Intentional Tea Tasting

The most direct way to learn from plants is through direct experience. Experience provides the foundation for exploration of any herb or mushroom you are hoping to learn more about and connect with. Spending an hour or so sitting with an herb through an intentional tea tasting, you discover virtues of the herb that likely have never been conveyed in texts about herbs, because these virtues are arising through your body–the wisdom of the herb embodied and integrated through our senses.

Through ingesting a simple preparation of the plant, ideally as an infusion/decoction but even as a tincture diluted in a little water, we first get a sense of aroma/taste (is it sour? Perhaps this indicates astringency? Is it bitter? Perhaps this indicates a digestive action? etc.). This then informs our wondering about the potential Foundational Actions the plant offers, which informs Primary Actions, and Secondary Actions in turn. Finally we can speculate as to how the plant might affect the tissues of the body–the thermal, structural, or fluid dynamics of a particular tissue, organ, or body system.

But other snippets of information are arising, sometimes as feeling-tones, sometimes memories, sometimes images. This is where we ask questions like, "What does this plant remind me of?", or "What is this plant like?" – allowing ourself to swim in the more poetic and imagistic waters for a moment.

Finally, we get to the practical applications of our newly embodied experience, asking the questions, "What kind of person could benefit from building a relationship with this herb?", and "“What does this herb have to teach me?”

Once you have some good practice exploring the basic energetics of a plant through a tea tasting, you can bring it to the next level by exploring the more abstract realm of plant constituents. Comparing our notes on energetics of particular plants to the plant constituents they contain can help us to integrate knowledge of phytochemistry and constituents in a way that simple flash-card memorization cannot, because the abstract is grounded in an embodied experience of the herb. Notice how we tend to move from embodied to ethereal. From sensorial to abstract. A real grassroots approach to herbal knowledge!

We could move in the opposite direction, but what fun is it to learn plant constituents and phytochemistry without the physiological spirit of the plant coursing through our body?

Staying with the unknown

One of the most difficult things about conducting an intentional tea tasting is the skill and ability to suspend your desire to know the plant/mushroom you are tasting so you can get out of your own way to let the herb's energetics, expressions, and personality resonate throughout your body. Your perceptions and interpretations of the way the herb interacts with your body is where true empirical knowledge of the herb's virtues arise from.

Engaging in an Intentional Tea Tasting:

The method of tea tasting I outline below comes from the late herbalist Christopher Hedley, by way of jim mcdonald, who conducted a similar tea ceremony at his Lindera Intensive the year I participated in it. There are many aspects of the method below that are drawn directly from Christopher Hedley and Non Shaw's The Herbal Book of Making and Taking – a great resource I highly recommend any herbalist have on their shelf.

