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Metta Wellness Space

@metta_wellness_space

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Creating space for space. ✨
Tea Ceremonies (Cha Dao - The Way Of Tea), Yoga, Yoga Nidra, Sound, Reiki & Women’s Circles - Eltham, Melbourne 🙏🏻

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A Tea Ceremony meditation is one of the most profoundly nurturing and transformative practices you can experience, particularly when it comes to mental clarity, emotional healing, and overall well-being. This ritual is not just about sipping tea—it’s a deep journey into the self, an invitation to slow down, connect, and truly listen to what your body and mind are telling you.

The tea used in these ceremonies is a subtle yet powerful plant medicine, infused with centuries of wisdom. Each sip guides you deeper into a state of calm presence, where the mind begins to quiet, and the body begins to relax. The natural compounds in the tea help to clear mental fog and promote a sense of peace, while also opening up the heart space, encouraging introspection, clarity, and emotional balance. As you sit with the tea, the plants offer their energy in a way that is gentle but potent—creating an opportunity for profound shifts in both mindset and emotional state.

Each ceremony is unique and offers a chance for healing. The tea acts as a bridge between the physical and spiritual, helping to center your energy and create a sense of groundedness, allowing you to approach life with a clearer, more open perspective. The gentle focus required during the ceremony invites you to release stress, let go of worries, and shift into a space of trust, clarity, and deep relaxation.

Everyone could benefit from the ritual of tea ceremony meditation. In a world that moves at such a rapid pace, it’s easy to become disconnected from our inner selves. Tea ceremony offers the perfect opportunity to reconnect, recalibrate, and reenergize. It is a simple, yet potent tool for fostering well-being, building mindfulness, and cultivating a resilient mindset.

If you’re ready to embark on a transformative journey, I invite you to join me for an upcoming ceremony. Let’s come together, sip mindfully, and experience the healing power of tea. Your mind, body, and soul will thank you.

Book your spot now, and allow the medicine of tea to guide you toward a place of balance and clarity. #chadaomelbourne #bright #teaceremonymelbourne taken in Bright, Victoria by @metta_wellness_space

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a year ago

What to expect during a Tea Ceremony?
A Tea Ceremony is a mindfulness practice, an invitation to slow down, using tea as a plant medicine & as your anchor. On arrival you will be asked to gather outside until the commencement time, then remove your shoes, turn your phone to airplane & then enter the space silently & find yourself a cushion to sit on. From there, the tea & teaware will be cleansed (this also serves as a cleansing of the soul & your journey), then the tea will be prepared & served to you. All in silence. Drink as much or as little tea as you like. A minimum of three bowls will be served to you. What is often found is each bowl serves a new unfolding or experience, and a deepening of the contemplative & meditative state, or at least a calmer nervous system.
For each ceremony, a beautiful soundtrack will have been chosen to compliment the tea, the time of day & to take you deeper into your journey.
A Tea Ceremony offers many benefits. It’s a beautiful opportunity to experience connection; to ourselves, nature & our community. It also reduces stress, induces relaxation & offers a rare moment of silence & stillness. Tea serves as a heart opening ally. She is a powerful & gentle teacher, that brings us into relationship with ourselves & all that is.
Through the silence of a Tea Ceremony we allow ourselves space to hear, feel & receive. It is common for emotions to arise & tears to fall with tea anchoring you into the presence & the offering of space to feel what needs to be felt. Allow the experience to unfold naturally. Each sit will feel like an entirely different experience.
All Tea served is what is known as Living Tea, from ancient, wild grown trees free from pesticides & fertilisers, trees which have lived in communion with humans for sometimes hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.
After each ceremony you have the choice to leave, and continue to bathe in the silence, or stay for reflection, open discussion & community connection. by @metta_wellness_space

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3 years ago

I am often asked what a Tea Ceremony is. It is essentially a moving meditation where we dance with the elements. The spirit of tea is our anchor & our guide, connecting us back to nature, back to ourselves. As we begin to slow down & quieten down, each sip becomes a journey towards clarity and peace. The ceremony takes place in silence and there is a space for questions, reflection & community connection at the end. I hope you can join me some time soon. by @metta_wellness_space

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3 years ago

Car ride chats on the way home from school:

“Mum you’ve been giving more than receiving lately. Why don’t you try write to Santa this year and ask for something for yourself? Why don’t you ask for a rare tea?”

