Modern matcha

Matcha is making more and more of a mark in these modern times. It's finely ground down, powdered green tea (cha meaning 'tea' in Japanese), and is purported to have wonderful health effects.

Matcha - powdered green tea

The first time I came across matcha was when my Zen teacher Daizan did a Japanese tea ceremony with us a few years back – I thought it tasted pretty horrible, bitter and strong! Then I went to Japan and we spent an afternoon with a tea master (mistress; on the left in the photo) and learnt about the art of the tea ceremony.

The development of the tea ceremony in Japan was very much influenced by Zen over the centuries, and has almost become the epitomy of mindfulness practice in action. Everything about the ceremony is highly ritualised, from the way you sit, the way the tea is prepared and the cleansing of the utensils, what kind of bowels are used, how you drink it, what scroll is handing on the wall and what flower arrangement is used, etc, etc. If your mind wanders then you can easily forget a crucial detail, so you must stay focussed!

But tea ceremony isn't just good for the mind. As I mentioned above, matcha has many fantastic health benefits. As I wrote in a previous article, the first person credited with bringing green tea from China to Japan was a Zen monk called Myōan Eisai (b. 1141). He wrote a manual for restoring and boosting health and wellbeing called "Drink tea and prolong life", and, as you can imagine, tea featured pretty highly.

In Chinese and Japanese traditional medicine, the heart is associated with the bitter taste, and the heart is seen as being the chief among the organs. At the time Eisai noticed people consumed very few bitter foods, he suggested drinking bitter green tea as a way of balancing their diet and restoring health. I think this applies just as much today, though, as back in the 1100s. We eat very few bitter foods (and those we do eat we tend to sweeten). I guess alcohol is one exception (beer and wine tend to be more bitter than your average drink), and if you've ever tried to get a non-alcoholic drink in a bar that's not mega-sweet then you'll appreciate this.

According to modern science, Eisai was really onto something with his green tea.

The tea bushes used to make matcha are grown under shade which causes the plant to dramatically increase the Chlorophyll content of the leaf, and Chlorophyll is rich in antioxidants. As a result, matcha has something like 140 times the antioxidants of regular green tea. Oxidation (a chemical reaction resulting in a gain in an oxygen atom) is a process that can cause cell dysfunction (a peeled apple or potato turning brown is the effect of oxidation), and the skin is at particular risk since it's our outer layer. Antioxidants block the effects of highly reactive molecules containing oxygen (free radicals) by sacrificing (being oxidized) themselves – hence why they're so important. Green tea also naturally contains polyphenols which can further inhibit UV radiation-induced skin damage.

According to this Teapigs article, matcha also contains two special amino acids called Theophylline and L-Theanine which give a sustained energy boost which can last 6 hours – this I've certainly noticed myself – and it can also increase your body's heat production by up to 40%, helping weight loss and the metabolism. And since matcha is made from the whole tea leaf, finely ground up, you end up consuming every last bit of goodness!

Teapigs modern matcha kit

Now what about caffeine... Ok so matcha has more caffeine in it than black tea, but only about 2/3 of the amount of caffeine compared to a standard filter coffee. Here are the stats: black tea 17mg per 100ml, matcha 29mg, filter coffee 45mg, espresso 173mg (source www.caffeineinformer.com). When you take into account the amino acids and this caffeine, it can really give you quite a lift.

Since I recently received a Modern Matcha Kit from Teapigs, I've been experimenting with ways of incorporating a more modern, cut-down tea ceremony into my daily routine.

I've got my traditional utensils – my chashaku (tea scoop) and chasen (whisk) – and my beautiful chawan (tea bowls). And now, thanks to Teapigs, I've got my modern equivalents – a 2ml plastic tea scoop, an Aerolatte electric frother, and a Teapigs shot glass.

My traditional bamboo tea scoop (chashaku) and the modern plastic equivalent

My traditional chasen (bamboo whisk)

The first time I tried the electric whisk with some matcha and hot water in the shot glass, about a second after I turned it on I had nothing left in the glass! Again, when I tried the electric whisk in a half-full tea bowl I was left with barely anything in the bowl! The frother is clearly over-powered for the job! However, electric whisking the matcha with just a small amount of water in the bottom of the bowl seems to work much better. The powder is well mixed in (no lumps) and a good froth forms, then you only need to add more hot water. I have to say it certainly beats the manual whisk in terms of convenience and effort (especially given my poor whisking technique!).

