The Medicine of Tea
Tea is one of the oldest medicines on earth. It has been mine for longer than I’ve been a doctor.
Where This Began
Long before I was a Doctor of Chinese Medicine, I was a student of tea.
In the Chinese medical tradition, tea is not simply a beverage. It is a formula — one that has been refining itself for thousands of years. Puerh in particular — aged, fermented, drawn from the ancient tea forests of Yunnan — has been used for generations to warm the middle, support digestion, clear the head, and gather the spirit.
I came to puerh the way most people come to their great teachers. Slowly. Then all at once.
What started as clinical curiosity became a daily practice, a ceremony, a way of marking time with my own body. Today, tea is woven through almost everything I do — as medicine, as ritual, and as one of the few things I’ve found that reliably asks me to slow down.
Tea Ceremony
A tea ceremony with me is not performance. It is presence.
Sitting together. Drinking slowly. Watching the light change. Letting the silences be as long as they need to be. Most people are startled, at first, by how much happens in a room where so little is being said.
Each ceremony is held primarily with puerh, though other teas are sometimes woven in depending on the season, the intention, and who is in the room. The pacing is traditional. The container is contemporary. You don’t need to know anything about tea to come.
Monthly Group Ceremonies Offered in Boulder and Santa Cruz on a rotating schedule. An evening with a small circle of people, usually 6–10, moving through multiple steepings of carefully chosen tea. Good for first-timers and regulars alike.
Private Ceremonies — Individuals, Couples & Families Ninety minutes of held, intentional space. People come for transitions, grief, celebration, reconnection. Some come before a psilocybin journey. Some come after a birth. Some come because they live in the same house as their family and have somehow forgotten how to sit in a room together.
Private ceremonies can be scheduled in person. Select formats are available virtually for long-distance families and couples.
OPTION 1
Private Tea Ceremony for 1-2 People
An intimate, unhurried tea ceremony for one or two people.
We’ll sit together with puerh — gong-fu, bowl, or side-handle style depending on the mood and the tea — and move slowly through multiple steepings. No experience with tea is necessary. You only need to arrive and be present.
People come for many reasons: a transition, a celebration, a moment of stillness, reconnection with someone they love. Tea has a way of creating space for all of it.
— 90 minutes, in person
— Puerh gong-fu, bowl, or side-handle format
— Held in Boulder or Santa Cruz (location confirmed after booking)
— $200 for 1–2 people
OPTION 2
Private Tea Ceremony for 3-5 People
A private tea ceremony for a small circle of people — friends, family, colleagues, or a group marking something together.
We’ll move through multiple steepings of carefully chosen puerh — gong-fu, bowl, or side-handle style — at the pace the tea asks for. Conversation happens naturally. So does quiet. Both are welcome.
This is a beautiful container for birthdays, seasonal gatherings, bachelorette weekends, grief circles, or simply an evening that means something.
— 90 minutes, in person
— Puerh gong-fu, bowl, or side-handle format
— Held in Boulder or Santa Cruz (location confirmed after booking)
— $300 for 3–5 people
OPTION 3
Private Tea Ceremony for 6-8 People
A full private tea ceremony for a larger gathering — the most expansive container Dr. LeTa offers.
Up to eight people, seated together, moving through an evening of puerh in whatever format the group calls for — gong-fu, bowl, or side-handle. Multiple steepings, unhurried pacing, and the kind of presence that only happens when a room agrees to slow down together.
People bring their closest people to this one. It works beautifully for milestone celebrations, retreats, corporate off-sites, family reunions, or any occasion where you want the gathering itself to feel like the gift.
— 90 minutes, in person
— Puerh gong-fu, bowl, or side-handle format
— Held in Boulder or Santa Cruz (location confirmed after booking)
— $400 for 6–8 people
Custom Teas
I formulate custom teas in the Chinese medicine tradition — blends designed to warm, cool, clear, calm, and support specific patterns. They are not drugstore blends. They are medicine, shaped by two decades of clinical practice and a lifetime of drinking tea.
My custom teas are carried at Soulcare Studios and through select practitioner partnerships. New blends are released seasonally.
Puerh Tea Education & Shop
My deeper work with tea — education, sourcing, lineage, and a curated shop of teas I’ve selected and formulated — lives at its own dedicated home: [puerh-tea.com]. If tea is calling you, that’s where to go further. More is coming this fall.
For Whom
There is no wrong reason to come to tea.
Some people come for grief. Some for marking transitions. Some because they have been moving too fast and they know it. Some come curious. Some come exhausted. Some come because a friend dragged them and they didn’t know what to expect.
Tea meets each of them where they are.
A Closing Thought
In a world that has forgotten how to wait, tea is a teacher of waiting. In a world that has forgotten how to receive, tea is a teacher of receiving. In a world that keeps insisting we go faster, tea — quietly, without arguing — reminds us that we are still here.
Come sit.