- Indie, aged 9. My sweet soul. 🌸 by @metta_wellness_space

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5 days ago

This morning, I shared tea with some fellow Chájín (tea servers), and how beautiful it was.

As we sat together after tea reflecting, we each shared how isolating our tea journeys have felt at times.

There’s this beautiful sense of unison and interconnectedness that comes with discovering tea, learning the forms, and deepening our practice. And yet, for many of us, the journey has also felt quite lonely.

Especially for those of us who began exploring this practice years ago, when there were so few others around us to share it with.

Thankfully, more and more tea lovers and servers are emerging here in Melbourne, and it feels so special to find one another.

This is why we’ve created this little community — to meet regularly, to share tea, to receive tea, to connect in person, and to explore a little more deeply the magic of this practice and all that it offers us.

Because while tea can be such a deeply personal practice, there is something really special about sharing it with others who understand.

To sit together. To learn from one another. To be both the server and the receiver.

Feeling very grateful to have found this community, and to all the connections still to come. by @metta_wellness_space

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10 days ago

Just imagine for a moment…
Sitting opposite me, here beside this river. There’s no need to speak. No need to make conversation or eye contact. Just sit. Be. Breathe.
You watch as the tea is prepared and served slowly, ceremonially, with care and reverence.
And for a little while, you don’t have to do anything.
Your cup is filled. You receive. You drink.
You notice the river. The trees. The sounds around you.
You drink nature from a bowl.
And maybe, somewhere in those quiet moments, you realise just how long it’s been since you gave yourself permission to simply be here.
No rushing off. No list of things to do. No one needing anything from you.
Just this.
Tea.
Nature.
Presence.
And that beautiful feeling of gratitude for the space you just created for yourself. by @metta_wellness_space

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a month ago

As a gift this October, Tea Ceremonies will be offered on a pay what you can or heartfelt exchange basis — because this medicine is for everyone. It may be a monetary exchange of your choice, an exchange in services or produce, or just your presence. All is fine & welcome.

I’m also trialling a simple booking form — you’ll find the link in my bio. It’s new and I’m learning as I go, so thank you for your patience and your trust. Fill it in and I’ll be in touch to confirm your date and time. 🍵🌿 by @metta_wellness_space

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a month ago

One thing I fluctuate between is honouring my cyclical nature… and feeling frustrated by it.
I am so deeply in tune with my cycles and rhythms. There is that beautiful expansion in the first couple of weeks — more energy, creativity, outwardness, a desire to connect, create, work, socialise and do. Then, slowly, I begin to turn inward. The energy changes.
The pace softens. I want less noise, less doing, less outwardness.
And eventually comes that deep calling to switch off completely. To retreat. To nurture. To be quiet.
I think this rhythm women carry is incredibly beautiful. But I also find it really frustrating and inconvenient.
Because the modern world doesn’t really accommodate it. Work doesn’t necessarily slow down when you do. The invitations keep coming. The emails still need answering.
The children still need feeding. There are deadlines, commitments, social events, things to organise and shit to get done. And during that retreat phase, sometimes I simply don’t want to.
The older I get, and the more attuned I become to myself, the more difficult it feels to ignore these signals.
We talk about women stepping into their power, but so often that still seems to mean becoming more productive, more driven, more available — adapting ourselves to a world built around a very linear rhythm.
A man’s hormonal cycle follows a much shorter, roughly 24-hour rhythm, while the average menstrual cycle follows a roughly 28-day rhythm (though every woman’s cycle is different). CONTINUED IN COMMENTS 🌻 by @metta_wellness_space

