Rolling Oms

Every Friday morning this summer I’ve been teaching on a roof top deck in my neighborhood. Six floor up with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline, the morning moon and rising sun. It’s early, 6:15-7:30 – a true sunrise class – but we’ve been crowded up there doing our sun salutations and enjoying the sun on our faces, eyes closed in final meditation. Last night we had an end of season class and party in the evening and during class watched both the fall sun set and a beautiful pink moon rise. We finished class with a cool fall breeze making us all shiver just a little, between smiles. The community of yoga is a wonderful thing.

All summer I’ve ended classes with readings about tea. Pema Chodron from her book The Wisdom of Now Escape, Trungpa Rinpoche as quoted by Pema in her book, and quotes from the book The Meaning of Tea by Scott Chamberlin Hoyt. I’ve asked myself why and what’s all this business about tea? I’ve wondered what tea and yoga have in common – to make me go back to theses readings and this theme again and again.

The answers are simple enough to see. I have a relationship with tea and I have a relationship with yoga – neither one of which came about through my own desire to have them. My spiritual practice, my sadhana has been, for over thirteen years, my yoga practice. But it has changed and evolved as my practice has grown, changed and evolved. So too has my relationship with tea.

I first started drinking tea when I had to stop drinking coffee. Too much caffeine was not good for an already anxiety ridden person. I needed to look for a replacement and tea was a natural to fill in. I drank Celestial Seasons Roastaroma because it tasted a little like coffee. I first started yoga in order to help deal with my anxiety also. I needed something less stressful than rugby. My wife had suggested yoga for a number of years and, almost under duress, we went to the first class together.

At first I used only tea bags. I didn’t know there was any other way to make tea. I knew nothing of loose tea or tea pots. I thought tea post were what you boiled your water in that you poured into your cup with your tea bag. Tea bags can make a good cup of tea but there is so much finer a tea to be made if you know about loose teas. Tea bags are just the tip of the iceberg. I knew nothing and wasn’t interested in finding out more at the time. I just needed to have a replacement for coffee that wasn’t Sanka. At first in yoga class I focused on asana, my physical practice. I didn’t know there was such a thing a yogic theory or that there was a 3000 plus history of practice or that a book like The Yoga Sutras or The Bhagavad Gita, or The Upanishads existed until a few years later. I came for the workout that would ease my stress, nothing more, nothing less.

When I was introduced to loose tea by a friend I thought he was crazy. It’s easier and takes less time to use a tea bag and there’s nothing to clean up. I didn’t want to wait to drink my tea. I wanted it quickly made and finished off. Then I had an epiphany in a diner in Washington DC. I’d gone for a run early in the morning right before one of my big presentation days at a national conference on substance abuse and drug courts when I stopped in a small diner and ordered breakfast and a mint herbal tea. They brought it out to me in a small cast iron tea kettle along with my breakfast. I started to pour the tea but the waitress stopped me. She said, “Wait a few minutes before you drink the tea. We just put the hot water in.” I didn’t want to wait but her words intrigued me. For once I waited. And while I was sitting there, inhaling the aroma of the mint leaves I settled into my seat and found myself calmer than before. After a few minutes I looked for the waitress across to see if I’d waited enough time. She nodded in between taking another table’s order. I poured a cup and added honey and it was the best cup of tea I’d ever had. There was something to this loose tea thing. The first class I took at Laughing Lotus I remember the yoga talk at the beginning of the class made me itchy. I kept wondering why the teacher was talking and when we were going to start the physical practice. “Get on with it,” I thought, my anxiety raising. I almost stopped going to class there because of all the talking. But I loved the vinyasa so I stayed and listened and after a while I started listening and hearing what the teachers said. Then I connected my breath to the movements of a sun salutation – something I’d never really done before. I was always off with the breath and not able to focus on it. But this one time in class I connected my breath with my movement and it was incredible. A few months later I was coming back for both the talk and the practice.

There are many types of tea and though I have my favorite types (green, dragonwell, gunpowder, Darjeeling, Moroccan mint, all kinds of herbals including my favorite – mint) I try new ones all the time. There are many types and styles of yoga to say nothing of the number of teachers, and although I have my favorites (Iyengar and Vinyasa) I try new ones all the time.

There’s paraphernalia in making tea. There are spoons, timers, tea kettles, and strainers all designed to help you make the perfect cup of tea. There are props in yoga including blocks, belts, bolsters, blankets, and chairs all designed to help you find the asana you are capable of finding. In both traditions it’s not cheating to use help – props and paraphernalia are only… helpful. It took me a long time to learn that lesson.

The making of tea has a many thousand year history and is still evolving. The practice of yoga and the inward journey is many thousands of years old and is also still evolving.

Both yoga and tea help me to slow down, to breath, to focus, to inhabit my body fully and with respect. It seems tea and yoga go together with me on more levels than one.

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape

“If you can live with the sadness of human life, if you can be willing to feel fully and acknowledge continually your own sadness and the sadness of life, but at the same time not be drowned in it because you also remember the vision and power of the great eastern sun, you experience balance and completeness, joining heaven and earth, joining vision and practicality. We talk about men and women joining heaven and earth but really they are already joined. There isn’t any separation between samsara and nirvana, between the sadness and pain of samsara and the vision and power of the great eastern sun. one can hold them both in one’s heart, which is actually the purpose of practice. As a result of that, one can make a proper cup of tea.”