From Wanting It to Living It
Have you ever opened your email intending to answer one message, only to find yourself ten minutes later responding to something completely different?
Or walked into a meeting already thinking about the problem waiting for you, and realized afterward that you barely noticed what was actually being said?
Or received a short text, “Can we talk?” and immediately started wondering what went wrong?
These moments are not necessarily a failure of discipline or focus. These moments are part of how the human mind works.
Our attention is constantly being pulled toward what feels urgent, threatening, emotionally charged, or immediately rewarding. When demands pile up, we can easily slip into familiar patterns of reacting before we have consciously chosen how we want to respond.
This happens to all of us.
A difficult email arrives, and we start composing a defensive reply. Someone makes a comment in a meeting, and we interpret it as criticism before we have all the facts. We are running late, and suddenly every small obstacle feels much bigger than it really is.
We tell ourselves to calm down, focus, or have more discipline. But simply telling ourselves what to do does not always change the state of mind we are in.
So how can we shift our attention so we can see more clearly and choose our response?
This is one of the questions I will explore at the upcoming Northwest Tea Festival in Seattle.
Tea as a Mirror of the Mind: Expanding Tea Practice into a Foundation for Clarity in Daily Life
Saturday, September 26, 2026 | 12:15–1:00 PM
Stage 1, Northwest Tea Festival
Free with paid festival admission — no pre-registration required.
Why tea?
A tea ritual may look simple: heat the water, prepare the tea, pour it, and drink. But when we do these things with intention, something 'extraordinary' happens. Extraordinary in the sense of being out of the usual pattern: Instead of allowing our attention to jump from one thought to another, we give it something concrete to engage with.
We 'see' the tea.
We 'feel' the warmth of the cup.
We 'hear' the water.
We 'smell' the leaves.
We 'taste' what is in front of us.
Tea also contains compounds such as caffeine, L-theanine, and catechins that have been studied for their effects on cognition and mood. Research suggests that tea constituents, particularly caffeine combined with L-theanine, may have modest short-term effects on alertness and some measures of attention.
When tea time becomes a ritual, tea provides something unexpected: a place for attention to land. Why does that matter? Because our attention is limited and the mind wanders.
Research on mindfulness describes similar process.
When we deliberately place our attention on something stable—a breath, a sound, or an object—we begin to notice how often the mind wanders. Each time we notice, we can gently bring our attention back.
As this becomes familiar, something interesting can happen. We become less caught up in any one thought, feeling, or sensation and more able to notice what is happening without being immediately carried away by it.
Researchers describe these two ways of working with attention as focused attention and open monitoring.
From reacting to choosing
Imagine receiving that difficult email. Your first thought might be: "They're criticizing me." Your body tightens. You have an urge to respond immediately.
Instead, you make tea as a ritual.
As you prepare it, you notice the tension in your body.
You allow yourself to feel disturbed without immediately acting on that feeling.
You look again at the email.
What did the person actually say?
What am I assuming?
What story has my mind created?
What else might be true?
And then another question becomes possible:
How do I want to respond?
This is the practice I describe through four steps in the Kominka Method™:
NOTICE — Where has my attention gone?
ALLOW — Can I let this thought, feeling, or sensation be here without immediately reacting?
DISCERN — What are the facts, and what am I adding through interpretation or assumption?
ALIGN — Given what matters to me, how do I want to respond?
The email has not changed.
The person has not changed.
The circumstances have not changed.
But your relationship to the circumstances has changed.
And that can change what you do next.
From wanting it to living it
Many of the things we want most in life are qualities that are intangible.
We want peace.
We want clarity.
We want compassion.
We want courage.
We want presence.
In the middle of drama, we may think, "I wish my life were more peaceful." In this self-dialogue, our focus is on the "absence of peace." We are thinking about what we don't have.
Shift the attention to a life that actually has peace in it. Then, a question like this will emerge: "What does it look like when I meet this situation with peace?"
Instead of "I want more compassion in my life,"
"What does it look like when I meet this person with compassion?"
