#2 - A Tea Master holding space - Moritz Tilman Holst @ Rivers and Clouds
Podcast Transcript on substack | Video on Youtube
My guest today is Moritz Holst. He is a tea master and the owner of Rivers and Clouds, a tea company.
Currently based in Europe, Moritz has shared his passion for tea from Davos to Ibiza. Beyond the tea he uses, what most touched us is the space Moritz holds (no pun intended). He is now working on physical spaces around tea.
Moritz’s discovery of tea was the silver lining of a trip in China going wrong. Since his meeting with a tea farmer, Moritz knew he would always do something with tea, no matter how much light or shadow he went through. Around tea, he holds space; and around these experiences, he envisions new kinds of physical spaces and communities, tea houses to change the world.
The Power of Tea
Moritz realized the power of tea when he could speak in Chinese, a language he was learning, about complex topics for hours without getting tired. Without tea, he would have felt exhausted after just an hour. He says major Chinese revolutions originated in tea houses, maybe the reason why Mao closed them when he rose to power.
Tea got popular with the spread of Buddhism around 300–400AD. Buddhists spread tea plants wherever they went. At some point almost every Buddhist monastery from the south of Southeast Asia all the way up to the north of Japan had their own tea plants. And that’s where it all comes from. They’ve been drinking tea far before the normal population started.
Tea vs Coffee
Coffee shoots you up and then drops you down, tea keeps you awake and focused for long periods of time. Tea is the yin to the yang of Coffee, it is more gentle, subtle and gives you space without rushing you, things can emerge. Some teas will keep you awake, others won’t, common to all is mental clarity.
Different teas, different effects
Moritz commented on the chasm between what we consume in the “West” and what they consume in circles of Connaisseurs. What we know as tea is of extremely low quality, originating from the industry the British built when they could not get their hands on Chinese tea. To this day, high-end chinese tea is mostly (90%) consumed in China.
The different types of tea:
How you consume the leaves:
The origin of the tea
Try different teas to know what works for you. Feel it.
The Price of Power
The tea Moritz sells is more expensive than the tea you will find in your local supermarket but there is no comparison in terms of flavor and, according to him, health benefits. We have not looked at research papers on the topic comparing different kinds of teas but Moritz explained how there are tea experts who publish in Chinese language about the benefits of the different teas.
If you compare a liter of great wine with a liter of great tea, you will get similar prices. It just depends on the referential you use. In the West, we are not used to paying that much for tea, our references are the typical English breakfast tea bags we find at the supermarket, but 2000 euros per kilo is not that high for Chinese tea connaisseurs.
The beautiful Space Moritz holds
Moritz’ space is very free, not too codified, and closer to what the Chinese tea ceremony is than to the Japanese codified way.
The yin of the tea, together with the rituals of preparation, serving, and drinking, create a warm, gentle, caring atmosphere. Space is created, between the actions and the words. A space conducive to self-reflection.
Illustrating the yin way of holding space, Moritz told a story about one of his friends:: “he’s somebody who, if people around him get noisy, gets quieter and people listen to him. People get that. Without him having to say anything. And that made a deep impression on me.“
An Equalizer
When he first discovered tea houses in China, Moritz realized that at the tea table, he was one between equals. There was the tea master and there were others, including him. Outside of the tea house, he would stand out as the tall blonde European in the middle of China, he never had the opportunity to be one among equals
The tea space is one to dissolve hierarchies. Moritz told the story of kitchen staff and the Mayor of Shenzhen sitting next to each other and having a great conversation for two hours without knowing or caring about their professional identities, and the outside hierarchies. Tea has the power to take you to another level, more personal, more universal as well.
The beauty of having a tea master who is not Chinese or even Asian is to open the space to more people as well. Westerners might see the tea ceremony as very Asian and not dare sit at the table, separating groups instead of unifying. Moritz is a way to mix and match.
Focus on Tea
Moritz does perform a ritual and tells stories about tea (and not only) but he talks about himself as the “ceremonial master in the background, just building the container”. One of the key words he uses is “humility”.
Preparing the tea: his advice is to just focus on your tea board and just take care of the tea, so that it is the best it can be.
You are in your bubble at first. There are plenty of elements to take care of, not to look around the table at first:
- The water: beforehand quality and during the preparation its temperature
- The porcelains: how you place them, clean them, warm them up
- The tea: quantity, the time you let it infused
It is a show. Everyone’s attention is drawn to this dance between the tea master, his gear, the water and the tea.
Serving the tea: You take care of the tea, and “you give what you have created to somebody you respect no matter who that is”.
Storytelling: Inspiring exotic tea stories replace typical chit-chat. Tell people what it is about, what tea you used, where it comes from, and what you are doing if they wonder.
