Serving tea properly requires years of learning
Proof of this are ** her trips around the world **, because Baelyn is called from everywhere to organize meetings in which tea and its rituals are shared . "There are a series of repetitive steps that you have to go through to make tea; find the space inside that structure and allowing the movement to arise spontaneously is the result of cultivating her practice", she explains to us. And she continues:" In the sung ceremonies , I always try to leave a lot of room for the energy to interweave in the form of collaboration among all those who are participating. At that moment something happens, and I'm not sure what it is until we are all together creating it . Therein lies the magic!"
KNOWING THE WAY OF TEA
But what has to happen for this model and actress (CSI New York, Not with my daughters, I'm seeing you.com), that she **she has posed with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie** and that she has been dating Brandon Boyd, leader of the rock group, since 2008 incubus , devote himself body and soul to such a "modest" activity? She tells us herself: "Before knowing the tea, I was looking for something... a feeling, a practice, a teacher, something that would help me connect more deeply with myself and with the world around me".
She found him in 2011, when two of her dearest friends met in Taiwan at Wu De , her teacher. "They were so inspired by their 'tea path' that they went home and they began to share that drink with the community. Finally, they organized a workshop that Wu De would teach in Los Angeles. The afternoon that she arrived , I ended up at her house to celebrate the ceremony. With each bowl I felt more present, more down to earth, clearer and spiritually nourished. There was a magic so palpable that it stayed with me as I went to sleep and until I woke up the next morning. I wanted more."
After going to her workshop "due to an incredible circumstance of fate" -because, in principle, there were no free spaces- she once again felt that so electrifying energy : "I found myself back there, bowl after bowl, being held by its warmth as it cleaned me from the inside out and opened my heart ", she recounts, moved.
After that, she began a ritual that she has not abandoned until today: sit every morning when you wake up, alone, in silence, drinking, watching and listening, in what is a form of meditation. Thus, little by little, she dove into the Tea Way Learning, one of the many lifestyles of Japanese culture, which includes others such as the path of flowers (Ikebana) or the path of energy and harmony (Aikido) . She also followed studying with his mentor -whose real name is Aaron Fisher-, an American from Ohio attracted to Asian culture from a very young age, author of several books on the subject and founder of the non-profit organization **Global Tea Hut.**
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FEMININE
"In the end, tea always asks to be shared , so I started serving it to my family and friends and the rest has happened organically from there," Baelyn narrates. By "the rest" she means the comings and goings of her acting as hostess at the tea ceremony , which almost always happens in encounters exclusively for women . One of them is the already famous ** Spirit Weavers Gathering **, "an embrace of the feminine and the ancestral paths" that is celebrated annually in Mendocino, near San Francisco.
There they practice basic human skills to ensure survival body and soul", such as fermenting food, weaving, dyeing cloth, sharing ceremonies, meals and dreams at night, drinking tea, make medicine from plants , sing songs... Despite the apparent simplicity of the event, tickets sell out months in advance that they take place, and their celebration resonates around the world.
So much so that the commemoration is already replicated in many other places of the globe under different names. The reason? For Elspeth it's simple: " getting together we have a deeper opportunity to heal our disconnection and find compassion in each other . Spirit Weavers has grown so quickly because inside of us we know that is that what we want: heal our wounds, be in community and bloom all together ".
But why only with women? "The fact of working specifically with them it happened organically "explains the angelina. "When I started serving tea, most of those who appeared were from my community of acquaintances , despite the fact that the ceremonies were open to anyone who wanted to come. I realized this, and began to consciously offer them only to them during the full and new moons ", she observes.
"Finally, I found that space it served to nourish both me and those who came . It created a safe environment to be together in a way that felt very old ; the authentically feminine is best developed in the common space. We have been taught to separate ourselves from each other and compete, which does not respond to our natural state ", Justifies the teacher, who is not only a tea teacher.
SING, DANCE AND TRAVEL
In fact, other of the rituals that Elspelth cultivates involve singing, dancing and percussion , to the point that her alias is Tien Wu, or what is the same, "divine dance" . She chose these rites because movement has always been a part of her life, since she studied ballet and folklore from the age of four. However, participating in the competitive world of dance never fulfilled him, as she "she felt it was wrong".
"When I stopped studying ballet in a traditional way I kept needing to move , and I found yoga. Through him, I began to connect with movement as a form of devotion and offering, in addition to finding a deeper harmony with my voice, because I love to sing. In 2010 I started going to workshops with **Saul David Raye**, who changed a lot of things inside of me and planted some seeds that eventually germinated into an understanding about how to share my gifts of voice and movement from a disinterested and non-goal oriented place", she tells us from Iceland.
It is there that she has taken him in one of her last encounters, which revolves around a performance by artist Samantha Shay . "I am in love with this land: raw nature and the midnight sun vibrate through my body. When I sit down to meditate, I can hear the grass breathing and the muttering mountain, it is very powerful," she recounts.
She doesn't have the same words of love for Venice , which has been her home for a long time, because she feels that, in recent times, the spirit of community, of neighborhood, has been lost. "It looks more and more like a tourist destination," he says. In fact, young Ella now spends much more time in the nature , in the beautiful canyons and mountains of the area, but she knows that is not where she is most needed. " There is a lot of work to do in the city , a lot of people looking for something, I guess validation at a superficial level. When they don't find it and the search continues, the opposite emerges, a desire for soul connection and deepening oneself." Maybe she can help them find it.