Gratitude Blooming Podcast
Inspired by nature, art and gratitude, the Gratitude Blooming co-hosts Belinda Liu and Omar Brownson bring fresh and diverse perspectives to well-being. For us, heartfulness is the new mindfulness. Gratitude Blooming was inspired by the artist Arlene Kim Suda and her 100 Days of Blooming Love art project. Hear from culture keepers, creators, healers, leaders and so many others who share their emergent practices to build the beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Please rate, review and subscribe. New conversations each week. We want to hear what you're grateful for. Learn more at www.gratitudeblooming.com
Gratitude Blooming Podcast
The Art of Surrender: Making Peace with Your Choices
Ever feel like life's pace is too fast? Ever wish you could just press the 'pause' button and breathe? Well, you're not alone. Join us with yoga instructor, Susie Lee, about the power of slowing down, leaning into uncertainty, and finding balance amidst chaos. Susie shares her personal journey with discovering the Gratitude Blooming card deck, which she now uses as a tool to infuse her yoga classes with intention and harmony. Pausing creates room for profound clarity and connection.
As the conversation unfolds, we discover how disruption can be a doorway to infinite possibilities, rather than an obstacle. We explore the art of surrender, the joy in receiving, and how nature can aid us in cultivating a sense of wholeness, particularly during unsettling times.
We also explore how Susie's creative role with Gratitude Blooming is helping us create beautiful new products that serve as tangible reminders for us to stay grounded and connected. This episode is a rich exploration of the intersections of gratitude, intention, and balance in our everyday lives. You won't want to miss it!
Get your own Gratitude Blooming card deck, candle and much much more at our shop at www.gratitudeblooming.com. Your purchase helps us sustain this podcast, or you can also sponsor us here.
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Share your thoughts and comments by emailing us at hello@gratitudeblooming.com. We love hearing from our listeners!
Hello Belinda.
Speaker 2:Hi Omar, it is a wonderful day to have Arlene and Suzy our guest with us today for this live practice. Suzy has been such an amazing advocate and team member of Gratitude Blooming, helping us to really expand what we're here to do through yoga and living with intention with the card deck, so I love that we have an opportunity to practice together with new and familiar friends.
Speaker 1:I know it feels like. I had a vacation the last two weeks and it's exciting to get behind the mic and hold space with you again. It was incredible to go away went off to Guatemala, stayed with the Mayan family, spent a week in Hermosa Beach and my cousin's place and just really now kind of coming back into the swing of things. I can sort of feel the pull of fall coming fast and furious already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's just beautiful that every week we have this opportunity to pause together for ourselves and in this kind of collective space and more and more I am just feeling such an important need to have these like slowing down times. So yeah, omar, I'm curious how it's been feeling coming back, because a lot of our work we talk about transitions. How is the integrating back been feeling?
Speaker 1:The first day of school for my daughters was yesterday and they popped up out of bed their new outfits for first day of school and then today I was like, hey, girls, time to go. So that should have like your first day. Excitement sort of very quickly becomes like okay, now we're back to this and I think that part of it is like okay, how do we hold this constant shift and I think this is coming up in a lot of the conversations that we're holding for a lot of organizations and teams that are asking us to bring the kind of grad to blooming kind of methodology to them is how do you pause, particularly in the face of uncertainty, and how do you sort of treat uncertainty as a friend? Right, like we always say, silence is a participant, right, and so creating room for not knowing the answers. And so traveling was very disruptive, you know constantly, kind of.
Speaker 1:It was beautiful because we were staying in different people's homes in Guatemala and just really getting a feel for the communities and the culture, and I really sort of enjoyed the Mayan kind of cosmology that I began to learn and this our host said they look at the world to the lens of harmony that if the water is clean, then they are clean. If the tree is healthy, then they are healthy. And so I've really been sitting with that feeling of harmony, like it's not just about me, but my relationships all around me and me to them, like what is the state of that? And so I feel like that's kind of what we're helping people do in pausing is like, okay, let's create a little healthy environment and space for us to sort of reconnect.
Speaker 2:Well, in your absence, omar, I was like, oh, this last week I was like, let me do a lot of things and get lots of things done. And it was an interesting energy where I had this very strong desire and expectation of progress and I really had the hardest time staying grounded on the land. And it was one of those weeks where I really had to take my own medicine. Like you are not in the state to do the things that you want to do, like, can you just let it be. And it just was a reminder to me about just like, what is this is so powerful? The simple act of stopping and reconnecting with what's your intent, what are you here to do? How that can really help to bring more harmony and balance in many ways.
