Encoding the Waters

A THREE-MONTH COURSE IN CONTEMPLATIVE TEA BLENDING

Within a single cup is a meeting of plant, water, person and attention. Encoding the Waters approaches herbal formulation as that whole encounter: a sovereign plant with its own form and vocation, a human threshold that calls certain medicine forward, water carrying the composition into the cup, and the preparer whose perception shapes how it is made and offered.

Across twelve weeks, students learn to read the plant more fully, recognize the deeper movement within a person or moment, compose from relationship, enter the question of what water carries, and refine the quality of attention through which a tea is prepared and offered. Working with twelve plants, students practise formulations for an individual and a gathering, while carrying their own Signature Blend through tasting, refinement and preparation to a final offering for another person or a small circle.

FEBRUARY–APRIL 2027 · FOUNDING TUITION $1,950 CAD · or 3 × $700 CAD

Enrol in Encoding the Waters

LIVE TEACHING AND VIRTUAL CIRCLES · DIRECT WRITTEN FEEDBACK · FOUNDING COHORT BONUS: A 45-MINUTE PRIVATE CLOSING CONSULTATION

Beyond Materia Medica

You may already know how to read a monograph, choose plants by action and energetics, check contraindications and build a sound formula. You may have years of study behind you, or a smaller circle of plants you return to because you know them well. At a certain point, the question changes: when several plants are appropriate, why does one belong?

That distinction is difficult to learn from a list of indications. It emerges through relationship: through the nature of the plant, the movement beneath what a person names, and the way one plant changes another when they meet in a formula. A blend can be medicinally sound and still feel unresolved; another can gather around a clear centre in which each plant has a reason to remain.

The precision of that meeting is resonance. In Encoding the Waters, you learn to recognize resonance within a practice grounded in materia medica, energetics and research. Relationship becomes how you perceive, and the cup becomes the place where this perception becomes medicine.

Who is welcome

Encoding the Waters is for herbalists, tea makers, formulators, growers, practitioners and artists, as well as those whose relationship with plants has developed through personal study and practice.

At its centre is an original plant-reading method that brings geometry, medicinal vocation and the human threshold into relationship with materia medica, sensory observation and preparation. Experienced practitioners can use this approach to deepen and refine an existing practice, while those earlier in their study are given a clear structure for learning how to read plants and formulate with them.

The course is especially suited to those drawn to plants as living beings, to the deeper intelligence carried through form and relationship, and to creating teas with greater precision, originality and intention. Safety, contraindications, interactions and appropriate scope are taught where they matter to formulation, with medically complex work remaining within qualified clinical care.

From Stillness to Ceremony

Month 1: Perceive

Themes: Stillness · Water · Reading

The first month begins before formulation, with the quality of attention brought to the plant. Tea Mind and Deep Listening slow the encounter until the plant can be met whole. From this ground, geometry, vocation and human threshold begin to emerge as different expressions of the plant’s coherence. Water enters as the living medium through which that coherence will reach the cup.

Month 2: Compose

Themes: Blending · Formulation · Refinement

The second month begins with the question: What is this cup for? From here a formula takes shape. Students learn how a plant can hold the centre of the blend, ground the body, carry the work or act as a grace note. Those relationships are read through story, through the way the cup unfolds, and through Sonic Composition, listening for how the plants sound together. Refinement returns every idea to the cup until each plant has earned its place.

Month 3: Offer

Themes: Preparation · Ritual · Ceremony

The third month carries the composition fully into water. Students learn how a finished formula changes in preparation, drawing on the disciplines of Camellia sinensis to refine water, heat, vessel and timing, and they prepare the Signature Blend with the presence and intention the course has been cultivating from its first week. Ritual and ceremony then give that preparation a held form, ending with the Final Pour for another person or a small gathering.

The Formulation Trilogy

Signature Formulation

Begins with the maker’s own threshold, story, intention or question, and becomes the capstone carried through refinement, preparation and the Final Pour.

Individual Formulation

Turns toward one person, bringing therapeutic purpose, preference, safety, constitution and scope into the composition.

Collective Formulation

Composed for a gathering or shared human threshold, where scale, service, place and the character of the group enter the work.

The Individual and Collective formulations remain focused studies; the Signature Blend runs the full length of the course.

The Founding Cohort

Much of this work depends upon discernment: learning when an impression arises from the plant, when it arises from the perceiver, and whether a compelling idea still holds once it reaches the cup. That kind of judgement develops through practice, comparison and careful response.

