Making the perfect tea

green tea
Originally uploaded by chikache

What? Don't you have anything better to do then write about such trivialities, you might ask? Well - not really actually, so please hear me out...

Fact #1: many freedivers stop drinking coffee when or shortly after they become passionate about their sport.
Fact #2: most drinks contains too much sugar
Fact #3: no one (not many at least) ask: "how did your water taste today?"

This is where tea comes in with its four main types (black, oolong, green and white) it never tastes the same. Black tea I keep away from because it has about the same effect as coffee does. (elevated heartrate, etc). If you want to read more about the different types you can read this Wikipedia article.

Over a year I was searching for the tea that gave me the most positive effect for freediving. All pseudo-scientific claims of tea manufacturers aside I could not detect anything reproducible. Placebo tea worked best but turned out to be to expensive.

When you google making the perfect tea you will see many entries with more than 10 points to keep in mind when making the perfect tea. All pages I found during this queste focused on the tea part of that line. I felt there was more to it and this is where I think it boils down to...

"Making the perfect tea" is about making not about tea.

What this means is that your tea will be perfect when you made it with full attention. So do not think about anything else. Being meditative about it. Notice the items you want to write on your shopping list - let go - and move on. Notice the mess that you really want to put in the drawer - let go - keep making your tea. It's the perfect excercise to stop discursive behaviour.

What I like about it is that it resembles perfect freediving. The perfect dive is about just doing it and not about the dive!