Intentional Tea Tasting
In engaging in an intentional tea tasting you are working to suspend your desire to understand the plant in order to really feel into the energetics, expressions, and personality of the plant.
The most developmental and generative rituals we engage in throughout our lives require us to suspend our desire to understand. Our desire to understand encourages us to reach past the discomfort of not knowing, effectively filtering our experience of the present moment through what we think we already 'know'.
Another way of saying this is that what you know is based entirely on the past. New knowledge and wisdom comes from being fully open to the experience of the present, which, in its fullness, is inherently unknown.
While suspending your desire to understand may be difficult at first, your ongoing devotion to practices such as meditation and nightwork will support you in developing your ability to suspend your desire to understand.
It is about practicing 'don't know mind', which is essentially allowing yourself to be comfortable 'not getting it' right away. 'It' referring to the myriad possibilities of experience the present moment offers.
In this way, the experience of the present moment unfolding in nightwork or meditation is allowed to bypass the ego affecting change on a much deeper level. You might say it bypasses the 'head' to affect the 'heart'.
With practice, we eventually learn to approach life in general in 'don't know mind' allowing for a much fuller experience of the present oriented in the much wider perspective of the heart.
Experience provides the foundation for exploration of the herb you are choosing to connect with. Spending no less than one hour sitting with the plant after ingesting in some form, we can write about what is most apparent through our senses.
Through ingesting a simple preparation of the plant, ideally as an infusion/decoction but even as a tincture, 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 opens us up to the energetics of a plant: the thermal, structural, or fluid dynamics of a plant. This then informs the Foundational Actions, which informs Primary Actions, and Secondary Actions.
Once we get a sense of all of these, we are able to move into the more abstract realm of plant constituents. Comparing our notes on energetics of particular plants to the plant constituents they often 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.
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?
Engaging in an Intentional Tea Tasting:
- Make sure you have a notebook in hand or nearby to take notes throughout the process of the tasting.
- Make an infusion of your herb.
- Note the aroma before pouring water over the plant.
- Once you have your infusion in a cup, find a cozy spot to sit with the herb to do a solo tea tasting.
- Take in the aroma for at least five minutes. Note any differences between this and the aroma of the dried herb.
- 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.
- As you are taking in the aroma, don't forget to note any images, feelings, emotions, or memories that arise.
- Taste the tea.
- What clues does the taste give you as to possible actions or constituents of the herb?
- Be aware of changes in aroma/taste as the infusion cools down.
- Continue noting any images, feelings, emotions, or memories as they arise.
- Start to search for the energetics of the herb, is it warming or cooling? Is it toning or relaxing? Is it drying or moistening? Is it warming or cooling?
- From here start to feel out the Foundational Actions: (aromatic, astringent, demulcent, relaxant, stimulant, or bitter?)
- Then move into Primary Actions: (tonic, alterative, adaptogenic, trophorestorative, diaphoreti, diuretic, expectorant, laxative, lymphatic, nervine, etc.)
- Try not to look up anything beforehand, just allow yourself to speculate.
- Then Secondary Actions: (anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial)
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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