No. 33 - On gratitude for body, mind and tea

This week, let me start by thanking you for being here. When you have a plethora of options in how you spend your time and where you place your attention, your choice to spend anything from a few seconds to a few minutes reading this is a kindness for which I am deeply grateful. I hope this note finds you with much gratitude filling your heart today and, of course, with fabulous tea in your cup.

On being grateful for body, mind and tea

Gratitude: the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.

Starting with gratitude

Although I start over ninety percent of my days with a gratitude practice that, while perhaps cliché or simply mainstream, helps to set an optimistic tone for my day, it occurs to me that I rarely appreciate what lies under my own skin. When you step back and think about it, our bodies are incredible machines. They run autonomously, taking between 5.26 and 8.4 million breaths per year (based on 10 to 16 breaths per minute) and pumping 1,825 litres of blood through over 36 million annual heartbeats. Needing only water and plants (like tea, obviously a vital nutrient), and (sometimes) animals, through electrical impulses and chemical energy, we move and think, act and react, create and love. Really, we are incredible.

Raising a teacup to the marvellous us

Although there are myriad ways in which the body can, and perhaps inevitably will, ‘let us down’, the fact that it is still working away at those basic functions is something to be grateful for. If you do feel ‘let down’ this very day and are finding it difficult to be grateful for the state of things internal or external, perhaps a pause for a cup of tea and five minutes of feeling your heart beat, imagining the blood as it flows to your extremities and back, or observing the gentle and cooling rhythm of your breath, can help you find a reason to show appreciation for—and return kindness to—your own self.

When we show kindness to ourselves, we may even be strengthening and improving the health of our minds. Not only has the act of expressing gratitude been linked to the release of ‘feel good’ molecules that help us experience more happiness and contentment, but a summary of the neuroscience of gratitude suggests that it increases the amount of grey matter in our brain. Grey matter is where we process information, so growing its volume is an idea I’m happy to raise a teacup to—grateful that every little bit of being thankful can make my mind more powerful.

Thankful for tea

Finally, on this beautiful autumn day, I am deeply thankful for tea. That unassuming beverage that graces my cup every morning, keeps me warm (or cool), adapts to my mood and my body’s needs, makes a great (Grandma-approved!) Thanksgiving cocktail, and nourishes my body and soul. Leading me into adventures yet untold, it connects me to the world and to history. It is my way of healing and bringing calm to the world.

So, on this Thanksgiving Day, I raise my cup in gratitude to tea, mind and body, and to you for being part of my tea family.

Until next time,
Steep Calm.
Bree

One more thing...

"Give thanks for each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night.
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson