Ritual Tea: How the 9 Secrets of Tea Can Transform Your Life by Mario Zeleny Review

Title: Ritual Tea: How the 9 Secrets of Tea Can Transform Your Life
Author: Mario Zeleny
Publisher: Sancti Spiritus
Pages: 200
Genre: Self-help/Inspirational
Format: Paperback/Kindle

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Media headlines abound these days saying, “Tea is trendy...” and we believe it until we read the first chapter of Ritual Tea: How the 9 Secrets of Tea Can Transform Your Life.   Entitled, Tea’s Sordid and Holy Exploits, chapter one is a worldwide, whirlwind tour of tea history that leaves the reader knowing once and for all that tea has always been trendy for very good reasons. Next to water, tea is the world’s most popular drink.

Author Mario Zeleny, lifelong tea lover and personal coach, extracts the magic of tea from its history, uses, and benefits but also from its power to change the world. He brings the secrets of tea into modern light, and makes it accessible for contemporary lifestyles.

“We do not have to be a Buddhist monk, or study The Way of Tea for decades to be your own Tea Master,” says Zeleny, “but you must understand its secrets to reap tea’s transformative qualities in your life.”

Ritual Tea boasts over 30 links to free tea products, ten personal rituals to help with everything from anxiety to sleep, and 10 charts that make crafting our own ritual a breeze.  

Discover the transformative power of tea hidden in its history, versatility, and essence through simple, timeless and individualized rituals. To help us on the tea path, the author has made a free Ritual Tea ecourse available through ArtSpellz.com.

Tea has made a 5000 year trek to inhabit the world and in its wake it has altered not only individual lives but cultures and countries.  Ritual Tea asks, “Who will we be in tea’s history?”  Will we just make tea, or will we allow tea make us?

First Chapter:

Tea Incarnations:

Sordid and Holy Exploits

Like most major discoveries, the invention of tea was an accident.

The history of tea reads like a myth from The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell:

                            •           Tea went on a journey and traveled the world.

                            •           Tea has companions.

                            •           Tea altered history—politics, commerce, spiritual traditions as well as the growth of nations in addition to people’s well-being, fame and fortune.

                            •           Tea has transformed, yet remains the same.

                            •           Tea is personal and universal.

                            •           Tea has started wars and ended them.

                            •           Tea is both sacred and ordinary. 

                            •           Tea has been used as money, for negotiations, to buy a wife and as a sacred tool in monasteries.

                            •           Tea is for welcoming and saying goodbye. 

                            •           Tea has provided meaningfulness and stability, social connection and comforting solace. 

                            •           Tea is refreshing and healing, stimulating and calming.

                            •           Tea overcame many challenges to reach you.

It should not be a surprise then that a substance of this magnitude has many birth legends. But, China, Japan, Korea and India have finally come to agree on one thing: tea was discovered in China about 5000 years ago by Shen Nong.

Shen Nong is the acclaimed father of agriculture and medicine in China. Shen Nong named tea ‘cha' which is the same pronunciation for "checking for poisons". One myth says, "He tasted herbs and plants all day noting their effects." When he tasted tea, he believed it checked for poisons as it made its way through his intestines.  In effect, it purified him of toxins.

Another story says Shen Nong was traveling, when he stopped to boiled water to sanitize it.  Leaves from a nearby bush blew in the steaming water. This new brew created an appealing aroma.  Upon tasting the tea, he found it delicious and stimulating.

Out of facts and legends, another less exciting story can be seen emerging.  In southwest China 5000 years ago, there was a tribe of people called Shen Nong.  The Shen Nong macerated herbs, plants and leaves to soften them. It was a common practice to extract the nutrients.  Edentulism (loss of teeth) was also common. Obviously, after the loss of molars, chewing many of the leaves and plants becomes difficult, if not impossible.

The next best thing to the dissolving qualities of saliva and maceration is water and a mortar and pedestal. Simple observations would have shown that warm water extracts faster and better than cold. Tea must have been extraordinarily easier to consume as a warm liquid than chewing and sucking on it during the day.

Regardless of tea's creation story, all is conjecture. Tea is not mentioned in writing until 3rd century AD in a Chinese medicinal text written by Hua T'o; far after tea's discovery.  By this time, the legends of the birth of tea had already begun to develop.

Written records or not, tea myths still abound even today. Many tea writers, blind to anthropological realities, have tea arriving into some countries considerably later than it actually occurred.  These stories are often dependent upon biased historical claims rather than on science and evidence. 

Throughout tea's travels, tea has remained ecumenical.  Tea is still innocent of the drama, abuse, bloodshed, and espionage associated with its history.  It is highly unusual that some cultures did not demonize tea for all the hell it caused among people. But tea also continues to be steeped in adoration and honor from the individual and collective lives it has changed for the better.

  

Ritual Tea: How the 9 Secrets of Tea Can Transform Your Life Tour Page:

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About the Author

Mario Zeleny – Lover of all things tea.  Mario spent 15 years in healthcare and social services in clinical and administrative roles that offered coaching to employees and volunteers.  An artist and entrepreneur from an early age, Mario now brings his love of writing, art, spirit, coaching and ritual together online at his creative living site, Sancti Spiritus and also from his transformational art site, Art Spellz. Mario looks forward to completing his education with Mentor Coach and St. Clement Seminary. He currently resides in Sacramento with his husband of 8 years, their children and their domestic sovereign, a pug named Brigit.

His latest book is the self-help inspirational, Ritual Tea: How the 9 Secrets of Tea Can Transform Your Life.

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My Review: 

Since I am Deal Sharing Aunt, I LOVED that there were links to 30 FREE tea products. There are so many different kinds of tea, that I was lost before I read this book. However now I know the meanings and so much more. I feel like I could sweep a tea category on Jeopardy! The tea blend chart on page 129 is great, because you will know exactly where and how the tea is made. The Herb Correspondence on page 110 was informative. If I feel like I am having a bad day and I need energy, then I know to drink ginger tea. There is also a free online class that goes with this book! I am giving this book a 4/5. I was given a copy to review, however all opinions are my own.