This dance between the tea master and the tea happens with Gongfu (this article will give you a feel) brewing: when the tea master will do 10 brews in a smaller tea container. You would not get such a beautiful dance with a longer infusion in larger containers (which is the way westerners do).
One of the aspects that most struck me was the little cups we were given, and the fact you can drink tea faster because it cools down quicker. How many times have you been served a big cup of tea and then needed to wait 5 minutes before you can sip without burning yourself? Gongfu gives you many rounds of tea at the perfect temperature.
Gongfu brewing also gives the opportunity to taste all the different flavors the tea has to offer.
Let people rest in Tea
Let the mind rest in tea. From silence, and keeping our attention on the tea, space emerges. No pressure to speak or do anything, just be. That benefit but the space created is as vast as this description is short.
The center of attention is not your fellow tea drinkers or the tea master, no verbalization is needed for this relationship with tea and space itself to be functioning, thriving.
Holding the space
Even if the tea master is not putting himself as the center of the space, tea is. The tea master is holding the space.
Moritz describes a field forming around the ceremony, a consistent bubble of energy that he felt entering and exiting. If he is the only one holding space, the bubble might follow him but if the space held is strong enough with the people there (for instance when he has trained people in circles), the field is not impacted by him leaving or coming and he can feel its strength. In a psychedelic experience, he could even feel energy flowing, and him directing it.
When asking Moritz for tips on how to hold space, his answer is to make yourself comfortable, and adjust the space so that it feels good to you. Create your own comfort zone so you can invite people in it. The better you feel, the more you can give.
Also, find your own style. Moritz learned about tea and tea ceremonies in China, yet the experience he offers is his and only his. He does not try to be anything else than what he is. Tea is a great modality for shy people who still want to hold space as they do not need to be the center of attention. Tea is.
In China, the tea service is quiet. Moritz tends to speak more because people have questions as they explore this kind of space for the first time and are curious. So the space you hold also depends on the people joining.
How to scale
Moritz prefers to have 7 to 8 people around the table, he can go up to 12 as he can still reach everybody (and refill their cups). I asked him how to go beyond that number and scale the tea ceremony. How about 420 people for instance? He shared two paths:
Meditative Bowl Brews
A bowl brew of white tea leaves is perfect (no specific temperature requirement) for meditation, everyone can look at the leaves unfold, and swim around. You don’t need to remove the leaves and white tea is very tasty.
This enables you to maintain one group, but it is not the same experience we have described, it becomes a contemplative practice.
Train Tea Masters
Split people into groups and enable people to be the tea masters at each table. That would recreate the same dynamics Moritz offers when delivering himself.
Physical Spaces
“In China, tea houses have separate rooms that you can book with a group and either one of you is the tea master or you book them together with the tea master. And then you have a main room in the middle where there are also some private tables.
And on those private tables you can either also sit there with your own friends or you can just sit at a common table where some others come as well. For the single tables and especially the rooms, you pay extra. And if you sit in the middle, you don’t pay that extra.”
Moritz has been working on physical spaces: he started with gastronomical projects — a tea house, a restaurant — and he has now expanded into a vision of a coworking, a business incubator, and a community around tea for his latest project.
He sees himself “building spaces that can have a strong role in changing the world, providing containers for people to get together, to really rethink how we live together, how our society, how our economy works. By giving them spaces where they are taken out, off their stress and placed into a bubble where they can actually, without any stronger medicines or drugs or anything, literally feel like they have an outside vision on what’s been going on around them, and can very clearly see how to change it.”
Replacing coffee (yang) with tea (yin) certainly contributes to this shift in the world.
Moritz’s dedicated tea houses build on the local culture: Morocco and England have existing tea cultures for instance. The importance is to strike people and create a gate to another realm:
”A perfect space for me is a space that also has a lot of stories. It should be something old or very exciting, but definitely something that could add to the entire experience by giving elements to talk about, by giving an element of wonder of somebody coming in, being like, Wow, what kind of place is this? You can get far deeper in a ceremony if you are anyways already ripped out of your normal reality. So my place in Germany, for example, where I’ve had my tea shop is like this 1504 captain’s house with baroque ceiling painting and all kinds of elements” that make you awe you.
He would develop from there and let people discover the power of teas that they might have missed with the current teas they have experienced.
He is also envisioning tea tables that fit an office or a space where people already meet and private little sets so that people can have this in a multi-purpose space. Just like tea, Moritz is yin and will let whatever needs to emerge, emerge:
“If I see it as a medicine, then it’s a medicine that finds its own way. I’m just the facilitator. And that’s also why tea has had a hard time in our life so far. Because it comes with a complete shift in attitude to a lot of things.”
