Tea is nought but this: first you heat the water, then you make the tea. Then you drink it properly. That is all you need to know.

                                                                                       –Sen No Rikyu

This is a deceptively simple quote by Japanese tea master Rikyu (1522 – April 21, 1591.) To the casual reader, one that is not immersed in the traditional practice of Chanoyu (the Japanese way of tea), this poem seems almost commonplace or obvious. I see it as both, but also as a masterful tincture of the very essence of having tea be a guide for a better life.

When I began drinking tea every day I was not looking for a “way” or a means to change my perception.  I was merely adhering to a New Year’s resolution. I had never made a New Year’s resolution, and was frequently telling my patients to include green tea in their quests for better health.  What I was not doing was practicing what I was recommending.  I understood full well that the “health benefits” that had become synonymous with the notion of drinking green tea were based on people in Asia drinking really good quality green tea…a LOT of it.  The statistics you read about that mention anti-oxidants, cholesterol, blood pressure, anti-cancer, weight loss, etc. all are based on people drinking 6-10 cups of very good quality, fresh green tea a day.  Not a cup or two a day of weak, urine-colored water from the all you can eat Chinese place, not a teabag of Lipton’s “green tea” from the grocery store, and certainly not a highly marketed bottle of green tea pills from the health food store.  So, I put my tea where my mouth was and embarked on a quest to embody these stipulations.

I began with Good quality green tea from China, Dragon Well (Lung Ching) from a dangerously addictive online tea shop in San Francisco, California called Holy Mountain Trading Company. This is still one of my recommended places both to obtain good tea from and to read about it’s merits.  Over the course of a year I eventually came to only drinking Matcha.  Matcha is a highly manicured, powdered form of green tea that is primarily used today in Japanese tea ceremonies. This was a personal choice and is certainly not the only way to reap the benefits of tea.  It just happened to be right for me.

I have no formal instruction on the tea ceremony as it is practiced in Japan, no teachers from a linage in the tradition of wabi-cha and I hope to never offend anyone who is a devote practitioner.  I am simply one man who has chosen to mindfully drink tea.  I have told a great many people that it is as if the tea itself has taught me and I in turn have arranged my own life accordingly.

Because of my unique position as an acupuncturist in a hospital, I have been able to watch a lot of other peoples lives be enriched by my suggestion to practice tea, (I say practice as opposed to merely drinking tea, because it is far more of a healthy habit than the simple act of consuming a beverage).  I have been surprised at the lessons that tea has shown me, and been nothing short of amazed at how the health of others around me has changed with the inclusion of tea to their lives.