Tea Name:

Cooling Flower Tea (to aid in sleep) with chrysanthemum, roses, osmanthus, and jasmine flowers.

Traditional Chinese Name:

寧神安睡茶 (níng shén ānshuì chá) – direct translation is:  calming sleeping tea

Nature:  Cooling

Taste: Sweet and bitter

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This cooling tea is perfect for calming the body, spirit, and mind, allowing yourself to settle and prepare for sleep.  I’ll take this a few hours before I’m ready to pass out so that it can help my body STAY asleep!  Although there are truly no guarantees here, I mean, even taking melatonin for me doesn’t 100% work… but it does help me calm down and not get so agitated with TRYING to sleep and getting frustrated that I can’t! 

In general, cooling teas that slow down the overall body, are considered yin in nature and help increase yin in the body.  The body tends to be more in yang during the day and more in yin during the evening, so that’s why allowing the yin to increase and the yang to decrease helps the body settle and come into a calmer state.

You can check this article that explains the balance of yin and yang in the body, AN INTRODUCTION TO YIN AND YANG IN OUR EVERYDAY SOUPS AND FOOD. 

I love that this tea is made of all flowers!  And you can choose your sweetener (or none!).  I used rock sugar for this recipe, but honey works just as well (wait for it to cool to about 60 degrees Celcius before adding honey as anything hotter will destroy the honey and reduce the benefits of the ingredient).  Rock sugar is OK in most temperatures, including boiling.

This tea is slightly cooling, regulates the Qi, and calms the spirit.  It’s a clean, simple taste with slightly sweet and bitter after tones and actually serves nicely both hot and iced (although the Chinese do have a position on drinking too much cold stuff!).

For this recipe, I steeped my tea instead of boiling it in the glass teapot, although that is definitely an option.  The boiling will intensify the flavours, but the steeping is just quicker and easier – especially if you’re in the office or on the go without any heat source, but do have access to boiling water!

What’s involved?

 Prep time: 2 mins

Cook time: 3 mins (steep time)

Total time: 5 mins

Serves: 1 cup

Any benefits?

• This Chinese herbal tea is cooling and allows the body and mind to come into more Yin state (slowing down), which prepares you for sleep
• It helps regulate the Qi and calm the mind (and spirit)
• Readily available ingredients (definitely in Hong Kong) and also in Canada (have bought all these ingredients in Toronto before)
• Great for traveling, on the go, or in the office
• Super easy to make

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Use disposable, environmentally friendly, degradable tea bags!

There are various individual tea bags you can find out there!

The two I’ve been using are these Japanese ones (sourced from Hong Kong) that fold over (see video).  I’m not sure if they are degradable completely, but finishing up a batch I took back with me.

I would recommend these disposable and environmentally friendly tea bags from amazon.  I also bought some and now have a pile of tea bag holders sitting in my drawer!  But I do love how convenient they are and will pre-make my own tea bags to bring to work or pre-fill in my thermal mug for drinking on the go!