Yerba Mate known as “Tea of the Gods”

by with No Comment BlogsTea talk

A wonderful start to the year, packed with changes and new beginnings for many people I know, myself included. Many new seeds have been planted and this year marks the ploughing and labouring of all those sowed seeds to grow into blossoming new creations and visions.

This is year I will be bringing you a feature on a particular tea each month, and the aim, to also eventually increase the range of teas and blends. It’s hoped that the knowledge into the properties and benefits of different teas will help you continue to make your art of drinking tea, the noble herb, a part of your health and wellness pleasures.

This month the first tea on the rank is the amazing Yerba Mate “Tea of the Gods”. Yerba mate is a tea that has been known to offer “the strength of coffee, the health benefits of tea, and the euphoria of chocolate“. An amazing all-rounder magical tea from South America packed with vitamins, minerals, polyphenols and amino acids, it contains less caffeine than coffee so doesn’t cause the jittery highs, but as a gentle stimulant in the fulfilment as an immuno stimulant and digestion tonic.

Packed with the usual antioxidants, it’s also been known to help with weight loss and depression or fatigue. However any therapeutic claims or effects of teas are only complementary to an already healthy lifestyle.

At Tuwawi Tea we’ve blended Yerba Mate into the Fortitude and Restoration Blend for added synergistic power. Fortitude Blend is excellent for times when you need to focus, to hold it together and expend all your energies into getting the deadline met, projects accomplished and exams pushed through. Restoration Blend is a popular favourite among tea lovers, as it restores and replenishes life’s normal wear and tear. Even more with added stresses of life’s curve balls.

Fortitude‘s blend of organic Black Mentha with Yerba Mate centres the breath as the anchor that holds through the storm, while the African Red Rooibos rich in polyphenols provide the therapeutic strength for the immune system to stay empowered through testing times.

Restoration‘s blend of organic Chai with all its warm and fiery spices, along with African Red Rooibos’ immune strengthening properties replenishes and refills the body, mind and spirit that’s drained and running on empty. Which is often us more than not.

Traditionally in native South America Yerba Mate is drunk through brewing it in a gourd, then mixed properly and carefully and drunk through a native straw called a bombilla. It’s benefits have been expounded and handed down since ancient times. Now in modern days, it’s widely enjoyed in the United States and many countries in the Middle East.

Drinking Yerba Mate just by itself in its pure tea form may be an acquired taste for some, but in a synergistic blend, its flavours and therapeutic properties are further tripled  and quadrupled in effects.

So if you haven’t explored this tea either by itself, or in a delicious blend, now is the time to introduce it to your tastebuds and enjoy its exhilarating effects.

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Disclaimer: Tuwawi Tea does not claim or guarantee curative effects of tea blends. Teas are powerful herbs but only a complement to your health as part of your overall healthy lifestyle.

 

Are you emotionally intelligent?

by with No Comment BlogsTea talk

If you’ve been connecting with me or following my posts and teas for awhile, you’ll know why I passionately created a range of tea blends specifically to complement your beautiful emotions. 

A natural result from all the healing work I do with my beautiful clients and also through my own personal life journey, I’ve come to find that 95% of our root anguish and blockages as a human being is emotional. None of us are exempted from being casualties in life. Life is laden with knocks, bruises and sometimes deep lacerated wounds. It is through healing and coming through storms that each cell and muscle of strength and wisdom grows and blossoms.

Are you emotionally intelligent?

Emotion is a word we give to describe sensations and feelings perceived through our minds and bodies. You’re fully aware of this as it’s the greatest gift as a human being, the ability to feel as all range of sensations and simultaneously perceive or describe it. Animals feel as sensations too but haven’t evolved the ability to simultaneously describe it. This may be an advantage or disadvantage, it depends.

Without description, the vicious cycle of mind-body loop is absent hence only primal instincts of survival and reproduction comes into play. All living beings will naturally gravitate toward what feels good and avoid what feels bad. Sensations are no different. When you feel heaviness and pain in the chest, head or stomach, clenching and tension in your muscles, nausea, constricted breath… you will naturally want to resist (fight) or run (flight).

So when you feel happy, excited, joyful, in love… your system floods with seratonins and endorphins,
you naturally welcome and indulge in those sensations.
When you feel sad, devastated, in grief…
it hurts in every single cell of your body, you naturally resist, deny or suppress.