The founding cohort is limited to twelve so that I can follow each person’s work across the full three months. Twelve weekly recorded lessons guide the independent study, while three live classes deepen the teaching in plant reading, formulation and preparation. Three virtual circles are reserved for examining work in progress and bringing questions into a shared room.

Written response is given at three stages in the course. Exclusive to the founding cohort: a private forty-five-minute consultation after the final portfolio.

Included in the course

  • Exclusive founding cohort bonus: Welcome Package

    Founding participants receive a printed course booklet, twelve herbs for weekly practice and ceremonial gifts, mailed in the first week of January. The welcome package is included in tuition for this first cohort only.

  • Twelve weekly recorded video lessons
    The course moves through Stillness, Water, Reading, Blending, Formulation, Refinement, Preparation, Ritual and Ceremony, with recorded lessons and guided practice unfolding between the live sessions.

  • Guided contemplative practices
    Recorded audio practices for each weekly theme: twelve ten-minute meditations, one for daily practice each week. Three additional twenty-minute meditations to anchor the monthly themes of Deep Listening, Tea Mind and coherent preparation.

  • Ongoing accountability and support
    A private community forum for questions, shared observations and work in progress, with two instructor response windows each week.

  • Six live online sessions
    Three 90-minute teaching sessions alternate with three virtual circles of 90 minutes for discussion and questions.

  • Early course access
    Course access opens two weeks before Week 1, allowing time to become familiar with the platform, gather materials and receive the practical information needed before teaching begins.

  • Three rounds of individual written feedback
    Personal feedback on your formulations at three stages: the Signature Blend, the Individual Formulation and the Collective Formulation.

  • Twelve weekly guidance emails
    Each week begins with an email outlining the focus of study, with an itemized list of what to watch, read, practise and submit, including the suggested deadlines.

  • Certificate of Completion in Contemplative Tea Blending
    Awarded on completion of the required body of work.

  • Founding cohort bonus: private closing consultation
    Exclusive to the founding cohort: a forty-five-minute one-to-one consultation with Mélanie after the final body of work is complete.

What the course asks of you

Approximately four to six hours each week, including the live gatherings. Each week combines a recorded video lesson, reading, and practical work with plants and water.

The daily practice includes a ten-minute meditation and tea preparation with the week’s companion plant. Everyone works with the same plant, attending to its nature and medicinal vocation, and to the person or moment its medicine may serve. Each participant brings their own experience and perception to formulation.

A separate twenty-minute meditation anchors each month’s theme. The cohort meets twice a month for ninety-minute live classes or virtual circles, with lighter independent work in those weeks. All live sessions are recorded.

Live gatherings are tentatively scheduled for the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 10am PST.

Three formulations are developed and submitted for individual feedback. Refining, preparing and offering the Signature Blend in the Final Pour may call for additional time in the final weeks.

Mélanie Pulla

My relationship with medicinal plants spans more than three decades. I studied therapeutic and clinical herbal medicine at the California School of Herbal Studies and with the late Michael Moore at the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine, and hold a Bachelor of Science in Wellness and Alternative Medicine from Vermont State University. My approach to preparation was shaped by a year of weekly study in Korean tea ceremony and Tea Mind with tea master Lee Uk-hyung in South Korea, followed by certification through the Choam Association for the Promotion of the Way of Tea in Daegu.

I am the founder of Water Over Leaves Tea Company, an artisan tea studio, tasting room and Herbalist ÉCONOMUSÉE® in Nelson, British Columbia, where I formulate therapeutic herbal teas and work at the meeting place of medicine, sensory composition and contemplative practice. I am also the creator and host of The Herballectual, a long-form podcast of conversations with leading herbalists about knowledge, practice and relationship with the living world.

Encoding the Waters is the culmination of this work, gathering the strands that have shaped my approach most deeply: herbal medicine, sensory composition, water, preparation, and the quality of attention brought to the making of a cup of tea.

What becomes possible

Graduates will have learned how to develop coherent formulations; create teas for individuals, loved ones, groups, retreats and ceremony; deepen an existing herbal or tea practice; refine a professional blending approach; and build an original collection of teas. The method serves a personal practice and a professional one alike.