Speaker 1:Well and this is great, having Susie here who has this great kind of depth of experience in yoga and yoga, I feel like, is a great way to physically practice balance and harmony, and we're going to get to pull a card. Is that what we're doing today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just love the this story of how we even got to connect with Susie. I literally have a really dear friend, Tina, who is neighbors with Susie in San Francisco, and Tina was holding space for a friend gathering, an overnight retreat at her house and she was like I have this amazing friend, Susie. She's going to be holding space for us with a yoga class and Tina had gifted Susie the card deck and literally that yoga experience was infused with intention and, Susie, it was beautiful that your yoga studio had the card deck and you even referenced a card that was really inspiring for you. So I'd love for you to kind of share this seemingly random, synchronistic connection to gratitude blooming. How has it been for you just discovering this unexpectedly and what has unfolded for you in your life right now in collaboration with us?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I'm a little nervous.
Speaker 3:But anyways, I'd love to share my experience. It was just as Blenda, you always talk about just paying attention and following the crumbs, and so it was such a lovely gesture for Tina to give me this card and I started engaging with it, you know, just in looking at the beautiful illustrations and looking at the prompts. But you were kind of talking about the power of the pause and I didn't really give myself the time and I wasn't really patient enough to really fully dive into the practice, until I started listening to the podcast and I feel like everything Kind of opened up for me, because I almost didn't have the language. I mean, I'm it, I am a yoga teacher. I do talk a lot about emotions, but just personally I felt like I really haven't done a lot of that work in a deep way. So I felt like the podcast gave me a Pathway to really dive deeper into my emotions, so it just kind of came alive for me.
Speaker 3:And then just I, just, you know, I, I sequence my classes and I thought, oh, this would be a great Opportunity to infuse some of my classes with an intention and I try not to be too I Try not to say too much or be, you know, too didactic and I just kind of Drop the prompt in there and if it resonates for people, you know people have come up to me after class and said, wow, that just hit the right spot at the right moment. So I've just been following what makes my heart sing, you know, and it's really been exciting to collaborate. I've never really thought of myself as like a creative person, but it's been. It's just kind of opened up this new avenue of joy for me, and so I'm excited to see where gratitude blooming kind of expands and I just have to say that Because of you, we were inspired to create the t-shirts that are really Reminders for people to you know for themselves.
Speaker 2:But then you know you're walking down the street and someone sees the t-shirt You're wearing there, gonna get that reminder as a gift. And Arlene, you and Susie met in person at your, your studio in San Francisco, and I would love for you to share with us a little bit about the t-shirts and your experience. You know unfolding. I know I'm Susie.
Speaker 4:I realize that I don't have the t-shirt here with me, but one of the things that was coming up, belinda, as you were talking, and Susie, as you were Talking about it as well, was that I really feel like I'm wearing the intention, which is just like a weird feeling, you know. So the t-shirt is. I mean, it feels I've never, you know, thought of having a holy t-shirt, other than maybe with holes, but like it feels like a sacred thing that I put on with this intention and I think in it's when there's a plan words right. So it's not really the intention. That's in the prompt, that it's rooting for you, the daisies are rooting for you, and so I. I really had this sense of the first time when Susie brought the t-shirt over. I really had a sense that someone's rooting for me and I and I sort of I sort of know it, I know I think we do have allies out there with the plants and nature all around us, so it's just beautiful. It was an unexpected thing I experienced with the t-shirts.
Speaker 1:You can embody it right like that's, you can actually literally wear your intentions. I love that's the creativity, because even the I'm rooting for you. You came from one of our podcast guests, sj. That was the card that he was reflecting on and as he looked at them, that was the feeling that he got. He said there are these two eyes looking up at me and I feel like they're rooting for me, and so you know, it's just, I think this ability to prototype, to really kind of go from like inspiration to Action, you know, this is the praxis that we get to play with at gratitude, blooming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who would have thought, Arlene, your illustrations Back in, like 2015, 2016, becoming the gratitude blooming card deck that became note cards and Now candles and t-shirts, like it's this whole ecosystem of how do we live With you know, more intention. Just by taking that pause for ourselves. How did it feel to see the art in that way, like your plants?