I've found my matcha routine a lovely addition to my morning. My meditation starts with methodically and mindfully making a matcha (so many alliterations...), drinking it slowly on my meditation cushion, then sitting for my usual 30mins of practice.

If you would like to try matcha for yourself or anything else from Teapigs, they've very kindly offered a 10% discount to readers of this blog valid until the end of June 2014. Just enter "mark" at the Teapigs checkout to get your discount (excludes cheeky, bulk buys, pick & mix and matcha kits). You could try doing the teapigs matcha challenge... Do let me know about your experiences with matcha using the comments box below.

teapigs matcha challenge

(Thanks to teapigs for sending me their modern matcha kit.)

If you would like to try matcha for yourself or anything else from teapigs, they have very kindly offered a 10% discount code for all Blue Kitchen Bakes readers valid until the end of June. Just enter blue at the checkout (excludes cheeky, bulk buys, pick & mix and matcha kits).

Thanks to teapigs for sending me a matcha kit. All views and opinions are my own.  - See more at: http://bluekitchenbakes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/i-took-on-teapigs-matcha-challenge.html#sthash.mUE57rjL.dpufffffffffffffffffff

Why you'd want to live a long life

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed a workshop I went to on the Energetic Basis of Zen Yoga where we were introduced to a book written in 1211 called Kissayojoki or "Drink Tea and Prolong Life" by Zen master Eisai. Eisai wrote it to help convince the Japanese shogun at the time to give up being an alcoholic and drink tea instead - essentially to live a better and healthier life. However, in writing the book he set out a great deal of knowledge and many practices he'd learnt in China for boosting health and vitality, and the keys to living not just an average length of life, but a very long life.

So the question is why would you want to live a long life?

Why wouldn't you...?! In the west we seem to have a preoccupation with finding the elixir of life, the secret of immortality, sometimes called the philosopher's stone - a mythical potion that supposedly grants the drinker eternal life and/or eternal youth. Just google for "secret of eternal youth"! But as far as I see it, this preoccupation or desire to live forever is really driven by fear. Fear of change, fear of getting older, fear of loss, and ultimately a fear of death. Death is one of the great unknowns that we will never know about. Just pause for a moment and think of what might happen to you when you die - it's scary!

Why is it scary? I think it all stems from that little word "you" (or actually "me"). What will happen to me? What is 'me'? Who am I? What is self?

When it comes down to it, aren't we just scared of finding out that we're not who we think we are? We have these ideas like "I have good skin", "I have a healthy body","I have a good memory", "I have many friends", then as we get older we find our skin wrinkles, our hair falls out, we lose our memory, and this is scary.

But if we can learn to let go of this precious 'self' we care so deeply about, then change, getting older, and even death suddenly seem much less terrifying. We just need to stop making those "I am..." identifications.

Of course it's not quite that easy! If you spend some concentrated time looking at that question of "who am I?" you might get a genuine direct experience of no-self - when the self dissolves and you realise that 'I' doesn't really exist in the way you thought.

But it's one thing having this realisation, and another thing altogether living fully and completely from this realisation: seeing through all those old habits driven by thinking of yourself as separate, and fully integrating this realisation into your life.

So that's why I think one might want to live a long life. Because it takes time and a lot of effort to see through the strong and habitual delusions of the self built up over the decades since you realised you had a self. And it takes time to work out how to truly live from this place. Developing wise or skilful intentions, making wholesome and compassionate actions, speaking wisely and kindly, finding the right kind of livelihood, putting your efforts and energy in the right kind of directions, paying attention skilfully, and practising the things that cultivate all these qualities. That's the Buddha's 8-fold path, that is! And it's a life-long practice.

Available here

The Energetic Basis of Zen Yoga

This week I'd like to review a workshop I went to last weekend (12th Oct) led by our Zen master, Daizan on "The Energetic Basis of Zen Yoga". The workshop was designed to look a little below the surface of our Zen yoga and meditation practice - to look, as it were, at the underlying operating system, what the practice is built on.

This workshop formed part of the continuing professional development (CPD) days Daizan runs for his yoga and meditation teachers.

We started off looking at the Japanese word for yoga: do-in - literally translated as guiding and pulling! Sounds strange until you think of it in terms of energy. We guide and direct our energy around the body using movements and stretches in order to unblock or work on certain channels. That really set the scene for what this day was about. (For the energy sceptics out there, see this article.)

