Day 13 • Drinking Tea Meditation

For today’s meditation, choose an activity you do each day that doesn’t take very long when you do it: brushing your teeth, washing your face, brushing your hair. As you do this activity, bring your attention to your body, to your emotional state, to your thinking, to the quality of relaxation or stress. See if you can use the activity as a meditation, a time of coming into the moment, paying attention to your actual experience, learning about yourself, taking an interest and fully experiencing the simple things in life.

If your mind kicks into high gear and you feel in a rush to get through your task, see if you can take a few breaths, and even if at a quicker pace, begin again and bring your attention to the sensations.

You may be surprised by what you find in slowing down and paying more attention moment by moment. Do you feel calm? Bored? Notice your emotions as they come and go— impatience, weariness, resentment, contentment. You may notice that many judgments come to mind as well. Note these thoughts, and let them go.

Q: I can’t seem to maintain a mindfulness practice throughout the day, how can I sustain it for longer?

A: For most of us, mindfulness is fleeting. We manage it for a moment, and then we’re gone again for a long period of time, preoccupied with the past, the future, our worries; we see the world through the goggles of long-held assumptions. What we’re doing in practice is working to shift the ratio, so that we can gather and focus our attention more frequently. Mindfulness isn’t difficult; we just need to remember to do it.

• I like the cup, it is warm on my hands and reminds me of a friend   Posted by Drea Douglas on Feb 13, 2020

  My mug of tea has a saying: “I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty mediocre at housekeeping.” It reminds me of the fried who gave it to me, and I smile. My room is freezing – I don’t have Read More

• #RealHappiness Day 13   Posted by SueB on Feb 13, 2020

  Being mindful in the moment requires that we slow down and pay attention.  This can happen with everyday tasks – brushing your teeth, washing dishes,  drinking a cup of coffee or tea.  The idea of focusing on the senses with Read More

• Coffee break   Posted by Tayler Wolfe on Feb 13, 2020

  Another day, another meditation. It was quite enjoyable taking time to leisurely drink my coffee this morning. Feeling the warmth of the mug and the coffee as it traveled down my throat was amazing.  I think I will do this Read More

• Earl grey with half and half   Posted by Maeve on Feb 13, 2020

  When I saw the title of today’s meditation, I ran and made a cup of tea.  It was such an treat to sit and meditate on a cup of tea.  Blue tea mug filled with fragrant earl grey tea and Read More

• Day 13-Slowly Sipping   Posted by jivani on Feb 13, 2020

  I had just made a cup of tea when I sat down to hear Sharon. She was talking about sipping tea! I decided to use that as my object of meditation today since it was there. It seemed perfect. Despite Read More

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Welcome back. A friend told me once that he’d decided to make brushing his teeth a mindfulness exercise. The first thing he noticed, he said, was that he was holding onto the toothbrush so tightly it might have been a jackhammer about to leave his hand. It was a clue for him that he might be bringing excessive stress to many of his activities each day. We take the lessons we learn in one activity and see what they might reveal for us about many activities, about the patterns of automatic pilot that might be present in many ways in our lives, and what we might observe when we’re open to our experience moment by moment.

Choose an activity you do each day that doesn’t take a long time each time you do it. Brushing your teeth, washing your face, brushing your hair. As you do this activity, bring your attention to your body, to your emotional state, to your thinking, to the quality of relaxation or stress. See if you can use that activity as a meditation, a time of coming into the moment, paying attention to your actual experience, learning about yourself, taking an interest, and fully experiencing the simple things in life.

We’ll try a few different examples. If you prepare something like a cup of tea, you can use it as a time of meditation. First, observe the cup color, shape. Put your hands around the teacup. Feel the warmth. You can smell the tea. Lift the cup, take a sip. You can taste the tea. You can feel the warmth as you swallow. You may notice many judgments come up in your time. “I chose the wrong tea. I drink too much tea.” Whatever it might be, you can allow them to come and to go. Simply return to the actual direct experience in the moment just now. Then, the next sip.

How many times do we do something where we’re just disconnected, we’re not even really there? How many times do we go along on automatic pilot without awareness of our moment-to-moment experience? We’re drinking a cup of tea, reading the newspaper, checking our email, having a conversation, listening to the radio, all at the same time. Where is the taste of that tea? In this exercise, we try to be more fully present just with one activity.