Anne's Story
I grew up reading all the core texts of a young ‘seeker’ and was fascinated with alchemy and the invisible world and finding all the answers to life’s big questions.
I did a lot of travelling when I was young and while living in Australia I found myself at the beach in a place called Noosa heads. It was late at night and fairly dark, save a brilliant full moon that lit the ocean below it. I was sitting at the top of the beach with a friend and a torch and like a strange horror movie, hundreds of tiny creatures, spider-like, were scuttling towards the shore. It turns out this was the annual hatching of the turtles, who seconds after being born, had already engaged their ancient innate guidance system to seek out the ocean by following the lowest point of light, which happened to be the moon’s reflection on the water surface.
In that singular moment, my life changed forever. Watching those incredibly brave baby turtles driven by their innate intuition to be what they were born to be, I had a rare glimpse into the space where both my individual place in the web of life and my absolute insignificance in the vastness of the universe collided. And then just like that it was gone but in that briefest of seconds, I had felt a sense of wholeness that I’ve been searching for ever since.
Then auspiciously I went to China (my mum’s family are Chinese) with a secret mission to find some of the famous green tea I’d heard was a great health tonic. There in the Shanghai tea markets, the size of ten football pitches filled with beautiful handcrafted teas, I had another moment of clarity (2 in a lifetime doesn’t seem that many!)
Why was so much energy and reverence bestowed on just one plant? I needed to explore this more. So I filled my backpack with tea and headed home and we created ATTIC (an acronym for All The Tea In China) back in 2006.
The teas have supported my ongoing journey ever since, teaching me how to reconnect with who I am as an individual and as part of something much bigger. There is a richness and balance to my life that didn’t exist before they unexpectedly arrived in it. At the core of my personal practice is an attempt to return to our innate spirituality, Animism, a belief that all things are sentient from rivers to rocks to plants. Once you experience for yourself the invisible guidance offered once we accept we ARE nature, not separate from it, the rift between our current way of living and the wholeness I first mentioned begins to close.
The question that has really surfaced for me over the years is what is true humanity, who are we under all our layers of cultural conditioning? Who were we before the modern world told us who we should be? How would we be if we were healthy in body, mind and spirit? So I'd love to share with you some of the amazing ways tea helps keep us balanced and strong in mind and body and how we can engage in certain reconnection practices to help us find our way back to who we truly are. To be more turtle and be guided by the blueprint that birthed us.
I did a lot of travelling when I was young and while living in Australia I found myself at the beach in a place called Noosa heads. It was late at night and fairly dark, save a brilliant full moon that lit the ocean below it. I was sitting at the top of the beach with a friend and a torch and like a strange horror movie, hundreds of tiny creatures, spider-like, were scuttling towards the shore. It turns out this was the annual hatching of the turtles, who seconds after being born, had already engaged their ancient innate guidance system to seek out the ocean by following the lowest point of light, which happened to be the moon’s reflection on the water surface.
In that singular moment, my life changed forever. Watching those incredibly brave baby turtles driven by their innate intuition to be what they were born to be, I had a rare glimpse into the space where both my individual place in the web of life and my absolute insignificance in the vastness of the universe collided. And then just like that it was gone but in that briefest of seconds, I had felt a sense of wholeness that I’ve been searching for ever since.
Then auspiciously I went to China (my mum’s family are Chinese) with a secret mission to find some of the famous green tea I’d heard was a great health tonic. There in the Shanghai tea markets, the size of ten football pitches filled with beautiful handcrafted teas, I had another moment of clarity (2 in a lifetime doesn’t seem that many!)
Why was so much energy and reverence bestowed on just one plant? I needed to explore this more. So I filled my backpack with tea and headed home and we created ATTIC (an acronym for All The Tea In China) back in 2006.
The teas have supported my ongoing journey ever since, teaching me how to reconnect with who I am as an individual and as part of something much bigger. There is a richness and balance to my life that didn’t exist before they unexpectedly arrived in it. At the core of my personal practice is an attempt to return to our innate spirituality, Animism, a belief that all things are sentient from rivers to rocks to plants. Once you experience for yourself the invisible guidance offered once we accept we ARE nature, not separate from it, the rift between our current way of living and the wholeness I first mentioned begins to close.
The question that has really surfaced for me over the years is what is true humanity, who are we under all our layers of cultural conditioning? Who were we before the modern world told us who we should be? How would we be if we were healthy in body, mind and spirit? So I'd love to share with you some of the amazing ways tea helps keep us balanced and strong in mind and body and how we can engage in certain reconnection practices to help us find our way back to who we truly are. To be more turtle and be guided by the blueprint that birthed us.