I worried about that too! And - I even went out for a Chinese dinner accompanied by house traditional roasty oolong GuangDong/Hong Kong style.Herb_Master wrote:
But how did you get to sleep after all that tea!
So, I'll tell you how I got to sleep, Herb_Master -- with more tea! Only this kind of tea is exactly what an Herb_Master will understand. In the evening after dinner I try to put together every relaxing herb that works well for me and make a tea. I also add flowers because they really do give a pleasantness to sleep. I mix bagged tea that I find useful plus loose herbs "strewn" into the pot by my own hand. So - last night's combination included Sleepytime by Celestial Seasonings, a Tulsi teabag (original: three types of Holy Basil), passionflower herb, chamomile herb, a tea I found in bulk at Rainbow Grocery called Dreamtime (all flowers), meadowsweet, and I can't quite recall what else I threw in there
But that's my usual routine: I go through my herbs and throw in what I feel like in the evening but I know that passionflower and chamomile work especially well for me in combination with other things, including for instance skullcap, oatstraw, lavender, linden. Lately I've tried adding catnip too. More often than not I throw in a few roses as well (pink, red or chinese, sometimes only petals). Also the Sleepytime & Tulsi are helpful pre-mixed tea bags.Hope this is not Too Much Information! I have a pinched nerve in my neck that acts up often and has required physical therapy for shoulder as well. It has been problematic with so much travel lately (esp lugging suitcases, changing pillows and beds, etc) so the tea has become especially important for relaxation. With the right combination I can feel even the muscles in my face simply pulling down from total relaxation before I go to bed. The herbs help me to feel refreshed in the morning too.
I'm lookiing for a good jaio gu lan herb which is also really helpful, but hard to find in very good quality. Last year Roy F. at Imperial Tea brought in a super good quality but it was snapped up and disappeared. I'll have to bug him but I think even in China it's not easy to find really high quality anymore because of so much demand.
But I love our Western Herbs. That's something else I feel I need to continue learning much, much more about.
