How can drinking tea relieve stress?
Drinking tea - and the ritual that accompanies it - is a wonderful exercise in meditation and awareness. In this video, meditation specialist Andy Puddicombe explains how building a ritual around a cup of tea relieves stress and promotes zen.
Transcript
The more we get into our senses, our physical senses, the less we're involved in the thinking in the mind. So we can't be thinking about something and at the same time
smelling it or tasting it. [MUSIC PLAYING]
It's almost as though the tea itself becomes your object of meditation, something to focus on.
So having a cup of tea in the day, whether it's first thing in the morning, perhaps mid-morning, or even at the end of the day, is a great way
to set up a-- almost like a ritual of zen. The more we get into our senses, our physical senses, the less
we're involved in the thinking in the mind. So we can't be thinking about something and at the same time
smelling it or tasting it. So start off by just, after you've poured the hot water into the tea,
just take a moment before you even pick the cup up. Take a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth just to settle yourself,
just to ground yourself. Perhaps you're watching the steam rising from the tea. Pick the cup up in your hands.
Feel the warmth of it. Enjoy that feeling of warmth. Smell it.
What does it remind you of? Is it a pleasant sensation? And then slowly, bring it to your mouth and take a taste.
Notice where in the mouth you taste it. Notice the sensation, the warmth. And sometimes if you're really attentive,
you can even feel the water as it travels down towards the stomach. So just by taking this time by building in this ritual around
tea-- and it only need take a few minutes-- you kind of have those little moments throughout the day.
It almost, like, creates some stability of zen throughout the day where you come back to that ritual again and again.
stress management
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