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a month ago

In the tea community, puerh and the deeper, darker teas are deeply loved and often shared. And whilst I love them too, and they can take me on such a beautiful journey, my body doesn’t always cope with the depth or the caffeine.
A few years ago I did genetic testing, which showed I have a CYP1A2 variation associated with slower caffeine metabolism. Finally, an answer to something I had intuitively known for years. I’ve never been able to drink coffee — even the smell can feel like too much for my nervous system — and I tend to avoid caffeinated chai and teas & even dark chocolate too.
Interestingly, I can sometimes sit with puerh and darker teas quite comfortably when they’re experienced ceremonially, slowly and with presence. But especially after my surgeries this year, whilst my body has been in healing mode, I’ve found myself much more sensitive and these teas just don’t feel right.
I often have people tell me they’d love to come to a tea ceremony but they can’t cope with caffeine. There is always an option. We have lighter teas and caffeine-free choices, and I’m very happy to create a tea experience that feels supportive for you.
Learning to honour my body and what it needs is a constant unfolding. The tea practice has taught me so much about this too. There is no prize for drinking the tea everyone else is drinking. Sometimes the most important part of the practice is listening to what your own body is asking for. by @metta_wellness_space

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a month ago

In Cha Dao, we follow “form”. There is a structure to the practice that honours the lineage, but also holds processes that are ceremonial, physical, or both.
Even something as simple as how we hold the tea bowl has intention. Traditionally, the non-dominant hand sits underneath the bowl as a stable platform, while the other hand gently forms a C around the rim. This encourages an upright, meditative posture, allowing the elbows to soften slightly outwards from the body, the shoulders to relax and the heart and organs to open.
There is something beautiful about having a form to return to. It gives the body a language for slowing down.
But sometimes I break form. Especially on cold mornings, I’ll hold the bowl a little more intuitively, wrapping both hands around it and letting myself really feel the warmth.
And as I sit there, I tune into that feeling of filling my cup. Physically, with a full warm bowl of tea. Energetically, too.
The form is there to guide me, not to restrict me. I can honour the practice and the lineage, while still listening to my own body. Some mornings I need the discipline of form. Other mornings, I just need to hold the bowl, breathe, and let it warm my hands. by @metta_wellness_space

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a month ago

My tea journey began in the depths of postpartum. After experiencing red-flagged postnatal anxiety after my first daughter, I had put a lot of things in place before my second was born. I worked closely with a postnatal depletion specialist, focused on my diet and made a lot of shifts to support myself. But I still felt the heaviness of motherhood, and particularly the loss of my yoga practice. Yoga had always been such an important part of how I cared for myself, but with two under two, I simply didn’t have the capacity to move my body in the way I used to.

I needed something that was just for me, but that I could actually manage. So it started with three bowls of mindfully drinking tea. And slowly, that little practice grew into what it is today.

If you’d told me then that my practice would one day involve boiling water and precious teaware around two small children, I would have thought you were crazy. Initially, I created space for it when they were asleep, or I’d sit up on the kitchen table where little hands couldn’t reach. But over time, it became something they gave me space for, and eventually something they became part of.

Like today. My daughter’s new toy, Tee Tee, joined me for tea while she crocheted him a new outfit. My other daughter was repainting our fairy garden toadstool table, while the dog flew around the garden chasing a football.

Some days my tea practice is solitude and quiet reflection. Other days it’s this. Children, noise, creativity and life happening all around me.

And I think that’s what I love most about it now. My tea practice didn’t become a way to escape motherhood. It became a way to stay connected to myself within it, while allowing my daughters to witness their mother slowing down, being present and making space for herself too. by @metta_wellness_space

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a month ago

Perhaps slow living isn’t about doing less. Perhaps it’s about being more present for the life we are already living.
We live in a world that asks us to hurry. To fill the spaces. To be productive. To move quickly from one thing to the next.
But what if we gave ourselves permission to pause? To drink the tea while it’s still warm. To sit beneath a tree for no particular reason. To leave a little space between one thing and the next. To say no when our body is asking for less. To stop rushing through the ordinary moments that are actually our life.
Slow living can be very simple. It might just be a conscious breath before you pick up the phone or start the car. A walk without somewhere to be. A meal eaten slowly without technology. An evening without plans.
A little less rushing. A little more noticing. A little less doing. A little more being.
You don’t need permission to slow down. But perhaps you can give yourself some anyway.
Perhaps today, ask yourself:
Where could I do a little less, and simply be a little more? by @metta_wellness_space

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a month ago