Wholeness, a place where our individualism and our interconnectivity meet. A place where we simultaneously feel our significance and insignificance living life in this world. Psychologists talk of self-actualisation and our drive to see our potential fully realised- namely re-becoming beautifully, truly, human.
If you follow this newsletter and my monthly musings, you will know of my interest in neuroscience, mainly the work of Dr. Iain McGilchrist. His research shines a light on how, as humans, our brains evolved to attend to the world from two different perspectives. Our right brain provides the interconnected viewpoint, how we weave within a much bigger ecosystem. Our left brain provides our sense of “I’, our individuality and drive to survive. Most of the time we have roamed the Earth, our brains have seamlessly blended an equal input of these 2 differing ways of ‘seeing’, providing the rounded experience of wholeness I mentioned at the beginning.
Sadly, nowadays that is not the case, as we find ourselves in a culture strongly biased by the viewpoint of the left brain and unsurprisingly, that is leaving us feeling fairly incomplete. The left brain calls for the singular ‘I’ and is built on our importance being measured by our productivity and accomplishments. The rise of coffee culture speaks to this, an enabler to help us progress in this new world, triggering our survival state so we are pumped with adrenaline, focused and powerful, ready to fight the tiger or make the work deadline.
As my tea explorations progresses, I am finally getting closer to making the connection between tea and wholeness. Human personality is formed relationally. From the day we are born, we begin developing as individuals in a world where we are constantly in relationship to others. Back in the day that would have extended to every sentient being, now it tends to mean only other humans (and the occasional pet or pot plant). I am going to look at this in greater detail next month but there is an ideal place where we are inwardly relational, with all the parts of ourselves, at the same time as being outwardly relational with all the things we interact with outside of us.
By the time the tea plant was first cultivated by the monks in China, it was already understood that drinking its leaves helped us naturally drop into this liminal place where we can hold both ‘me’ and ‘all’ concurrently. We now know this is mostly due to Tea being rich in a unique amino-acid called L-Theanine that activates both our brain hemispheres simultaneously. It is recalibrating our 2 forms of attention to blend more equally, as nature intended, returning us to that more harmonious place both within ourselves and in the way we interact with the world.
Sadly this is no longer true of all tea. We have messed with it, commoditised it, hidden it in tea bags made of bleach and plastic, we’ve chopped it up and used it as dust. But by returning to the pure, whole-leaf, hand harvested version of this incredible plant, we can again reap its benefits as the monks did long ago. We only have to drink it every day.
So as we launch our new shiny recurring order system (just choose the subscription option on the website), I wanted to cheekily plug the importance of ritual, of the accumulative effects of drinking these teas every single day. I know how easy it is to forget to order, lose the habit or wing it for a while. But my plug is a reminder that within that daily healthy habit, there lies the most powerful potential of our humanness, a way back to our wholeness. As the tea's impact on our brain chemistry eases the left-brain bias of our present society, so we shift back into our more rightful place.
There is a nice incentive for this repeat ordering (15% reduction on the price of the tea with every order), as it also really helps Ric and I. Not only in being able to better manage our stock levels but also to build a little more predictability into our income stream. For many of our long-term customers, it is also a little thank you, as ATTIC would not have made it through the last few years without you.
As I write this newsletter over my 3rd cup of green tea and as we celebrate the Gaelic festival of Samhain and the beginning of the ‘darker half’ of the year, let’s hunker down and be grateful for such a warming joyful ally to guide us as we turn inward for a few months before heading back out towards the sunlight.
Have a wonderful month and we look forward to talking to you again in December.
Anne and Ric x