Speaker 4:You know I have. I've developed a healthy detachment and I think from my art, I think all artists have to do that in some ways. So, so I really feel like a channel when I had that magical feeling of putting it. Well, the t-shirt was as beautiful, susie, you just selected such a nice like, it's like a nice cotton and it it just drapes so nicely. It feels good, you know, it feels really good. But when I feel the intention of the plant rooting for me, I feel like it's coming from the plant. I don't feel like it's my drawing, I feel like it's just that is. I happen to capture it, you know, in that daily drawing practice, but, um, it is the plant coming through to remind us.
Speaker 3:So I also think it's just a nice connection as well. So I was wearing the t-shirt the other day and a few people commented. So I feel like they're little sparks of connection and I think, like Jack Cornfield talks about like vibrating the strings of everyone that you meet, and so it's just little reminders and intentions, like I see you, I'm rooting for you. So I've had a few, just like just resonance with people. So, yeah, that was really yeah cool.
Speaker 1:Those little sparks are just so powerful.
Speaker 2:Like.
Speaker 1:I just received an email from one of our the sponsors for our gratitude booming podcast with Janem and it was about an article about glimmers, like these little fractions of a moment.
Speaker 1:And my wife and I went to go see the meteor shower that was here a couple of days ago and got up one in the morning, drove out a little bit to get to a place where we could be in a little bit more darkness and we're staring up at the sky and these shooting stars would just come by like just fractions of a second. And there was a decent number of people out there and just the ooze and the aws that would come from just literally not even a full second, just like a fraction of a second. You would see, maybe out of the corner of your eye, one of the shooting stars come by and the idea was that these glimmers, these moments of awe, are really incredible counterpoints to triggers. Like we're all aware of what triggers us, but are we really aware of those glimmers, those sparks, and like how do we hold onto them with equal measure?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's incredible that also, where our inspirations are building on top of each other and we're creating something bigger together, like and you know, we recently also just made a tote bag out of the t-shirts, because Susie was literally talking to the printer and they were like, yeah, you know, I could just easily make this into a tote bag and you could have that too and like, all these different ways that we can inspire each other and build off of that, like that's incredible.
Speaker 1:I think I found about them on Instagram. I was like, oh look, we have tote bags now. When did that? When I was away for two weeks, which is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the garden is very wild and very healthy. So, susie, in our live practice format, we love to hold space for a question that you are holding or an intention that you're holding as a way to inspire others to take that same pause, as they're listening and watching this for their lives. So I'm curious, what's the live and most present for you right now that you would love to ask nature about?
Speaker 3:Well, I still feel a lot of the energy around the summer. It's about spending time with family and travel, a lot of activity, so a lot of energy, external energy and gathering energy from other people and I feel this shift going into fall, like you were saying, omar, and I'm just trying to hold on and not sort of rush through to the next thing. So I think the intention of just slowing things down and pausing is still relevant for me, but I'm also kind of leaning into this. Whatever this next season, this next transition, which is more of an inward turn, like looking inwards versus like expending energy outwards, this is the time really to kind of go inward. So, slowly, I feel myself kind of retreating a little bit or going inward, but still trying to relish in my community, my friendships, my celebrations, you know all those things. So I don't think I answered the question.
Speaker 2:How would you describe as? We're kind of getting ready to? You know for you to pick a card. How would you describe this season of your life right now? You're a mother. You used to work in the fashion industry. You know you've been studying and teaching yoga for like 20 years. Like. How would you describe this particular season of your life as well?
Speaker 3:It just feels like a settling in, so feeling I think I've always had some issues with like not doing enough and you know it's all about achievement and I never really felt comfortable, I guess. And so I feel like there's a settling in and to really get and just to know myself a little bit more. All my relationships are changing my relationship with my mother, my relationship you know, I've been in a very long-term marriage my relationship with my kids. I feel like everything is kind of moving and turning and I am just settling into who I am and kind of trusting that I have the very best intention and then just trying to formulate a new way of being with all my relationships.
Speaker 1:Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Omar, you want to kick it off for Susie. I love how you frame the opening.
Speaker 1:So we have you're looking at the back of the cards and there's 39, seven rows, six columns.
Speaker 1:And part of why we look at the back of the cards is it gives us an opportunity to disrupt our sort of auto reply system.
