It’s National Tea Day on 21st April! Find out how to get the most out of your tea by embedding it in mindful practice, and where to go for a good cuppa.
May Chen from Tsia Te, meaning “sip tea” in Fujian, currently runs traditional Chinese tea ceremonies and tea meditation workshops in Manchester Art Gallery and Didsbury Parsonage. During the tea meditation you pay attention to your senses and receive three to five bowls of tea while May guides you through meditation.
Hi May. Can you tell us what makes good quality tea?
Hello! So, we have six different types of tea, green, white, oolong, yellow, red, and black tea, and each of them offer different things. To make sure you’re getting tea which is good quality there are things you can look out for in the appearance of the tea leaves like their size and shape or you can make sure the dry leaves smell as you expect them to and if the flavour aroma is natural.
Then you’ll need to drink the tea to tell whether it’s good or not when it’s wet. So, when pouring, you observe the colour of the liquor, is it pale yellow, bright green, copper, amber, black accordingly? Does the colour meet your expectations according to the type of tea? And, how transparent is it? Most of the time the liquor should be very transparent or clear. Then when you come to taste it, think about how you experience the mouth feel of the liquor, how does it travel through your throat? Does it make your mouth feel dry? It’s actually very similar to wine tasting.
What are the mindful qualities people can tap into when drinking tea?
Tea was first discovered in China thousands of years ago and it was actually discovered as a medicine, then later on it was widely used by monks in temples to help them keep mental clarity while they meditated. So, it developed from a medicine to a spiritual practice companion and now it is considered to be more of a social beverage. So, my role in guiding a mindfulness practice is to revert the role of tea back to its spiritual roots. But essentially tea and tea leaves are a plant, they are a part of nature which holds so much wisdom. As you can imagine it gets all its nutrients from the soil and the earth so when we drink a cup of tea, it is a cup of nature.
When you are drinking tea it’s very easy for your mind to wander off, therefore we need to engage as much as we can to help us anchor in the present moment. Focusing on the smell, the taste, the texture of the bowl, the tea liquor, the tea leaves floating in the water, feeling the warmth of the tea in your mouth and as it travels to your stomach, it’s about paying attention to your body’s reactions.
To attend one of Tsia Te’s upcoming events or buy tea and tea merchandise then go to its website at Tsiate.com