So what’s emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence happens when you are aware, simple as that.
With and as awareness, changes happen, shifts occur, emotional energies release and move, wounds heal, brain rewires, beliefs fall. Space, lightness and new emerges…

Hence an emotionally intelligent awareness (you) flows as the sensations themselves, free of judgement of good or bad. However it may be sensed and perceived in the body, the sensations ride its course until it flows on, or dissipates into nothing. The energetic charge then diffuses. What do I mean by these words? Simply that emotions are pure energies, just like a raging thunder lightning storm. A storm does its thing then passes and gone.

During turbulent emotional states, it can be very unnerving and tumultuous. This may cause you to deny and resist by trying to escape for example with mind altering substances like alcohol, drugs or busy activities… just so you don’t have to feel that pain or face that fear. These may work for awhile, or even for years, as may happen with many of us in the suppression and denial of all our childhood emotional wounds.

However all energies are contained and housed in the body if they’re not processed through. Hence it brews and stews (yes, like teas and soups) and in some of us into a concoction of bitterness and hate. Deep seated anger or fears can lead to chronic dysfunctional behaviours like violence or anxiety, at the random activation of any of its related triggers. Then the all-hell-breaks-lose kind of outbursts are projected onto others who may or may not have anything to do with the cascades of pain and fears. Or it may lead to a total mental breakdown or worse, a fatal illness.

Psycho-energetic lingo aside, basically emotional intelligence is your awareness of the naturalness and beauty of being human. The feeling and processing through all your range of human emotional sensations as you are held in your own compassionate space. The mind will naturally label the sensations and automatically desire what it seems to like and avoid what it seems to not like. Nevertheless all sensations are allowed and honoured.

What I find works powerfully for me is to return to the breath. Breath is neutral, breath is life. By anchoring my awareness as breath alone, just the sounds and sensations of the breath, all other sensations takes its own course until it runs out of steam, however turbulent they may be. Interestingly enough, once it’s processed through, space and lightness results, and amazingly clarity and insight reveals. We don’t even have to try at all. It all happens by itself, almost effortlessly.

Okay so now let’s put the kettle on…
and whatever emotional state you are in currently, let’s just breathe…
as we sip on our favourite blend of tea aahhh…

SALE

Now’s the time to stock up your tea pantry, with my upcoming move into my mobile home, I have to thin down my stocks to fit in the van. So it’s an opportunity for you to cash in on the 30% storewide sale on all teas until the end of July. Head over to the store now!  Type in the code MOVINGSALE! (all caps)

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Ever tried Pottery?

by with No Comment BlogsTea talk

A reconstructed post from an oldie 26/05/2016:

I’ve always loved working with my bare hands, anything from gardening with earth through my fingers to hand painting with acrylics. This probably played a huge part in flowing me into working as a deep tissue remedial therapist for the last 15 years, as I love manipulating muscles and soft tissues under my hands to release tension and relieve pains.

potterywheelThis year I started exploring into something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time, Pottery. If you have done pottery or are an experienced potter yourself, you’ll know that it’s a skill and art that can take years to master… and perhaps a lifelong journey.

So without any expectations nor demands, I set out simply to enjoy myself and have fun, like all other things in life! I experienced challenges from frustrations when the blob of clay flew off the wheel on the first day, to the joys when a teacup was moulded out of the mound of soft clay. As any potter will tell you, the key is in centering the clay on the wheel, just like life, the quiescence that pervades regardless of how fast the wheel turns and whatever shape takes form.

So here I’ll like to share all the photos of my pottery which have aptly come to be called Crooked Creations partly because to date, my skill in getting the pottery piece symmetrical is still a challenging event! and partly because I actually do delight in creating non symmetrical, slightly or hugely imperfect pieces as it reflects the nature of us, the perfectly imperfect nature of our humanness.

I endeavour to give some of these pottery pieces away either as gifts to friends and family, or as giveaways here at Tuwawi, to you beautiful passionate tea drinkers. Each piece is an individual piece made with love as much as my pottery skills are not at professional level by any means. Who knows? while being a practical piece for now it may and could become a priceless possession when I become super skilled and well-known one day!

