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Aside from my one cup a day coffee habit, I have a significant peppermint tea habit. It’s actually a joke around my office, because I attend all meetings with my tea cup. It’s kind of sweet, too, because at Christmas time, people give me tea and cups and little Buddhas.

Anyhow, shifting the coffee to post-practice has meant drinking mint tea before practice. I’m definitely sold on how much better my stomach feels. My mind, though, is another story. Home practice this morning, and my mind felt kind of… I don’t know, kind of smooshy, I guess. Not pointed, like it usually is. Not focused and strong. Not driven.

I never realized how strong my habit is of getting up when I hear the coffee pot beep, and of sharpening my mind on a dose of caffeine. Plus it dulls hunger, which is handy for a few hours.

So, not so pointy-minded this morning. It feels different, and my inclination (being human) is to figure that that’s a problem. But really, it may be quite to my benefit to take the drivenness down a notch or two. I always have moments of good intention, when I think about how I need to soften things up a bit and knock off the warrior attitude, and I even manage to pull it off on occasion.

Who knows what’ll happen here. The happy stomach trumps the pointy mind. That’s all I know for now. Secretly I hope the unavoidable softness of the smooshy mind will bring me a new consciousness in backbends, but it may bring something else entirely.