In the first round, each participant brings in a personal topic they would like to explore in the space of Emergent Interbeing.

To help you choose a topic, we suggest the following areas:

1. An insight that has been on your mind – perhaps an inspiration from a book, a conversation, a podcast, or a film.
2. Something essential happening in your relationships, for example in your circle of friends, at work, or in your family.
3. Something personal that is currently preoccupying, inspiring or challenging you.
4. A question or insight regarding the practice of Emergent Interbeing itself.

Guided by our deeper sense of what feels most resonant we discover together which of these topics we will choose to explore in our Tea Dialogue. This process of sharing and choosing a topic takes about 30 minutes.

Each participant then takes on the chosen topic as their own, as we open it together in the field of Interbeing. The dialogue itself lasts about 60 minutes. When our dialogues come to a close, we end our gathering with a final sip of tea. And extinguish our candle.

If there are multiple small groups, we conclude with a short collective gathering in which we share our experiences.
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The Ritual Framework
‍Our experienced hosts, who accompany you through the Interbeing Tea Dialogues, will open and hold this ritual framework through the shared process – and invite you to entrust this protected space with your openness and honest concerns. We formally open this shared space by lighting a candle together. This also gives our gathering an outer, visible form.

‍The Tea Dialogues open up a new world that goes far beyond personal advice. They bring about so much more than mere psychology.

‍Participants in the Tea Dialogues repeatedly experience how being together in Interbeing makes qualities accessible that are especially life-serving when we are wrestling with major life questions or challenges. Where psychological solutions address us in our individuality, the Interbeing Tea Dialogues open our horizon. They allow us to experience our uniqueness within the larger current of life. And this sense of being embedded in a whole is healing. One might say that here we recognize that our “personal problems” are expressions of a larger human unfolding.. It is not just ‘me’ who is struggling with something – rather, life itself is seeking to reveal and manifest new possibilities of existence. This shared process, anchored in a profound awareness of ‘not knowing’ or mystery, liberates us from isolation and grounds our life within a broader field of possibility. We receive and embody a strength much greater than ourselves.

The Interbeing Tea Dialogues rely subtly yet intentionally on the power of a ritual framework. Coming together with a cup of tea grounds us in a shared reality. And the tea itself has healing effects on body and mind. In this way, we can enliven our deepest existential questions that, alone and fragmented, we would often face helplessly.
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Tea Ceremony
‍Perhaps you have already taken part in a tea ceremony. In China and Japan in particular, the tea ceremony holds a special place, as it opens a space of openness and togetherness among participants. Sharing a special tea ennobles the moment we spend together. And it opens us to a unique quality of relationship that the tea supports – between us humans in our shared presence; with the tea itself, which also allows the more-than-human world to be present. Moreover, tea is an invitation to follow a shared path of inner alignment – from the profane of everyday superficiality to the profound of genuine encounter between us.
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The Spiritual Quality of Tea
‍Depending on the tea we drink, we can experience with subtle immediacy how the beverage not only offers something in terms of taste, but can also opens something more subtle between us. For the Interbeing Tea Dialogue, we recommend rosemary tea – because rosemary deepens our relationship to the spiritual dimension, to the Spirit that connects us all, and points us to life in its greater wholeness. By opening ourselves together to these subtleties we also open to the imaginal – to what can arise between us.