When working with pottery I usually get so engrossed I rarely stop for a drink or rest until a lump of clay is off the wheel or finished in its moulding. Then when I’ve sort of finished one or two pieces I love sitting back and sipping on a freshly made cup of Restoration Blend or Elation Blend before I feel energised again for another round.

What better than to brew and then drink your favourite blend of Tuwawi Tea out of your own handmade teapot and cups!!

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Quinoa Spinach Salad

by with No Comment BlogsTea talkWholesome Foods Recipes

This is Week 2’s recipe for the 7-Week Wholesome Foods and Tea series, a redo as the original post was pinged off the webspace mysteriously, after the recent switch of this website to a new server.

raw_quinoaThis Quinoa and Spinach Salad with all its other added wholesome ingredients like chickpeas and vegetables makes it one of my favourites. Tastes divine and SO easy to whip up! and of course packed full of goodness and nutrition.

If you’re not quite familiar with quinoa it’s a superfood of the grain world. It’s nature’s complete protein and
packed with nutrients like magnesium, iron, potassium and fibre. It’s a wheat-free complete protein that is almost a staple in a vegetarian or vegan diet. I’ve often been asked, “how do you cook Quinoa to perfection?” Generally I’ve always gone with the rule of 1 part quinoa to 2 parts water after it’s rinsed thoroughly. Then brought to boil and cooked covered for about 15minutes, until their white curly tails appear and they’re light and fluffy. Quinoa comes in either the white or red varieties.

This beautiful salad can be eaten on its own as a meal or as a side dish to a main meat dish (if you’re a meat eater) or another main vegetable dish.


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Quinoa and Spinach Salad

Ingredients

Baby/cherry tomatoes
1-2 red pepper/capsicum
1-2 stalks of fresh basil
generous lot of fresh spinach leaves
1 red onion
2 cloves of garlic
a handful of sliced sundried tomatoes
cooked organic chick peas
1 cup of cooked quinoa
100g creamy Danish Feta cheese

Slivers of fresh avocado for garnishing

Dressing

Olive oil
Kaffir lime oil (or any lime oil if available)
Mixed spices of grounded coriander, chilli, turmeric, fenugreek, cardamon and cumin
salt and pepper to taste

* all ingredients preferably organic

Directions

Chop fresh tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes and capsicum into small pieces or slices.
Chop onion, garlic and basil into fine pieces.
Mix everything together in a salad bowl. Add in cooked chickpeas and mix well with spices, olive oil, kaffir lime oil, salt and pepper.
Add cooked quinoa and generous loads of spinach leaves. Mix well with drizzled olive oil, lime oil, spices, salt and pepper.
Finally crumble feta cheese and mix well again adding spices, oils and salt to taste.
Serve and garnish with slices or slivers of avocado.

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This salad dish goes absolutely beautiful with a fresh brew of Sentimental Blend as you relax into your day or evening. Serve the tea hot if weather is chilly or cold and iced in a sweltering summer.

There are many variations of Quinoa salads, you can put together just about anything. Of course, if you’re vegan leave out the cheese. Try it, it’s so simple, no excessive effort at all, but overloaded with taste and nutrition.

Click here or on the image below and watch the Youtube video of me whipping this dish up for you!
Then leave a comment in the box below and share your thoughts, tips and ideas too. Would love to hear it!

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Keys to Health and Longevity

by with 2 Comments BlogsNature WondersTea talk

You know the usual spiel for the keys to health and longevity down to a pat. Yes yes yes you may say… eat wholesome foods, plenty of exercise, sufficient sleep, lots of sunshine and fresh air. Sounds absolutely wonderful in theory, so how many of us actually live it? How realistic is it to be all of those all the time?

Even if we religiously practice all those obvious idealistic way of living, what guarantee is there that we will never ever get ill? Do we want to live a long life, really? Well yes of course, you may say, as long as I’m healthy, I’d love to live a long life!

Health is one of the greatest assets in our relatively short span of human life. All the money and material wealth in the world simply can’t buy good health. We all know this, we know how amazing we feel when we’re healthy and full of life as compared to how we feel when we’re run down or ill stricken.

Having worked with clients as part of their health and wellness programs, plus in my own past journey of self-healing from depression, alcohol dependency, digestive inflammation and chronic fatigue (as much as I’m one not in favour of labels at all) I’ve come to learn that the keys to health and wellness is not as simple as a,b,c… yet… is purely and simply as simple as that. If you’ve had your fair share of health challenges in your life journey, you may second that.