The workshop was centred around the teachings of the first monk to bring Zen to Japan, Myōan Eisai (b. 1141). After originally studying Tendai Buddhism, he spent 4 years in China learning Zen (or Chan), before coming back to Japan and establishing the first zen temple in remote Kyūshū (the third largest island of Japan to the southwest). Among his notable disciples was Dōgen, founder of the famous Sōtō Zen school. Eisai is also credited as the first person to bring green tea into Japan from China.

It seemed Eisai was pretty successful (read politically skilled) at bringing Zen into the Japanese mainstream, and in 1202 he founded the famous Kennin-ji temple in Kyoto (still very beautiful and worth a visit today). The Shogun (military governor) at this time, Minmoto no Sanetomo, was a complete alcoholic, and Eisai took on the responsibility of trying to get him to sober up an live a more healthy life. Eisai thought that he could get him to drink tea instead of alcohol... Jolly good plan I say ;-)

Drink Tea and Prolong Life

In the process of trying to convince the shogun it's not all about going out on continuous benders, and that being an alcoholic is actually very bad for the body, he wrote in 1211 a book called the Kissayojoki - literally translated as "Drink Tea and Prolong Life". In it he says "tea is the most wonderful medicine for nourishing one’s health; it is the secret of long life." More on that later.

As you might imagine, it actually contained more than just a plea to drink tea. It was a manual for healthy living, in fact describing very much what we would call Zen yoga. The Kissayojoki is part of the tradition of Yangsheng (Chinese) or Yojo (Japanese) referring to a broad array of practices aimed at nourishing and prolonging life through breathing exercises, dietetics (especially abstention from grains), sexual practices, meditation and visualization exercises, pharmaceutical prescriptions, and methods of "guiding and pulling" (Japanese: Do-in, Chinese: Dao yin). Why you'd want to prolong your life will be the subject of a future article.

One of the central ideas that's been around in traditional Chinese medicine for at least 4000 years is that of the energy meridians. These are energy pathways through the body that make up a circuit or web that delivers our life force, (Chinese: qi, Jap.: ki) to the organs and tissues of the body. There are 12 major meridian channels, each correlating to the organs in the body in a reciprocal relationship. For example a healthy liver allows energy to flow easily along the liver meridian, and unblocking the liver meridian can help the liver function better. The idea is that when meridians are blocked, or the flow is too great or too little, problems result.

Qi/ki is stored in three main centres in the body, known as Tan Tien (or Dan Tian; Chinese) or Tanden (Japanese) literally translated as 'field of elixir'. They are the East Asian equivalent to the Indian Chakras. The main tanden is in your belly, known in Japanese as your hara.

Japanese monks have been involved in accupuncture at least from 1227, which implies a good understanding of the energy meridians (Japanese: myaku). In the Kissayojoki, Eisai goes into some detail about the meridians and their relationship with the organs (see picture).

So why tea?

In the meridian system, each organ and organ meridian is associated with a different quality - season, colour, taste, element, direction, emotion. Here are the organ associations for the 5 tastes:

Heart – Bitter
Liver – Sour
Spleen – Sweet
Lung – Spicy
Kidney – Salty

The heart is seen as being the chief among the organs, but the problem was that at that time (and probably still nowadays) very few bitter foods were eaten - particularly by this drunken shogun. Nowadays those that are bitter, we tend to liberally sweeten.

So, as a way of balancing our diet and restoring health to our chief organ, the heart, Eisai suggested drinking tea. If you've ever had green tea, you'll know how bitter it is! These days other bitter foods include coffee, beer (bitter), cocoa/dark chocolate, olives, and citrus peel.

Prolonging life further

Of course, balancing the diet and promoting the health of our inner community of organs is just the start. We can't do anything if our physical body is out of whack, undernourished, weak, unbalanced. Once we've got that under control though, we can start working on boosting our health and wellbeing higher and higher - and this is how we really prolong our lives.

With this in mind, the physical yoga practice during the workshop focussed on stretching and opening up all our main meridians. Not only is it important to open/unblock these channels, but it's also important to get the energy flowing down them, and for that we did some practices using the sound 'mu'.

Mindfulness and meditation are also an essential part of this unblocking process. If you're interested I run regular courses in mindfulness in Camberwell, London.