Let your Heart Guide You

I couldn’t sleep last night.  After a solid twenty minutes of tossing, I decided to get up and make a cup of tea.  Upon opening my tea canister, which holds a plethora of tea brands and flavors, I saw the “Healing Teas” booklet.  “Healing Teas” is a mini-resource on the multiple benefits of tea.  I haven’t really looked at it since picking it up in the grocery checkout line a few years ago.  I decided to peruse it as I waited for my water to boil.

As the book reminds me, I really should be drinking more tea (like 3 times a day vs. once a day).  It’s so simple and healthy.  To name a few benefits, tea:  protects against heart disease, reduces the risk of cancer, destroys harmful bacteria and viruses, lowers blood pressure, fights infections and reduces cavities and gum disease.  So why not drink more tea?

As I continued to read “Healing Teas”, I thought about the overwhelming number of teas I see in the grocery aisle.  First there are colors of tea:  black, white, green, red, etc.  Then there are herbal flavors: licorice, anise, catnip, dandelion, echinacea, garlic, ginger, goldenseal, and roobis.  Of course, there are the old standbys like earl grey.  There are more choices in the tea aisle at Whole Foods than there are in the cereal aisle.  (I may have to verify this assumption).  “How to know which tea to buy?” I sometimes wonder as I stand there in amazement of the selection available. 

Anyway at 3:45am I opted for the caffeine free ginger tea by Yogi Tea.  If you’re not familiar with the Yogi Tea brand, it’s always such a treat to unwrap a bag of it as you never know what the little tag at the end of the tea bag string will read.  It’s like opening a fortune cookie, but there are never numbers or phrases that really aren’t fortunes.  Yogi Tea offers inspirational and sometimes thought-provoking phrases.  On this morning the phrase on the ginger tea bag was “let your heart guide you”.

Let your heart guide you.  By chance this was also my intention for my yoga practice yesterday.  Specifically, my intention was to practice with an open heart.  It’s an intention I’ve discovered on and off the mat since returning from Maya Tulum, Mexico.  Is it coincidence or a sign that my tea bag and current intention are the same?  Or maybe it is simply an affirmation that I really do need to let my heart lead me through life.

I finished my cup of tea, went back to bed and woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed.  I’m committed to drinking more tea and living life with an open heart, both on and off the mat.