Each blend follows the same path from first question to finished cup: reading plants beyond indications, choosing them for the need or threshold at hand, building a formula with structure and purpose, refining it through tasting, and understanding how water, preparation and the coherence of the herbalist shape the medicine. What carries forward is a practice that holds across plants, people and purposes.

Founding Tuition

$1,950 CAD

or 3 monthly payments of $700 CAD · Total payment-plan tuition: $2,100 CAD

The founding cohort is limited to twelve places.

Founding cohort bonus

Tuition includes the mailed welcome package and a private forty-five-minute closing consultation. Both are offered exclusively to this first cohort.


Enrolment closes January 8, 2027.

ENROL IN ENCODING THE WATERS

All tuition payments are final and non-refundable.
The payment plan is a commitment to the full tuition.

Practical Details

COURSE DATES

February–April 2027. Course access opens two weeks before Week 1 to allow time to become familiar with the platform, gather materials and meet the peer circle.

WEEKLY TIME

Approximately 4 to 6 hours most weeks, including live gatherings

EQUIPMENT

A 0.1 g scale, thermometer, kettle, infusion vessel, small saucepan, several matching tasting cups or jars, and a journal.

COURSE ACCESS

Materials and recordings remain available for twelve months from the course start.

LIVE SESSIONS

Six 90-minute live sessions: three teaching sessions and three virtual circles for questions and feedback, tentatively scheduled for the first and second Wednesdays of each month at 10am PST. All sessions are recorded and posted within 24 hours.

PLANT MATERIALS

The course works with a shared palette of twelve herbs, mailed to each participant with the printed course booklet and bonus ceremonial gifts. The complete welcome package and preparation details are sent in the first week of January.

RECORDINGS

Every live session is recorded and posted within 24 hours.

ENROLMENT CLOSES

January 8, 2027.

Course Questions

  • Approximately four to six hours, including recorded teaching, reading, practical work, a daily ten-minute meditation and tea preparation with the week’s companion plant.

    The monthly twenty-minute meditation and two ninety-minute live gatherings are included in this allowance, with lighter independent work in live-session weeks.

    The final refinement, preparation and offering of the Signature Blend may require additional time.

  • Attendance is encouraged, particularly for the Integration Studios, where we discuss formulations, observations and questions together, but it is not required. Every session is recorded and posted within twenty-four hours. Questions arising from the recordings can be shared in the private community or brought to the next Integration Studio.

  • Materials and recordings remain available for twelve months from the course start, allowing you to complete the work at a slower pace. Individual written feedback follows the course schedule and is provided on the three formulations submitted during the twelve weeks. The Certificate of Completion is issued once the required body of work is complete.

  • Yes. Each participant receives a mailed welcome package containing twelve herbs for the shared palette, a printed course booklet and bonus ceremonial gifts.

  • Yes, you’re very welcome to pay the full tuition by e-transfer. Please send your payment to melaniepulla@gmail.com. No password is required.

    Please include your full name, email address and full mailing address in the transfer message. Your place in the cohort is confirmed once payment has been received.

    E-transfers are accepted for full tuition payments only. If you prefer to pay in monthly instalments, please select the payment plan at checkout.

  • No formal herbal qualification is required. The course is designed for both experienced practitioners and those whose plant knowledge has developed through personal study and practice. Some familiarity with medicinal plants will be helpful, while the shared palette gives everyone common material to work from.

  • Students who complete the required course work will receive a Certificate of Completion in Contemplative Tea Blending.

  • All tuition payments are final and non-refundable. Enrolment through the payment plan is a commitment to the full course tuition. If Encoding the Waters is cancelled by Mélanie Pulla, all payments will be refunded in full.

  • Course materials and recordings will remain available for twelve months from the beginning of the course, allowing plenty of time to revisit the teaching and return to the practices after the twelve-week cohort has ended.

  • A welcome email confirms your place. Welcome packages are mailed in the first week of January, when the complete plant list and preparation details are also provided. Course access opens two weeks before Week 1.

Encoding is authorship

A beautifully crafted cup of tea carries more than ingredients and proportions; it carries your voice and perspective, the energy and focus you bring to preparation, and the intention and attunement through which you meet the plants, the person and the moment. Encoding the Waters teaches you to gather these threads into a single composition, giving each tea a form that bears your signature.


Tea is a language written in water.
Learn how to encode it.


FEBRUARY–APRIL 2027 · FOUNDING TUITION $1,950 CAD · or 3 × $700 CAD

ENROL IN ENCODING THE WATERS