Tea InfusiastA few weeks ago, I was lucky to enjoy my first visit to a Buddhist monastery. I spent a weekend at Blue Cliff Monastery in upstate New York. The monastery is part of the Plum Village Tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.
This post shares a short tea-bubble meditation. You can do it in as few as five minutes.
It uses the bubbles from pouring certain teas–NOT bubble tea–as the focal point of the meditation.
Does a particular tea that you drink tend to make more bubbles when poured? If so, that’s a great tea to choose.
Examples could include chai, Darjeeling, etc.
Make it easy to have restorative and mindful tea sessions this spring: purchase your Spring Rest Kit for Tea Lovers!
Imagine carving out time to enjoy a peaceful, mindful tea session. You spend a few moments using a practice to ground yourself. Then, you mindfully drink your tea and take time to journal. Maybe there is even music playing. At the end, you notice that you feel more at ease and peaceful.
I designed this Spring Rest Kit for Tea Lovers to help you have experiences like this!
Tea, flowers, and happiness (I mean sunshine!) can help me slide more easily into presence. Please allow me to explain.
In my regular meditation practice, I meditate in all kinds of spaces–my living room, a doctor’s office, in a meditation center, and in my car. The list goes on.
One of my favorite places to meditate when I am not practicing with others is at my kitchen table in the morning with my tea things. Taking a few minutes to set up this space is a great enhancer of the experience.
Recently, I led a tea meditation on the campus where I teach. It was an honor. The Mindfulness Center organized the event and invited me to offer it in their serene space. I have experience offering tea meditations online and in person. In person is trickier in the sense that I often have to bring some of the tea things. So, for this event, I needed to think about what items campus had, what I must provide, and what I might also bring to enhance the experience.
I was blessed to enjoy a spontaneous session of tea with a Buddhist Sister at a recent mindfulness retreat.
Last weekend, I had a profound experience attending a two-day retreat. Adelphi University, near me, organized a program on its campus with monastics from Blue Cliff Monastery. The monastery “is a mindfulness practice center and monastic training center founded by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, author, and peace activist…Thich Nhat Hanh.”
I’m sharing some ideas to invite stillness into your life. These tips are for anyone who finds it challenging to meditate or “be still.” Maybe that’s you most of the time. Maybe only sometimes.
Difficulty with being still in meditation is something I have had to tackle in my own practice. My body and mind have often (and continue to, at times) struggle to remain still. For me, part of this challenge is nervous energy and part is physical stiffness.
Two ways of thinking about the challenge really helped me. First, reframe the issue of stillness. Recognize that stillness can be “absolute” or relative.
Secondly, conceptually and physically separating forms of stillness can also be helpful. You can be (relatively) still in body and/or mind. Either and both can be healthy and are worth cultivating.
Here are some ways to invite stillness into your life.
Friday Morning Meditation and Gratitude Practice Series, September 2024
Interested in exploring what a conscious gratitude practice and gratitude-focused meditations could do for you? Or, maybe you already have a gratitude practice and would like to deepen it with meditation and the encouragement of community. Either way, you are warmly invited to sign up for my September guided meditation series focusing on gratitude!
NOTE: I added some updates to this post since I graduated from the training.
I’m about 80 percent through the Inward Illumination Meditation Teacher Training with Shawn J. Moore through Sankofa of Yoga. [Update: I graduated from the program in July 2024.] This training has been a fabulous journey! I’m learning so much from the practices, classes, readings, assignments, and small group work.
I met Shawn at a retreat with Tracee Stanley in Summer 2023. (The photo is from that experience.) His sound baths and meditation sessions were absolutely transporting!
So, I subscribed to his newsletter and attended a few of his online experiences. (You can subscribe to his newsletter at the bottom of his page, located here.)
In this post, I reflect on several enticements to speed through a mindfulness course.
My ever-evolving relationship with tea has been one of the main paths through which I have deepened my mindfulness practice. I am also expanding my practice in new ways. Notably, I recently began an online mindfulness training program. The materials recommend we aim to complete the course in about three months, although we have flexibility. So far, I’m really enjoying the training program’s mix of information, stories, guided meditations, and journal prompts.
