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Since the beginning of 2018, every month we gather to perform what we have termed a “Tea & Sound Experience”. Now that we’ve been walking this path for over a year, and so many of you have enjoyed and shared this inspiring project, I decided to write something about this “sensory” experience with the hope that it peaks the interest of more tea and music lovers and you come and partake in one of these sessions with us.
Basically, our concept combines formal tea ceremony with a sound bath. Two healing practices that we combine naturally in an inclusive and fluid way. Two different types of travels that accompany each other, mixing, fusing, contrasting, bringing us inwards, exploring, opening, taking us beyond… we explore, travel, return relocated, having shared a group experience as individuals, personal but shared, still but having had all our senses vibrated, calmed, united, meditative, silenced… renovated.
Anybody who has frequented Čaj Chai Teahouse over the last 15 years knows just how important music is for us! In May 2017, destiny made sure I bump into a frequent customer and guitarist extraordinaire at the airport. We were both returning from separate trips to Asia and for both of us, our trips revolved around tea and tea ceremony… we share a love for tea and music in a profound, ceremonial and transformative way.
Some months later, this fabulous tea-loving guitarist, Guillermo Rizzotto, offered me the chance to experience the new sound project he had created with Michie Kuwashima (Tibetan Bowls and voice), which they had named Sonando道. His intuition invited me with the idea we might want to collaborate. I laid down on the tatami and submerged myself in the sound bath, relaxing until having fallen asleep. I awoke just as they were winding down and embarrassingly had to admit I had fallen asleep even though I really did love it! Months later Guillermo would reveal that my drowsiness was a very positive omen for him as his father had always fallen asleep during his recitals and he too loved his son’s music! Evidentally, we were destined to come together and make others relax and often times even enter a meditative state through our music, sound and tea, which I lovingly refer to as Good Vibrations, thus simultaneously manifesting my love for Brian Wilson and the healing potential of sound and tea medicine.
Every month we offer a Tea and Sound Experience at “Ceremonia del Té”, in the Gothic Quarter, right in front of Čaj Chai Teahouse and sometimes at private homes, events and festivals. We invite participants to leave their worldly affairs behind as best they can, let go of worries, plans and try to embody sustained presence for a while. Breathing, we open the senses and let ourselves be guided by the soundscapes and plant medicine, the silence of tea and the sounds of Sonando道.
We gather to share the ephemeral nature of the “one moment, one chance” occasion that the Japanese refer to as “Ichigo ichie”, or as Master Oogway says, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift…That’s why they call it Present.”
If what we do resonates with you, we invite you to check our web for the next Tea and Sound Experience!