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WELLNESSWEEK
This post in a nutshell:
– Tea has been used as medicine for thousands of years.
– If your tea is not organic or known to be from a wild and clean source it is almost guaranteed to have been grown in fertilisers and pesticides – this is bad for you and your environment.
– Organic tea is a base level option tea (never non-organic) and if you can find wild, living tea choose this.
– Tea is more than just a warm beverage, unless it’s just a warm beverage ;)...
– The ‘Tea’ we are speaking of here comes from Camellia Sinensis (*)
– Sitting in silence drinking tea for a few moments each morning is a kind of meditation that can calm and direct your mind before you take on the day.
– Tea for many is a meditation and way of calming, healing and feeling the inherent connection we have with this planet.
– British tea is not black tea in China, it is red tea.
TEA TIME
Rich: When I ‘officially’ started ENRICHD it was actually a blog called "Rich Eats" where I embarked on a world travel extravaganza - beginning in Thailand.
During that time I was more focused on fat burning and vanity than holistic health and wellbeing. Tea was a HUGE part of my shift from external goals to moving deeper within.
In this article we are going to find out how tea is so much more than a dried and ground up leaf in a cup of hot water…
TEA IS MEDICINE
As well as the innate physical healing potential of tea, the X factor comes when we stop and think about what it can be. Taking a moment out of the day to be quiet, sit, think through the leaf to the mountain, to the sun energy growing the 200, 500, 1000 even 2000+ year old tree, and how that tree was and still is nourished by some of the cleanest water on the planet; it breathes the purest air and is a living part of the mountain ecology. Completely connected.
As you sit and think about how one tree gives its leaves once per year and one family go to the tree to retrieve its gifts and guide them through their journey before being ready for your bowl (or cup). As you sit there and ponder the trees, the air, the lifeforce energy within the tree, daily stresses melt away.
There is no deadline, no bill, or car that needs fixing… stress disappears and the feeling of peace and connection re-emerges. That is healing. That is a gift to your human physical existence where clarity can be attained, and from clarity daily stresses can be addressed more effectively - lovely right?
THE TEA CEREMONY AND LA.
When I arrived in LA I’d already had a taste of the real deal… teas from wild trees that is. It was at a tea bar in London where she first ‘spoke’ to me. And speak to me she did. It was a profound moment, that if you have sat in any of the ENRICHD Tea Ceremonies you will have heard, more on this at a later date.
With this knowledge and feeling of a true tea, a world outside chemically grown and bagged powders, there was no turning back. Having backpacked from 18 years old, it's kind of like experiencing world travel outside the packaged holiday resort, that all inclusive convenience will never taste or feel the same again.
Back to LA...
I found a world of tea in Venice Beach. Experiences that I will be forever grateful and will always remember. Specifically, more than buying good tea, it was a community of beautiful people serving each other tea, tea ceremonies.
The tea ceremony is about feeling the ever present connection with each other and nature, it is about drinking a healing medicine, allowing the qi energy to work its magic through your body and soul, letting go of judgement, the material man-made world disappears, financial status disintegrates into that which it is – just a number, and then the number itself collapsing into infinity. During the ceremony (and after) we acknowledge and feel each other as equal living beings, all one and the same.
There is silence, sometimes for hours (it’s a rarity in this day and age to sit with another person in silence and just feel), sometimes people cry from the emotions that are released (maybe that’s the tea working its magic), we engage in conversation (sometimes about tea, or whatever comes up), and as a wise Chinese Emperor once never said: it’s a moment to shut up and be.
Thinking bigger, choosing organic (foods as well as tea) is not about saving the planet but about preserving our place on this beautiful spinning blue and green rock.
Big shout out to the community in LA when I was living there, such a beautiful time going deep into the world of tea.