implements for the Japanese Rite of Tea

My whole life, starting from when I was very young, I have drank tea. Peppermint Tea for an upset stomach, brought on by severe migraine headaches and Willow bark Tea for the pain, which is tree bark that has the same chemical make-up as acetaminophen.
Now that I am older, living in my own home, I grow mint in clay pots- because when you plant it in the ground it just takes over everything and I like my other plants too! We eat peppermint mashed potatoes and the children get mint tea when they are sick. We also drink homemade tea instead of soda and it varies from day to day. Black, Raspberry, Lemon, Pomegranate...my mother brought me Pumpkin Spice, which is very very good too!
So what is so special about tea?
Recently, in the past few years, I have began a journey into reading and studying Japanese/Geisha culture. Brought on by books like Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, thriller writer Laura Joh Rowland and The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery.
For years before I had been obsessed with the ancient Egyptian Culture which was seeped deep in tradition also...but was ever changing and most of it long since forgotten and currently being rediscovered. Part of the Japanese culture has been in place long before Christ, and some of it is still very alive today!
When it comes to the part of me that is interested in historically accurate clothing...books like The History of Underclothes by C. Willet and Phillis Cunnington start in the Medieval stages of Europe. My word, the Japanese and their descendants have been wearing multiple layers of clothing for thousands, not hundreds of years. A true kimono could include 7-8 robes and were worn by women who weighed less than the silk they carried on their backs!
It forced them to sit, stand and kneel with a type of patience and reverence that is totally unheard of today! Geisha meant a word equal to entertainer and they spent years learning their craft. They were not prostitutes they were actresses, part of what was called a floating world. Not at all what is expected of actors and actresses today.
And although geisha were not traditionally the ones who performed temae. They did bring it to the attention of the Western world when Japan was invaded in the 1880's by missionaries.
What is temae? To me, and the inner spirit it has awoken in me, it is simply the act of making tea...but there is so much more...so much more to it than that...
So here is where I will start...
When you make a cup of tea, you follow a series of steps. You cannot deny each step, or you will not end up with a cup of tea at all.
For thousands of years there has been families in Japan who make their entire living for generations making tea, they call it temae.
And for now...I am going to live my life by it...the greatest gift that it is giving me?
It is forcing me to slow down...slow down and choose wisely...