There is no particular magical formula, cure nor answer. Genetically you may have acquired certain predispositions to better or worse health, but this isn’t your ultimate fate. The growing sciences of epigenetics has and is already proving that your can alter or reverse your blueprints by altering your environment i.e. through your lifestyle and mindset.

These days the latest research and health information are widely accessible through the internet and natural health is a booming and growing industry. If you actively take responsibility for your own health, you have every opportunity to maintain, heal and reverse many imbalances with more herbs, potions and methods than ever before. There are tonne loads of information, suggestions and proponents of all sorts of “proven effective” herbs, lotions, potions, diets and methods.

While this is absolutely amazing, it can also be downright confusing, expensive and mind boggling. I’ve seen how some clients, friends and family spend loads of money running around from one natural therapist to another, ingesting dozens of supplements and paying for various eating plans and diets. One particular client of such had spent years trying to heal her digestive system, and while she did improve, she was still suffering inflammation quite regularly, even after having cut out nearly half of all types of fresh foods. Then incidentally, when she changed job recently and would you believe… voila! Her digestion healed overnight, and she added that it was then that she realised how very stressed her life used to be.

Stress is profound. While you need it for achieving and accomplishing tasks, it’s also a hard-wired fight or flight mechanism in your body and brain for survival and evolution of our species. However, chronic stress wears your body down hence prematurely ageing it, suppresses your immune system hence increases your susceptibility to all kinds of illnesses. You’re drained and depleted of energy and eventually may even lead to serious or life threatening conditions.

Stress as you may know consists of mental, emotional or physical, or all of the above. While the solution is simple, nevertheless you are a complex being. Physical exhaustion is just as much a stressful impact on your body as suppressed and unprocessed emotions. When you relax, accept and embrace in the moment, it allows your whole system to unwind into its parasympathetic mode i.e. giving it the space to return to homeostasis or balance.

So here’s my take on the keys to health and wellness, and of course longevity (if you’re into that as well) it’s the encompassing of all that we already know in the context of:

  • Being in tuned with yourself ~ when you’re in tuned you’ll know what wellness and healthiness feels like, likewise you’ll also know what unwellness feels like which leads to…
  • Listening to your body and intuition ~ your body is an intelligent living machine. When you get a cut or a wound it heals itself. Everyday various intricate intercellular and systemic processes happen on its own within your body, to keep the whole machine running. Your intuition is the innate wisdom you’ve naturally acquired over the course of  your mental, emotional and genetic evolution. It pays to stop and listen to it. It is your very own internal guiding system, the way your body communicates with you. The world might rave on about the most expensive pill, herb or diet program but that may or may not be what is right for your body at all. Knowing, sensing and listening… you will then make choices that are right for your self.
  • When you’re fully the two points mentioned above… it becomes fairly simple really. Also most enjoyable and thrilling too, because it may not necessarily mean spending a fortune on fancy programs and treatments, abstaining from pleasures in life like various foods and drinks, or practising any kind of elaborate and exotic rituals. It’s all a matter of balance, and your mind and body’s own intelligence will guide you in the adjustment and rebalancing whenever the “boat goes off-keel”.

Simple yes, yet seemingly so impossible to be. Life, lifestyle, pace of life… all seem to render us to becoming out-of-tuned. We simply can’t hear, let alone take heed of the signals and messages from our internal alarm system. We know all about “stop, slow down, take time out, chill… make the time, take responsibility for your own health” yet how do we? The irony is that when you’re so caught up in the vicious stress cycles, you’re not even aware that you are!

Instead of waiting for the inevitable to happen, which is final collapse, breakdown or worse…

A cup of tea is the best excuse and breather to interrupt the pattern. It helps you to simply do all that… slow down, chill, take time out and stop…

In that space of stillness and silence you are back in tuned with your self and your body. You can hear and take heed. What’s more a cup of tea also tastes so good!

Please feel free to share your thoughts on health and wellness in the comments box below. Would love to hear your voice, tips and more suggestions on keys to health and longevity for a conscious life filled with vibrancy and aliveness.

