How we read the world shapes our lives.  Whether we are reading the sun’s place in the sky to tell time, the weather to understand harvest cycles, or animals’ behaviors to tell us about the weather, how we read natural events as well as our own experiences shapes our perceptions and actions in the world.  [...]

It’s a New Year and by the Chinese calendar we have just entered the Year of the Tiger.  Hang on - it looks like we are in for a tumultuous year – a year of change, drama, and intensity – but also a great year for travel.  Supposedly, it is not a good year for [...]

If you find yourself lagging and dragging right now – start sipping and start breathing; pour a cup of tea and then do some deep inhalations and exhalations.
Change is all around us.  Change comes from within us.  Change is us.
For most of us, the weather is changing during these winter months – and this does [...]

Can you love yourself for fifteen minutes once a day?
Great!  Please go fill up the kettle, heat up the water, and let me tell you about self-success.
In the time it takes to mindfully sip a cup of tea, you can change your life.  Sounds a bit too simple, doesn’t it?  Ah, but this is how [...]

As crucial as the herbs and spices that create a flavorful tea are the circumstances that surround its consumption.  Tea steeps the stories that are created while we drink it, and allows us to recollect those stories the next time we taste it.
Once, my friend Alex put googly eyes on various objects in her kitchen, [...]

The memory of just how Toni – as I have always called her – and I reconnected eludes me.  It was several years ago now when we started to exchange the infrequent email and hope that we would reunite “one of these days.”  As second cousins – we shared great-grandparents who helped settle Montana - [...]

Oh, yes, it is that time again – the holidays are upon us and, as always, we are looking for something different to prepare and serve – something festive, creative, tasty and easy?  Now that I have your attention, you probably know I am going to suggest TEA.  I will certainly not disappoint you, of [...]

I recently returned from three weeks abroad during which I traveled through the tea estates of Southern India.
One thing I discovered during my travels was that we take for granted the leaves that we love.  More specifically, we take for granted the people who pick the leaves that we love, and these people are mostly [...]

Tea has taken me on a journey to many actual destinations, but, above all, to a place of calm - quiet, restorative, relaxing, and solitary.  The mere act of taking time to brew a proper cup of tea from fresh, premium-quality leaves calms me, centers me, and focuses my attentions away from the stresses, intensities, [...]

Sadly, as is often the case in LA, the stress accrued in getting to an appointment counteracts the relaxation the appointment is designed to deliver.  But despite the fact that it was Parents’ Weekend at UCLA and the campus was teeming with proud parents and their UCLA sons and daughters, the extra traffic and dearth [...]