Soul-Shifting & Afternoon Tea: Autumn Ritual & Nature Immersion

A Daily Practice for Soul-Shifting: Afternoon Tea (Photos courtesy of Laura Weber)

When Autumn sunlight begins to wane and life feels chaotic and jagged, nothing is more comforting, more grounding than Afternoon Tea. Leaves + Water = Nature's Elixir - Tea. Slowing. Stirring. Reflecting. Dreaming. It's a daily Soulscape I anticipate and treasure, a natural tonic for health and harmony.

Enjoying a cup of Minthe, Artemis Tea & Botanical

Tea Time for me is sacred. It's a ritual that soothes and centers breath. I practice the Art of Afternoon Tea as I would practice Poetry or Prayer. It serves as a Nature-rich mantra for sensory immersion, and a balm for physical, psychological, and emotional healing and resiliency. My Medicine for Life.

Tea Time offers a gentle invitation for memory to simmer and imagination to spark and flare forth unimpeded. Tea Time allows me to alight in the potency of Now, to sip its subtle understory and wait for the flavors to emerge. It's a Soul-Shifting moment to reorient the day toward what is Good, what is pure Gift. It allows me to practice Gratitude, and frame the demands of an over-stimulated, excessively frenetic pace by easing into the warm embrace of Nature's calming cadence: steamy leaves in a mug full of wonder. Warm hands, heated core, natural aroma and blissful hydration. Clarity. Focus. Balance. Stillness. Calm.

Tea Time practiced mindfully is a thoroughly spiritual practice, prerequisite for Whole Nature Literacy. It sharpens olfactory acuity and flavor palette while alluring us into stillness and patience. Tea Time cradles us as we commence our daily interior reflection, and equips us with coping skills necessary for spiritual composting - for letting go, for shifting what is stagnant in our soul, and stirring the remains into new life.

Tea Time also immerses us deeply in the process of Change. It orients us toward our primordial Home, Water. As the natural elements of the tea leaves transform in the crucible of steamy, undulating Water, we become co-sojourners in the odyssey of returning to Earth. Our bodies relax as we ingest the vital essences of our plant-kin, once vibrant and attached to their Earthly matrix, now floating in the diffuser - suspended in their aqueous surroundings. This is comforting somehow, this process of Change - our growth, decay, and returning to Water-saturated Earth. Tea Time is profoundly stimulating as an Art form, creating space for wild imagination as we commingle with Nature's primary elements. Tea Time translates our kinetic, creative flow into new ideas, kindling life, energy and possibility from Nature's medium. We learn how to let go, to imagine "What if..." - to be transformed, to lie back in the water. Open. And float.

Lotus, Open & Floating

I love Tea Time for so many reasons, mostly because practicing the Art of Tea Time means learning to slow the tempo, to enjoy and savor, to go deeper, and to let myself be recreated by Nature's healing energy. If Life feels jaded, maybe settle into this ritual. It might suit you - *not sorry* to a Tea.

This is the tenderness of Afternoon Tea

A sacred communion

That cannot be rushed

And cannot be told

Only sipped.

And shared.

Graciously given. 

And humbly received.

Thus have I loved you –

and you have loved me.

(by Laura A. Weber, excerpt from her poem, "Afternoon Tea")