Tea and Mindfulness. Drinking pu erh and making a collage

Hello, tea lovers and welcome back to The Tea Squirrel! This is episode number two of my series on tea and mindfulness. If you’ve missed the first part, you can check it out here. Let me briefly recap what this is all about. Being present in the moment, enjoying the beauty of little things, being intentional with one’s thoughts and actions are all things that tea lovers can easily teach themselves by cultivating a tea ritual, however simple or elaborate. My goal for this series is to practice mindfulness more consistently and explore it in a creative way. I’m hoping to inspire you and get inspired at the same time.

Originally, the prompt I had selected for this week was “sketch the things you see in the room around you. This is an exercise in presence, where you can let your mind unwind and practice gratitude for the here and now.” This is one of the list of prompts by The Good Trade, a resource for sustainable living I read on a regular basis (link at the end of the post).

Even though I designed my own logo for The Tea Squirrel, I am not good at drawing or sketching, or maybe I’m just too afraid to fail and I should face it and embrace it. The goal here is not the result but the process. Anyway, I decided I was in the mood for something a bit less daunting and opted for a collage instead. I didn’t play it safe with my tea choice, though, but more about that later.

By total chance, I discovered a few dried leaves I had pressed into a book which I had not opened in years. I can’t remember where the leaves come from, I might have collected them in San Francisco or even Seattle (6 years ago!?). I thought they were absolutely beautiful and even most of the colors were well preserved. It felt like unearthing a buried treasure and I was suddenly grateful to my past self. One of those leaves became the centerpiece for my collage.

I repurposed a piece of sturdy cardboard and wrapped it in Japanese calligraphy paper to simulate a canvas. Other supplies I used were handmade origami paper from Japan, scraps of stationery and pieces of pu erh tea wrapper. You could also use photographs and magazines. Don’t forget you’ll need some sort of glue (stick or tacky), a pair of scissors and a good dose of playful creativity from your inner child. Before settling on a final design, I arranged the elements on the “canvas” without gluing them and when I was happy with the composition, I snapped a picture with my phone to remind myself what goes where.

Tea and Mindfulness. Drinking pu erh and making a collage. The Tea Squirrel

I’m kind of happy with the result, even though I find it a bit too cheesy, but let’s not forget that the most important part is the process not the result. I was so fully absorbed into the task at hand, sitting on the floor, paper and supplies scattered around me. I had so much fun, I enjoyed the playfulness of it, the beauty of perceiving different textures with my hands, and I might be biased, but I find paper, especially handmade paper, to be one of the most magical things.

I used strips of pu erh wrapping paper because I was drinking pu erh. As I mentioned before, I didn’t play it safe with my tea choice because ripe puerh, also known as shou puerh, is never my go-to. I’m not naturally drawn to it and I think it’s because I haven’t found one that I truly enjoy. Nevertheless, I never shy away from a good challenge for my nose and taste buds.

This particular pu erh tea was gifted to me by a friend of mine, which was another great reminder to be grateful. It’s pressed into bars wrapped together into a brick. Each bar is pre-scored and makes it easy to break off pieces as you go. I don’t know anything about this tea, I don’t know where it’s from or how old it is. The description on the wrapper is in Chinese, so I used Google to help me translate a bit. It says that it’s sun-dried and that’s from Xishuangbanna in Yunnan (which technically makes it pu erh tea), China. It’s deep reddish brown and smells sweet and funky, like decomposing autumn leaves and old books with a faint note of camphor. Did you know that one of the scent components of the most irresistible-smelling flowers is called indole? Indole is the smell of decay and this pu erh definitely has that. I don’t know if it has any of the other desirable components that would make it irresistible, though. The taste is very earthy but not as funky as the smell. Does it need longer aging? Maybe, but I’m not a pu erh expert, so time will tell.