1. Make sure you have a notebook in hand or nearby to take notes throughout the process of the tasting.
2. Make an infusion of your herb – light infusions are preferred over strong infusions since light infusions invite your awareness more deeply into your body.
3. Note the aroma before pouring water over the plant.
4. Once you have your infusion in a cup, find a cozy spot to sit with the herb to do a tea tasting.
5. Take in the aroma for at least five minutes. Note any differences between this and the aroma of the dried herb. Notice the top, middle, and base notes. Note any images, feelings, emotions, or memories that arise.
   1. It can also help to smell the lid of the jar or teapot you used to brew the tea, as a lot of volatile oils gather here and sometimes evoke different aromatic notes that are not as perceptible coming directly from the infusion.
6. Take a sip. Leave space between sips. Swish the tea around in your mouth so you can experience the taste more fully.
7. Notice the texture and sensation in your mouth:
   1. dryness, prickliness, viscous, numbing – allow your language to roam freely
8. Notice the taste:
   1. bitter, sour, sweet, salty, umami, savory, pungent, dry, moist. Search for each and assess if they are present and to what degree.
   2. What clues does the taste give you as to possible actions or constituents of the herb?
   3. Be aware of changes in aroma/taste as the infusion cools down.
9. After some time, allow yourself to ground and direct your attention inward. Take a good swig and watch the herb as it travels into and throughout your body.
   1. Notice any parts of your body where the activity of the herb is felt. What is it doing? Challenge yourself to check in with parts you don't normally bring awareness to (how is the herb affecting your toes, your elbows?).
10. Notice the movement of the herb: is it moving energy downward? Or is energy rising? Inward or outward? Is it a slow, unfurling movement, or is it urgent and rapid? Is it moving directly, indirectly, or in waves?
11. Continue noting any images, feelings, emotions, or memories as they arise – it can help to try and finish the phrase: "This herb is like..." (a person you know, a season, a place – always allowing your language and associations to roam freely).
12. Notice how the herb affects your mood: is the herb elating or uplifting? Does it put you on guard? Are you relaxed, edgy, uncertain, or calm?
13. If you haven't already, start to search for the energetics of the herb, is it warming or cooling? Is it toning or relaxing? Is it drying or moistening?
    1. If you want to get more specific, identify the Foundational Actions: (aromatic, astringent, demulcent, relaxant, stimulant, or bitter?)
    2. Then move into Primary Actions: (tonic, alterative, adaptogenic, trophorestorative, diaphoreti, diuretic, expectorant, laxative, lymphatic, nervine, etc.)
       1. The primary actions are primarily informed by where you feel the herbs affects in your body.
14. Consider what kind of person might benefit from this herb.
    1. for a certain constitutional type? (Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic | Vata, Pitta, Kapha)
    2. for specific ailments?
    3. for certain astrological signs?
15. As you close out your tea tasting and take your final sips, reflect on the following question: “What does this herb have to teach me?” – allow this question to take you wherever it goes: from the most simple and obvious teachings to wisdom dislodged from the depths of your imagination. This question is particularly illuminating for those whose physiology did not mesh well with the herb’s actions.
16. After you’ve completed your tea tasting and recorded your reflections/speculations, feel free to refer to a combination of materia medicas available in whatever herb books you have available to compare with what they say.
17. Find gaps, or differences and really allow yourself to ponder them (I felt this plant was very warming, yet these texts say they are cooling, what’s going on here?)

Often, I like to do a body scan before drinking the tea. If I do a body scan at the beginning of the tea tasting, I will do one at the end as well after I've spent some time with the herb to see how my inner ecology has shifted in response to the presence of the herb. Also, if possible I like to hold my tea tasting in the presence of the live, growing plant. If I can't do that I'll look up a photograph of the plant to refresh my memory – unless you are doing a blind tea tasting.

Taking it deeper, I like to be aware of where the plant is at in its growth cycle at any given time (even if it's winter and the plant I'm ingesting hasn't emerged from the soil yet, I will bring my awareness to the root/rhizome where the energy of the plant is held in that moment) and then do some imaginal/visionary work seeing how the present state of the plant mirrors or reflects my internal state. This is a practice that's a bit hard to convey in writing, so feel free to reach out if you would like additional guidance in deepening your tea tastings and plant meditations in this way.

“I began spending several hours a day deepening my relationship with different plants. Sometimes I sat quietly with a plant. Sometimes I kept an image and feeling of the plant in my mind as I carried out other tasks in my daily schedule. As I spent weeks, and often months, with each plant, I came to be able to distinguish one “feeling tone” from another. I worked with this for over a year until I could distill the essence of each feeling tone into usable knowledge. That is, I learned what essential elements lay at the heart of the feeling tone, those things that gave it its distinct emotional flavor, different from all others. Each species and each plant within a species possesses a distinct energy or life essence that I experience internally as a feeling. These feelings are much subtler than the more readily identifiable emotions of anger, grief, joy, and fear. They represent a wide spectrum of emotional shadings, each distinctly representative of a particular plant or species.”

– Stephen Buhner, Sacred Plant Medicine