The selecting, brewing and enjoying a cup of herbal tea can be such a deeply healing, meditative and transformative process. In cultures around the world there are so many traditions centred on the making and consumption of tea. In the modern day you can recreate these practices and tap into its power and potential.
Here are a few ideas about transforming your herbal tea sipping experience into something with greater potential for healing, contemplation, empowerment, inspiration and peace.
The Power of Ritual
Ritual is anything we do with higher intention. It is action taken to invoke a response from our lives, and it can be as simple as preparing a cup of your favourite herbal tea. When we create ritual in our lives, we are getting intentional about the everyday things we do so that they can become transformative. When we act mindlessly we don’t maintain control over the situation. When we act with mindfulness, which comes naturally in a ritual setting, we get to consciously choose from a place of power what kind of energies, thoughts, beliefs, and ideals we want to participate in.
The Ritual of Tea
Herbal tea makes a great action for ritual because it has some essential ingredients: calmness, healing, mindfulness, sensory experience and it is personal. When we brew herbal tea we are blending the experience of our favourite or most needed herbs, what we enjoy drinking and how we enjoy drinking it. Whether you are drinking the tea on your own or with someone else, the personal connection that this cultivates makes it very powerful and ensures that it goes to the deepest part of our being.
Inspiration
Here are some simple, fun, and effective things you can do to create a beautiful herbal tea ritual for yourself…
Set your intention, meditate or bless the herbs you’ll use in your tea. Infuse them with good energy and lots of positive thoughts.
Grid your kitchen with crystals to keep the positive energy going.
Use your herbs to draw a design on your counter top before you add them to your hot water. You could create a dollar sign for abundance, a heart for love, a smile for joy, or a stick figure for health.
While your herbal tea is brewing, gaze at your reflection on the surface of the water, try to see yourself happy, healthy, abundant, and blessed. Once you have a good image of yourself in these positive ways, begin sipping the tea to take it all in.
Say a positive affirmation over your tea before you take each sip. When you drink, you will be adding a physical action to the affirmation which helps it sink in faster.
Say ‘thank you’ to the herbs, the process, the Earth, and the Sky – all important parts of the healing tea experience, before you drink. Gratitude always switches the energy up in a good way!
If you know someone who is sick, stressed, or just in need of some extra love, take a few sips for them as a prayer and a blessing. The energy will make its way into their lives!
Herbal tea is a healing drink on its own, but connecting over your cup of tea into a moment of peace and appreciation enhances its benefits. Consider these words
“You must be completely awake in the present to enjoy the tea. Only in the awareness of the present, can your hands feel the pleasant warmth of the cup. Only in the present, can you savour the aroma, taste the sweetness, appreciate the delicacy. If you are ruminating about the past, or worrying about the future, you will completely miss the experience of enjoying the cup of tea. You will look down at the cup, and the tea will be gone.” Thich Nhat Hanh
About Andrew Yeo, Teapot Teas
Andrew Yeo, is the Owner and Master Tea Blender of Teapot Teas. Teapot Tea’s mission is their raw passion for real living and commitment to self awareness through learning and development. Building communities through holistic partnerships, placing relationships and integrity above all. Making sustainability the core factor in all decision making and bringing nature back into balance.
Andrew’s fascination and love of tea began at the age of two years, when he was taken with his mother to visit a childhood friend who lived the Raffles Hotel Singapore. He remembers the majestic old dame, the wrought iron laced tables, finest of bone china tea pots, the wonderful aroma and the fascination about what lay within the teacups. All his life, he has been captivated by the elegance, ritual and the joy which tea brings to the lives of many.
Teapot Teas combines his two great passions, teas and health. Following his first and subsequent visits to Raffles, little did he know that 15 years later he would begin his food and hospitality career there serving tea and seeing again the joy which it brought. Moving from Singapore to Sydney, he ran the prestigious Amrita Spa where he became familiarised with spa cuisine, herbal teas and the beauty of health and wellbeing.
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