Photo by Nadia Todores

Tea is Medicine.

Which feelings do these words evoke in you?

Do you agree? Do you have doubts that this is true?

After all, most people drink tea casually and perhaps on autopilot almost daily – often in front of TV, or while scrolling social media. Mostly, teabags are used because they are fast and easy, requiring the least amount of effort and time. The least amount of attention.

So of course, when tea is consumed in this way – it is easy to see it as a nice drink, a warm beverage, a commodity.

But medicine?

Photo by Sergey N

Yes, tea and tea ceremony are a powerful, beautiful, gentle, soft plant medicine.

Medicine in a holistic way – healing us on a mind, body, and spirit level.

The founder of the tea community that I belong to defines Medicine as anything that puts us in harmony with ourselves, others and the world. That puts us in harmony with Nature. Not just the nature in the form of trees and forests and animals, but our own true Nature. Experiential recognition of which has been searched for by so many spiritual seekers through millennia.

And that’s what Tea does so beautifully.

Photo by Nadia Todores

Tea Ceremony invites us to stop, pause, and slow down. For centuries, ancient tea masters and sages recognised that through sitting with tea our mind becomes quieter, and we can drop into our heart, into our body with greater ease.

Tea takes us by the hand and moves us away from thinking into feeling.

Tea Ceremony engages all our senses. It is such a beautiful human practice to live life through our senses, and yet – how often do we actually do that? How often do we feel life rather than think about it? How often do we actually taste tea and not think about the tea?

Photo by Sergey N

When we think about things rather than feel them, experience them – we lose our connection to those things and life in that moment. We lose harmony.

When we engage all our senses at the same time, another sense is created – the Sense of the Heart. The Awakening of the Heart. The heart that can directly see and experience the magic in the ordinary life. As a result the fog clears and our eyes brighten up.

When we sit in a tea ceremony – we are receiving – receiving tea and receiving life. We are there, doing absolutely nothing. Not in a passive way, but in a very engaged, present way. And yet, we are doing nothing and just receiving, just taking in. This deep receptivity on all levels is what the Feminine principle is all about. The ability to just be and take in, receive.

In the world that is ruled by the masculine way of living – doing, thinking, being busy – this practice of connecting to the feminine is truly needed. Not that something is wrong with the masculine, it’s just that the tendency to live this way became skewed and unbalanced. We lost the middle way. Tea reminds us the importance of creating pauses, the moments of receptivity and silence in our lives.