Discipline into Devotion: Tea as a Dojo for Life (with Eli Buren)

In this episode of The Reframe Podcast, John O'Connor and Eli Buren explore how a simple bowl of tea can become a doorway from discipline to devotion 🍃🫖

We unpack the felt stillness of tea ceremony, the hunger for real ritual, and the “upstream” awareness behind any modality—tea, qigong, fatherhood, even jiu-jitsu.

Eli maps the Five Elements as a life cycle (water → wood → fire → earth → metal → water) and shows how leaders stuck in perpetual “fire” can land, care, and tell the truth inside.

We talk rupture-and-repair with our kids, humility that comes from suffering, and building the four bodies—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual—so presence doesn’t vanish when life gets loud.

If you’re a high performer curious about reverence, or a beginner wondering where to start, this is a gentle, honest invitation to sit, listen, and let devotion emerge.

If this conversation stirred something, share it with someone who might need the reminder: presence is a path we walk together 🤝