This month, during our practice and community gathering next to the Pirámide de Cholula, we enjoyed—along with our usual healthy breakfast at Healthy Garden—a very special experience: a tasting of imported teas led by Sarai Calderón, tea sommelier and founder of the brand @tesbrote.She joined us and lovingly shared her knowledge and experience of ceremonial teas from the East.

In the middle of a warm, enriching conversation and great company, participants had the chance to taste different types of black tea, white tea, green tea, and some blends.We also learned about infusion times, and how flavors and nuances change depending on whether we taste the first, second, or third infusion—awakening our senses to a whole new world of sensations.

Tea ceremonies

Tea ceremonies in China and Japan,beyond their strong cultural and social aspects, are deeply connected to spiritual and meditative practice.

When the tea ceremony is understood and practiced to foster harmony among people, promote harmony with nature, discipline the mind, calm the heart, and reach purity of enlightenment, the art of tea becomes teaism..

Zen Buddhism has also influenced the development of the tea ceremony. The key elements of the Japanese tea ceremony are harmony with nature, personal cultivation, and enjoying tea in a way that is both formal and informal. It evolved as a transformative practice.

Through this experience, we confirmed that drinking tea with a certain inner attitude—placing our full attention on the act itself and the sensations that arise, adding nothing beyond our own presence—can lead us to understand that higher states of awareness can be experienced even while we’re immersed in everyday activities.