Instead of "I wish I had more clarity."
"What allows me to see this situation more clearly?"
Instead of: "I want more courage."
"What does courage look like here?"
And instead of: "I want abundance."
"How can I think, speak, and act from abundance in this situation?"
The difference may seem subtle, but it changes the relationship between attention and intention.
You are no longer waiting for peace to arrive. Instead, you are practicing peace in what is happening.
You are no longer waiting for compassion. You are practicing compassion in the way you listen.
You are no longer waiting for clarity to arrive. You are creating the conditions in which you can see more clearly and choose.
The value changes from something you want and cannot touch to something you can enact and experience.
Through repeated experience, something you do can become part of how you live and who you are.
Ritual as architecture for attention to return to our values
When attention shifts from being reactive to being more intentional, we feel different. After meditation, for example, we may feel deeply grounded and restored. Our awareness becomes wider, and we have greater access to clarity.
A ritual can create a similar internal space—an architecture in which awareness can widen.
A kominka, a real architecture, offers a great metaphor, as it carries invisible values.
Craftsmanship.
History.
Patience.
Care.
You cannot pick up “craftsmanship” and hold it in your hands. But you can see it in the joinery. You can feel it in the hand-hewn beams. You can experience it in the details of the house. The invisible now can be experienced through the architecture.
A ritual can do something similar for our inner lives. Intention and values are invisible. But a ritual gives attention a place to land and creates a structure in which awareness can widen, allowing us to notice what matters and enact it, which is experience.
You prepare the tea.
You attend to the water.
You feel the cup.
You listen.
You taste.
You notice the mind wandering.
You return.
Within that structure, you may see your values more clearly and experience them in the grounded space of the ritual. You “return to,” or “remember,” the intangible qualities you want to bring into your life.
And that wider awareness can open up a response you could not see while caught in your first reaction.
You might choose to ask a clarifying question instead of defending yourself. You might respond with more compassion. You might realize that no immediate response is needed at all.
The value has moved from something you want into something you can enact.
And that is how an intention becomes a lived experience.
The Japanese tea ceremony is an organized ritual built around these principles. Strongly influenced and shaped by Zen philosophy, it embodies practices that resonate with what we now understand about attention and awareness through neuroscience. It provides a deliberate structure that supports the attention of both the host and guests.
However, you do not need an elaborate tea ceremony to begin.
It could be five minutes in the morning.
A cup between meetings.
A few deliberate moments before responding to a difficult message.
Each time you create this kind of architecture through ritual, your attention can shift from:
“How can I get more peace, clarity, compassion, or abundance?”
to:
“How can I live these qualities here, in this moment, with what is already in front of me?”
“How can I use this situation as an opportunity to practice what matters to me?”
With awareness widened, you may see something you could not see before.
This is the shift:
From wanting it to living it.
I look forward to exploring this with you at the Northwest Tea Festival on September 26—and to sharing how an ancient tea practice can become a practical foundation for clarity in modern daily life.
Warmly,
Kiyomi
References
Attention and attentional capture
Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (2002). Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3, 201–215.
Theeuwes, J. (2025). Attentional capture and control. Annual Review of Psychology, 76, 251–273.
Focused attention and open monitoring
Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2008). Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(4), 163–169.
Lutz, A., Jha, A. P., Dunne, J. D., & Saron, C. D. (2015). Investigating the phenomenological matrix of mindfulness-related practices from a neurocognitive perspective. American Psychologist, 70(7), 632–658.
Mindfulness, monitoring, and acceptance
Lindsay, E. K., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Mechanisms of mindfulness training: Monitor and Acceptance Theory (MAT). Clinical Psychology Review, 51, 48–59.
Creswell, J. D. (2017). Mindfulness interventions. Annual Review of Psychology, 68, 491–516.
Ritual and psychological processes
Hobson, N. M., Schroeder, J., Risen, J. L., Xygalatas, D., & Inzlicht, M. (2018). The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22(3), 260–284.
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