Spring Balance Teas for Calm Energy and Longer Days
With spring’s arrival—the equinox officially landed last Friday—each day contains increasingly more daylight than darkness until the summer solstice, on June 21—the longest day of the year.
The boosted volume of sun compels us to do more—to go out on neighborhood walks or even mountain hikes later in the day, to push back dinnertime, to spend post-work time in our gardens. Social invitations ramp up, too. We head out for block parties, backyard barbecues, al fresco drinks and snacks at restaurant happy hours. After winter’s heaviness, it all dazzles.
The expansion of light doesn’t land as a burden, of course—we welcome the invitation to engage more with the outside world, and to squeeze bonus thrills into our days. But this time of the year can also exhaust. It even comes with medical terms in far northern latitudes, like Alaska, where the sun never quite sets in the heart of summer.
Spring and summer light call for inner calm
Summer hypomania, a clinical condition, describes the bursts of high energy, decreased need for sleep and impulsive behavior that hits during the long Alaskan summer. Solar insomnia, too—the term refers to how prolonged summer sun can interfere with sleeping and lead to disorientation. Polar madness captures the vibe graphically. This broad term gets tapped to explain the psychological strain that can come with extreme light (as well as dark) cycles in polar regions.
So while we champion the fresh spring in our step, we also might seek ways to help us ratchet-back the energy at the end of a long spring day. Let’s tap tea, that most fabulous of beverages, to help keep us vigorous as we savor our abundance of daytime.
Happy spring, friends! We look forward to taking care of all of your tea needs across the season!
Spring Balance Teas: Cloud Chaser (Organic)
What a gem. It’s no surprise that customers clamor for our custom Cloud Chaser tea throughout the year. With bright flavors from lemon balm, lavender, marjoram, peppermint and rose petal the tea, Cloud Chaser brightens moods and lifts spirits. The aromatics, too—pure balm! But this grand tea also contains St. John’s Wort, the flower that practitioners of natural medicine around the globe leverage for the sake of mental well-being. We think the overall combination in this tea represents spring perfection, with gorgeous flavors and aromas along with St. John’s Wort’s mental boosts. When spring runs you ragged, here’s a tea to brew day after day.
Spring Balance Teas: An Ji White Green
Not only is spring a splendid time to brew and sip many pots of tea—it’s also when a balance of fine teas get harvested in Asia, from India to Japan. Our An Ji White is a classic spring-harvested tea, plucked by hand at the beginning of the season when the leaves are tender and silvery white. The tea, from Mt. Tian Mu in China’s Zhejiang Province, comes flooded with theanine, a calming amino acid. The compound helps make the tea taste sweeter, and mitigates its natural bitterness, while also delivering serenity to sippers. What a beauty—a must try for spring. In a way, it serves springtime double-duty. The theanine ripens calm, but the small taps of caffeine help keep you alert through the expansive days of spring.
Spring Balance Teas: Desert Rose (Organic)
One of this tea’s signature flavors, sage, delivers us to the American West. In many parts of the west, including the desert parts, sagebrush peppers, if not blankets, landscapes. When it rains, the petrichor (the word for the aroma that rises from earth after a rain) rises suffused with an enchanting sage perfume. But sage brings to the teapot more than aromas and flavors. IT also contributes toward health in different days, from boosting memory to reducing anxiety. That’s right—sage can spark tranquility, just what we seek during spring’s excitement. This blend also contains rose, rosemary, lavender and lemon balm. It’s a combination platter of American West and Mediterranean, with just a few minutes steeping on hot water. A spring treasure!
Spring Balance Teas: CHA Relax
Got calm? We’ll take a guess: sometimes, yes. But your body craves peace and quiet 24/7. Calm stands as the inflammation antidote, the stress flattener. Achieving it brings about a wide variety of health benefits.
When you’re busy running from task to gathering, from job to post-work commitment to weekend kids’ soccer game and the rest of it, nurturing calm doesn’t come easy.
Here’s where CHA Relax steps in. We developed this blend in collaboration with CU Boulder’s Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA), in part to help stressed students and faculty tamp down anxieties across the busy school year. Nice bonus—cha means tea in Chinese! Green rooibos, a native herbal tea from South Africa, delivers vitamins and electrolytes to this blend. Rooibos offers much in the way of health to sippers. It also contains elder flower, chamomile and spearmint, which develop flavors and also help instigate some of the desired calming—especially chamomile. And then comes ginkgo leaf, which contains botanicals that help open blood vessels. Among other things, this benefit aids the brain. The organ needs a lot of blood to function, and with better-functioning blood vessels the brain gets a boost.
Quenching, soothing and elegantly sweet, our CHA Relax belongs in every kitchen’s tea corner—especially in spring.
