Korean Green Tea, much more then a simple cup of tea!

Enjoying a cup of tea is in European culture a pleasant pastime, a relaxing moment while chatting with some friends and of course, we cannot possibly forget the cookie that comes with it!

However, the simple "drop of green" has a much deeper sense in Korea where it originates. It started with the ceremony of offering tea to an ancestral god back in 661 AD. It is not only a taste of a new flavor, it is a "think the flavor" matter.

To explain that I have to say that Koreans focus on the inner being while drinking tea and they have a veritable ritual for that. I am not focusing on the ritual itself for now, yet, I truly believe they teach us a very important lesson: thinking about what is eternal in you. We all have those questions within us like:" what ‘s beyond the stars?" or "why am I here on Earth?"

When you quietly descend inside your heart and try to sincerely look for answers to questions like those above, the cup of green tea in your hand becomes more then a simple drink, it turns to a veritable thought material although we know thoughts don’t have a physical body.

It is interesting to do this switch –from our traditional European drinking tea style (the chatty way) to the Korean approach, focusing on our own soul. Thus, the green tea can work like an elevator taking us in the depths of our hearts discovering old forgotten riches or maybe unanswered questions and emptiness…

Regardless of what we discover, it is worth to get down there and see where we stand. Maybe we, westerners are too busy to realize that the "urgent" can be such a tyrant as it does not allow time for what is truly important.

We have to pay a multitude of bills and we have to make sure we have a good job, two or three of them if possible and by the time we arrive home, all we can do (eventually) is to sleep so we can wake up the next morning and go all over again.

Drinking tea and meditating in the meantime? Oh, drinking tea might happen in the office maybe or at home, but the meditation part is too much to ask! We often times consider it a waste of time because we must keep up with interminable projects and the inner part of our being suffers silently.

Yes, the tyranny of the urgent keeps us so absorbed within that we simply don’t even realize the fact that we are running just like mice in a mice race.

However, meditation is the way drinking Korean green tea turns from a plain drink to a true life experience and we speak about "thinking the flavor " not only about tasting it.

More then an experience, Korean Green tea has an exceptional antioxidant role because it is rich in catechin polyphenols, particularly epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). EGCG is a powerful anti-oxidant: it inhibits the growth of cancer cells and also kills them without harming the healthy tissue.

It is also benefic in: lowering high cholesterol levels, cardiovascular disease, infection and impaired immune function. Weight loss is also controlled as three green tea cups a day boost the metabolism helping us keep our weight in balance.
It also "wakes you up" as it contains caffeine yet, it has no calories.

Dae-jak represents the tea leafs picked after the first three harvests of the year and it is what we have in our teabags as"Green tea".

A little about how to make it to get the best taste:
-use pure spring water (no chlorine as it alters the taste)
- let the water cool after boiling (if the water is too hot it will bring out a bitter aroma), add the tea only when it reaches around 60C (140F).
-let it steep for 2 1/2 min.

I tried this switch and I loved it, you can too keeping in mind that the green drop has the following message: "think it" not only "drink it"!

Enjoy the Korean green tea as well as the Korean inner focus!