How to Make a Honeysuckle Sun Tea with TCM’s Top Herbs

Enjoy this refreshing summertime tea made with one of Traditional Asian Medicine’s most valued medicinal flowers. Honeysuckle, known as Jin Yin Hua, is a time-honored herb prized for its anti-inflammatory, protective, cleansing, and replenishing properties, offering a gentle, soothing sip that supports overall balance and wellbeing.

In early summer, a traditional ethnobotanical practice in China is to gather the flower buds and emerging blooms of honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, for both food and medicine. Energetically, its sweet, cooling nature provides perfect, gentle refreshment on a warm summer day.

This delicious recipe, blending honeysuckle with bright blood orange and cooling mint, refreshes and revitalizes your body while nourishing healthy, glowing skin. Psychospiritually, the honeysuckle’s beautiful aroma gently grounds you in the present moment, deepening calm and enhancing appreciation for the here and now.

Honeysuckle Sun Tea Benefits:

• Detoxify your body

• Improve your skin’s health. Eases acne, boils, rashes, dryness, eczema and psoriasis

• Enhance your digestion

• Bolsters immunity; clears wind-heat in TCM

• Support lung health; eases cold/flu symptoms and upper respiratory infections.

• Support healthy blood sugar levels

• Elevate your mood

• Cleanses and protects your liver

• Nourishes hydration and body’s yin fluids

Honeysuckle Sun Tea acts upon the following acupuncture channels/meridians for inner strength and harmony: 

• Lung

• Heart

• Stomach

How to:

In a pitcher of spring or purified water add 1/4 cup of fresh or dried honeysuckle flowers, thinly sliced blood orange with rind and a handful of fresh mint such as peppermint, spearmint or chocolate mint.

Let the flowers, citrus, and herbs gently infuse in the sun for at least two full hours to draw out their full flavor and therapeutic benefit. Sip slowly and mindfully — nurturing radiant health from within.

Enjoy!