Lucid Dream Tea and Me.

I thought that I should start this blog off by explaining the reason behind the title. Dreams and I have always had an interesting relationship. Some of my earliest memories are actually of the dreams I had as a 4 year old, and my mother helping me work through them. Always so vivid, intense, frightening, magical. For a young child.. too much. They are not fortune telling or psychic in any way, just vivid... so much so that now, I feel I carry alot of those experiences I've had in dreams into my real life and honour them as true experiences in some way. Anyone who has lived with me for any extent of time has experienced (and by experienced I mean been scared by) my crazy dreams. Of course, the older I got, the more I wanted to control them (I beleived I could). Tried meditation, exercise, pranayama breathing (to name a few)... In college I really got into Carlos Casteneda. I read all of his books several times...His book  The Art of Dreaming, to help one control ones dreams,... sounded like a good idea..I was spiritual and grounded (ha!) ...that was a disaster to put it mildly. Remembering that experience still frightens me to this day.  You must be very strong of spirit to take on that book fully.
So about 10 years ago, I was in Montreal at a wee organic grocerie store in Westmount and came accross this little purple box in the tea aisle. Beautiful box, so inviting.

Lucid Dream Tea by the Algonquin Tea Company.
An incredible tea :
"100% certified organic hand picked indigenous Canadian herbs.
All of our herbs are wildcrafted (handpicked in the wild) in a sustainable manner, picking amounts that a deer would graze. Those herbs which are more rare are grown organically using non-mechanical, ecologically integrated and permacultural methods."

It had such a positive feel to it that I thought it might keep the bad stuff at bay and the good times rolling (in dreamland that is ;)).. I have not been without it in my cupboard since then.  My good friend Matthew remembers it helping me find some clarity in dreaming, what I found this tea did was to help me become more 'lucid' in my everyday life. Now that I am a mom, my cups of tea are less frequent and my dreams are hard pressed to win a battle with my sheer exhaustion on any given night, but every once in a while I get to experience the wonder and grandure (and less oftern, terror) of my dreams. In my daily life however, I've learned that lucid dreamings are endless. Just have to slow down long enough to see it all happening around me. What a gift, in such a little box.