Tea Power

By Mehtab, Founder 
March 2011

Admit it. You love the yoga, but you really love the tea!ing to a survey, yoga students often trust their yoga teachers more than many other professionals.

Yogi Tea has been served after every class at Yoga Yoga since we opened our first location on South Lamar in January 1998. We have tried to figure out how many cups of tea we brewed and served over the years. One number I came up indicated that if all the Yogi Tea could be poured into an enclosed dock, it would float a medium-size cruise ship.

Our current catalog of classes does not show an attractive slim person doing a pretzel pose. It shows a big fat cup of steaming Yogi Tea about to be sucked right up.

You may do a sweaty Ashtanga class, an electrifying Kundalini class, a nurturing prenatal class, or a realizing Hatha class but at the end we all come together into the same cup of Yogi Tea.

And that is one reason we serve Yogi Tea: nothing creates community like a shared cup of tea among new and old friends.

I remember my first YT (Yogi Tea) Experience. It was 1973 at a converted hippie crash pad that now served as a Kundalini Yoga Ashram. All the time I was doing this wild yoga in the living room, I kept smelling a sweet spicy pungent aroma coming from the kitchen. At the end of class I was handed a mug of Yogi Tea by a smiling woman wearing a turban.

I was converted, hooked and immediately addicted. Yogi Tea and yoga became one and the same. When my wife and I started teaching yoga from her home in the years before Yoga Yoga opened, there was always a pot of Yogi Tea brewing in our kitchen and whenever we traveled to teach yoga, we took a thermos with us.

So what is the deal about this tea? Where did it come from?

Back in the early 1970s Yogi Bhajan, the master of Kundalini Yoga, had just begun teaching yoga in Los Angeles. After class one day he served them some tea he had made from an ancient Ayurvedic recipe from India. The students started calling it Yogi's tea.

Not only did this tea taste great, it had beneficial effects on their yoga practice. All the spices worked together to produce a tonic drink that was more than a beverage. Yogi Bhajan described the ingredients this way:

"Cloves take away pain, cardamom aids digestion, cinnamon is good for the bones, black pepper stimulates the digestive process, and ginger is an Ayurvedic panacea, giving strength and energy. And the synergistic effect of all the herbs is more than the sum of its parts."

During the early 1970s, Yogi Tea was served in the chain of Golden Temple Vegetarian Restaurants across the United States and Europe that were started by Kundalini Yoga students. By the early 1980s, the tea was produced commercially and eventually formed the basis for one of the most successful natural tea companies in the country called- what else?- the Yogi Tea Company.

Originally, Yogi Tea was only served with dairy milk the traditional Indian way, with the milk added to the tea and then reheated to almost a boil which helped to remove any mucous-forming properties.

Soy milk became a popular vegan option later and today some people drink it "straight" with no milk or honey sweetener. Before the days of packaged soy milk (and yes I am that old) we used to use pineapple or apple juice in place of dairy milk.

In addition to keeping the body and nerves strong for a yoga practice, Yogi Tea has been used therapeutically in many ways.

Yogi Bhajan says about Yogi Tea: "If you take a really a good amount of Yogi Tea, it will keep your liver very well. It is said to help the liver. And when we started in the sixties, people who had drug habits- who couldn't even move- we put them on Yogi Tea."

It has been used as a remedy and preventative measure for colds, flu and diseases of the mucous membranes. Black pepper is a blood purifier, cardamom is for the colon and together they support the brain cells. Cloves help support the nervous system. Cinnamon is good for the bones. Ginger helps strengthen the nervous system and is a natural energizer.

It can help women when they are experiencing menstrual discomfort, such as cramps or PMS symptoms. Yogi Tea diluted with milk can be helpful to a child who is experiencing the pains of teething.

While you can buy the individual spices for Yogi Tea and use our on-line recipe, you may find it easier to pick up the bulk packaged Yogi Tea at the Yoga Yoga centers and just add your own fresh slice of ginger to taste. (Add extra ginger when you are feeling a cold or the flu coming on!)

See the video called “How to Make the Perfect Pot of Yogi Tea” below on how to brew your tea using packaged spices.

Now don't be disappointed if your homemade Yogi Tea is not quite as tasty as the cup you get after each yoga class. The secret? Like everything else in life, Yogi Tea is always better after yoga!