Momentum Issue 17: Listen to a coffee or tea meditation
Easily incorporate some more mindfulness into your routine.
Having some sort of mindfulness practice is incredibly valuable.
This doesn’t need to be a formal meditation. This doesn’t need to be any sort of formal practice at all. But having ways of incorporating more mindfulness into your day is a great way to support your health.
This week, try listening to a coffee or tea meditation while you sip your morning drink.
Importance
I don’t know if it’s just me, but recently things have been feeling more chaotic than usual.
And interestingly, when things get chaotic, we tend to move away from the practices that would serve us best. I haven’t opened my journal for over a month, and I rarely include any mindfulness or meditation in my day anymore.
But this is precisely why we have these practices in the first place - to support us when things are challenging. These practices provide us with the resources we need, so they will be available to us when we face challenging times.
This is why it is important to have a daily mindfulness practice, whether you feel like you need it or not.
While not the standard healthy habit we usually talk about, mindfulness has numerous health benefits, and taking care of our mental and spiritual health is just as important as our physical health.
The benefits of mindfulness almost seem endless. Mindfulness can:
This quote by Thich Nhat Hanh illustrates the importance of this practice:
“You must be completely awake in the present to enjoy the tea.
Only in the awareness of the present, can your hands feel the pleasant warmth of the cup.
Only in the present, can you savor the aroma, taste the sweetness, appreciate the delicacy.
If you are ruminating about the past, or worrying about the future, you will completely miss the experience of enjoying the cup of tea.
You will look down at the cup, and the tea will be gone.
Life is like that.
If you are not fully present, you will look around and it will be gone.”
Implementation
Find a coffee or tea meditation you can listen to each morning. You may like to stick with the same one, or you might want to try a few different ones. These are two of my favorites:
Mindful coffee break - 3.5 minutes
The coffee break meditation - 10 minutes
I recommend the Insight Timer app, which has lots of free meditations. Just search “coffee meditation” in the search bar.
Once you’ve listened to the meditation a few times, you may find you no longer need to have the audio. You’ll likely be able to complete this practice on your own.
I find that focusing on aspects of the cup of coffee to be easier than focusing on the breath, especially when I am feeling particularly anxious or have a busy mind.
Try this out for a week and see if this practice resonates with you.
You can also try walking meditations, which again, can sometimes be easier than sitting and paying attention to the breath.
Before you go
I’ve had some requests for my book recommendations. If you’re interested, you can check out my Reading List on my website.
I have also recently introduced my blog on the website as well, if you want to check out any articles. This is a work in progress, but soon I will have all 160 articles on there, conveniently categorized.
Also, here are some free links to relevant articles.
5 Simple but Important Things You Should Do Before Looking at Your Phone in the Morning
Being Busy Isn’t a Badge of Honor, It’s a Lack of Priorities