The meaning of Yugen

When a Canadian man and a Taiwanese woman meet, fall in love, and marry — as ours did in 2006 — they bring two very different relationships with the world into the same kitchen. She grew up in a household where dried herbs were kept in labelled jars, where the first response to illness was a carefully brewed decoction, and where the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine was simply part of daily life. He grew up in a world where medicine came in blister packs and wellness was something you managed with a doctor's prescription.

For years, he was politely sceptical. She would suggest a tea for his digestion, and he would reach for an antacid. She would recommend a herb for his energy, and he would pour another coffee. He was not dismissive — he respected her deeply — but he had been raised to trust what could be measured, tested, and prescribed. Ancient remedies, however lovingly prepared, felt like folklore to him.

Then came the diagnosis. Type 2 diabetes, in his mid-fifties. His blood sugar was sitting in the high teens — a number that alarmed his doctor and frightened him. The prescriptions followed: one medication, then another, then a third. Each one helped the numbers, but left him feeling flat, fatigued, and somehow less himself. He was being managed, not healed.

It was his wife who sat with him one evening and said, quietly, that she had something she wanted him to try. Not instead of his medication — she was careful about that — but alongside it. A blend she had been preparing for years: bitter melon and mulberry leaf for blood sugar, aged pu-erh and hawthorn berry for digestion, goji and schisandra for energy and vitality. The same herbs her mother had kept in those labelled jars.

He drank it. Every morning, with the same attention she had always given to the preparation. And slowly — over months, not days — things began to shift. His fasting glucose, which had sat stubbornly in the high teens, began to fall. It crossed into the low teens. Then into single digits. Today it stays consistently below 6. His digestion, long troubled, settled. The fatigue lifted. He felt, as he puts it, like himself again — but a version of himself he had not met before.

Yugen Teas is the direct result of that journey. It is his acknowledgement that he was wrong to dismiss what he did not understand, and her quiet vindication of a tradition she had always believed in. We built this company together — a Canadian who learned to listen, and a Taiwanese woman who never stopped knowing. Every tea in our collection carries that story.

David was 55 when his doctor handed him his fourth prescription in three years. Metformin. Then a second medication. Then a third. Each one came with its own list of side effects — fatigue, digestive discomfort, a persistent flatness that made him feel less like himself. His blood sugar numbers improved on paper, but he did not feel well. He felt managed.

He had always been curious about traditional Chinese medicine — his grandmother had kept a small cabinet of dried herbs in her kitchen in Guangzhou, and he remembered the smell of them as a child. So he began to read. He visited a practitioner in Taipei. He started asking questions that his GP did not have time to answer.

What he discovered was not a cure. He is careful to say that. What he found was a practice — a daily ritual of blending and steeping that gave him agency over his own body for the first time in years. Bitter melon and mulberry leaf for blood sugar support. Aged pu-erh and hawthorn berry for digestion. Goji, ginseng, and schisandra for energy and vitality. He brewed each blend with the same attention a craftsman gives to his work.

Over eighteen months, his fasting glucose levels fell steadily. His digestion — long troubled by both his condition and his medications — began to settle. The bloating that had plagued him for years eased. He slept better. He felt, as he put it, like the lights had come back on.

David's story is one of the reasons our Wellness collection exists. We are not making medical claims — we are not doctors, and tea is not medicine. But we believe, as David does, that what you put into your body every day matters. That ancient botanical knowledge deserves to be taken seriously. And that a cup of something carefully made, steeped with intention, can be the beginning of a different kind of conversation with your own health.