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On the point of relaxation, along with a cup of tea, nature is also healing and health inducing. Immersing in the elements of nature like water, fresh air, sunshine, rain, wind and breeze through all our senses naturally activates the production of seratonins and dopamines (happy hormones) but is also the quieter time-out. Below are the links to a few videos I’ve put together from my woodwalks in the UK if, weather unpermitting, you might like to enjoy a bit of nature through my nature videos, made specially for you for while you sip on your tea!

Click here or click on the image below to view the video

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Click on images below for more Nature walks or watch Tuwawi’s Nature Wonders playlist on youtube

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What is your Passion?

by with 2 Comments BlogsTea talk

This month’s blog I’m going to touch on this thing called Passion…

followheartresizeIn my household all we’ve ever known is living true to our hearts’ passions and flowing as such. Mind you… this isn’t always a seeming journey without the challenges of obstacles or creeping doubts. A few years back my two older kids James and Jessica (who are young adults now) exclaimed in astonishment during one of our vibrant chats at the dinner table, when they found that their classmates at school had no idea what their passions are. As they were approaching the end of their high school years, these young teenagers were faced with the stressful dilemma of what to embark upon after school, seemingly for the rest of their lives.

My kids who knew then what they were passionate about, could not understand being asked those sorts of questions by their classmates, let alone knew how to answer them

 

“What is your passion?”
“How do you know your passion?”
“How do you find your passion?”
So our dinner table conversation that night turned into a most lively discussion.

The sad thing is when you are so numbed to the conditioning and programming of your familial, cultural, social and educational expectations, you end up not knowing what your passion is. Your life and perceptions become so confined within the limitations and acquired boxes of beliefs and expectations. You don’t even realise you are living and functioning on auto-pilot, just running on programs that have been installed into you.

This is still fine and happens, the majority of the human race seems to unconsciously operate in such a mode. You may not even notice nor care. Or you may be one who might wake up one fine day and realise your whole life is slipping past and seems an utterly meaningless existence. Worse still it may get to the point where there is no motivation nor drive to get out of bed. Or you deplore what you do for a living and life becomes a depressive torturous existence lacking in lustre and aliveness.

You as a human are a living being with an objectified brain that thrives on creations, expansions and flow. Creativity doesn’t necessarily mean just art or music. Creativity flows from passion and expresses in any shape or form, and through any means.

Passion by my definition is when it feels in sync deep within your heart and guts, regardless of whether it makes any logical sense or not. Be it a cause, creation or activity… the sign that it’s a passion is when time stops, you lose a sense of self or space and there is a sensation of its own flow. Passion simply feels alive and your heart sings and smiles, simple as that!

Passions can and may end up being the way it sustains your living, or it may be something on the side for you temporarily. Passions may change or not, just like everything else, life is a passionate flow of itself. Life itself is meant to be passion at its rawest… watch a caterpillar morph. bees pollinating, puppies at play! We’ve all fallen in love before, that’s what passion is.

So if you still aren’t passionate or wish to know the answer to “How do I find my passion?” my answer to you would be… You don’t find your passion. Your passion emerges, seemingly finds you!
As you naturally shift out of your limitations and your old beliefs crumble… passion and aliveness emerges itself because it is already you! and you simply reveal and unfold, and start to blossom into infinite possibilities.

So it’s for this reason that I’ve put together Tuwawi’s Passion Blend. With it’s exquisite premium leaves of Organic Snow View Darjeeling with dried rose petals and buds, the blend is infused with a very subtle sweetness and flavour that celebrates the opening of your heart as it loses itself in its own creation.

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Darjeeling Snow View tea is an exquisite black tea grown in the Darjeeling region of northern India, at the base of the Himalayas. The UK Tea Council has coined it the “Champagne of Teas,” in honour of its unique flavour. Apart from its obvious antioxidants, Darjeeling tea is also very nurturing for your digestion.

In line with this, check out also Tuwawi’s Heart Creations section where I will share all my passions. Some of them may coincide with yours too and eventually I would love to invite you to share if you care and wish. Teas are one of my many passions and I love and enjoy bringing teas to you through all my passionate activities and endeavours. Join me in Heart Creations for inspirations and fun, as you enjoy each brew of Tuwawi’s Emotional Blends. I would so dearly love to hear about your heart passion/s and thoughts on these too so please share in the comments box below. Would love to hear your beautiful voice and words!