This simple and delightful morning ritual will change the quality of your day — and hence your life. Try it for just a week; there is absolutely nothing to lose. It might even give you the power to create other changes you’d like to make. It works for me.
1) Get up earlier than everyone in your household – you’ll need about 10 minutes of solitude, but you might prefer 20 or longer. But you only NEED about 10.
2) Don’t shower, just go to the kitchen and pour yourself a glass of water. Drink a medium size glass of water, ideally with a squeeze of citrus in it. The body needs this rehydration after sleep, so make this a daily habit.
3) Take five minutes to prepare a beautiful bowl of matcha, doing it as mindfully as possible. It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t, especially after you’ve done it a few times, after which it oddly becomes quite automatic. These actions go into muscle memory in no time flat.
Set a small amount of water to boil. While it heats up:
* Get the matcha out of the fridge, and grab your matcha toolkit (sieve, scoop, and frother) Ideally these items just stand vertically in a tall pretty cup, and just live unobtrusively on the counter someplace easily accessible. You’ll also need a small matcha creamer or a mug, and a gorgeous bowl. The bowl can be anything at all, but ideally it’s a bowl you especially like.
* Grab a hefty scoop and sieve your matcha into the creamer
* Pour two ounces boiling water into your bowl (not the creamer), and let it sit for 10 seconds or so.
.* Transfer that cooled but still quite hot water into the creamer (bowl should now be empty and hot)
* Vigorously swirl creamer as if it’s a wine glass, and use the frothing tool to create crema
.* Pour tea into bowl
4) Take your bowl of tea and go sit someplace for five minutes, ideally with some kind of view of nature, no matter how modest.
5) Sip your tea and really taste it. Try to inhale when you’re “chewing” it, and exhale as you swallow, and notice how long it finishes. You can often still taste the tea a full 30 seconds after swallowing it.
6) Try to wish yourself and your body well, and just feel grateful to be awake, as awake as it’s possible to be.
7) Start your normal day.
8) Try to start most days like this. You’ll totally miss them when you don’t do it.