing arises when we begin to repair our collective relationship with the Earth—because we are the Earth. Only by restoring balance in that relationship can we experience the wholeness, belonging, and peace we so deeply long for.

I share all this with you because while eco-spirituality—the sacred cosmology that sees the divine in ecosystems and landscapes—has long been the quiet foundation of my practice, I’m now stepping more fully into clarity and intention around this truth. I am devoting myself even more deeply to this path, and to ensuring that everything I share is in alignment with this vision of living in devoted and dedicated reciprocity with the Earth.

With Earth Day just behind us, I hope to carry that momentum forward, offering more consistent opportunities to gather, reflect, and reconnect with the natural world through tea and ritual. I also realize that for those of you who’ve never attended a tea ceremony—or even some who have—I may not have always clearly expressed the heart of what I’m sharing. My intention is not simply to offer tea, but to invite you into a path of reconnection, reverence, and ecological awakening.

I look forward to sharing more with you as this vision continues to grow. May you, too, experience the quiet magic, the profound healing, and the deep remembering that Chadao has brought into my life.