Speaker 1:And you know, when we hold an intention, sometimes we already have an answer that we're sort of like oh, I'm feeling this. So therefore I need this, and I think part of what the gratitude blooming practice invites is infinite possibility to sort of recognize, in any given moment, any number of things are actually possible. Our brain likes to sort of narrow the field of vision and so, as you're settling down, you might already be like well, in order for me to settle down, I need to go do this and by really kind of allowing the randomness to kind of disrupt that bias where you're giving yourself a chance to kind of say, like, as I wind down, what might that look like in my life and what might transpire because of that? So Belinda will scroll and as you can either just tell her to stop at one of the rows seven rows or if there's a number one through seven that speaks to you, you can do that as well.
Speaker 3:How about four? Fourth row, All right?
Speaker 1:Fourth row and then one through six.
Speaker 3:And the second card.
Speaker 1:All right. So, rooting in Ooh number 21, the daffodil representing the theme of beautiful sadness, how can you express gratitude to yourself and others when experiencing endings and trust that beautiful new possibilities will be born? So we'd first just invite you to look at the art itself. Like, don't worry about the prompt, just describe in some ways, the most literal way you can, the art that you see, before trying to interpret it.
Speaker 3:Well, I see beautiful blooms atop a pretty narrow stock, pops of color, like the stock, seemingly thin and maybe delicate, but this beautiful bloom sitting on top of it. Beautiful colors. I love yellow. The colors, you know kind of remind me of light. I know it's one of the first flowers that pop up during the spring. It's very short lived, so really an invitation to enjoy the beauty while it lasts. And then, just with daffodils, you know, after the blooms die you kind of let all the energy go back into the soil. You don't pull out the daffodils, so you kind of let it die back and there's beauty in kind of that drawing back into itself.
Speaker 1:And just now, as you look at the theme of beautiful sadness and the art, does anything come up for you with those two elements?
Speaker 3:I sort of I'm going to maybe make that connection into yoga a little bit, if that's okay. So the last pose in all yoga classes is suppose that in every yoga class is Shavasana.
Speaker 3:And it's about everyone's favorite, and it's just about letting go, not necessarily giving up or just kind of giving in to the pause, the rest, and many times with intentions you're asking for this transition into this next phase. But sometimes the letting go is really hard and leaning into the unknown. So I kind of feel the daffodil and the beautiful sadness is kind of a sort of speaks to that last ending making way for new beginnings, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now, as you think about the intention and the sort of moment of life that you're in right now, what comes up for you with the art and this theme of beautiful sadness?
Speaker 3:I guess there's a part of me. I'm an empty nester. Both my kids have left and they're creating their own beautiful lives on their own, and so I feel like I've put in. My life's work has been in taking care of the family, and so now what is my role? So it's that letting go of that I don't know impact or relationship, and kicking them off the dock and letting them go to build their own lives. But there is sadness in there because I really long for when the kids are really little and creating family. There's definitely a little bit of sadness, but the prompt says it's beautiful because they are both thriving and doing what they love. So it's been a wonderful experience to watch them.
Speaker 1:I just picked up a book recently called Letting Go by David Hawkins. He talks about letting go as surrender. To be honest, I've actually never really liked that framing. I like the idea of surrender just relinquish To me. Part of it has always felt in some ways forced. Recently I've been focusing my practice around receiving. Receiving is a way easier for me. In some ways there's an irony. It is easier for me to feel like I'm receiving as a way of letting go. It is easier for me to feel like I'm receiving as a way to surrender, because surrender feels like I have to do something, whereas when you receive you don't have to do anything, you just have to accept. In that acceptance I have found it much more of a grace in this moment, just as your feeling. What feelings come up for you as you hold this idea of letting go or receiving?
Speaker 3:Well, not that you're losing a part of yourself. Basically you're raising your kids. The whole idea is to let them go and to be independent. So there was initially a sense that, oh, I'm losing a part of myself. So just this idea of what do I need to fill it with to make myself feel whole again. So I think I've been just kind of reaching out to just finding ways to be okay with change, finding ways to find connection within my community. And then nature is.
Speaker 3:I've always been really outdoorsy and active, but I really think the Grudtu, blooming Cards and this whole practice has really invited me to slow down and to really pay attention. So I do really look to nature for a lot of clues. And it's interesting that I was talking about just that sense of feeling whole. And I was on a beautiful hike a few months ago and I saw the trail kind of got lost because there was still snow, but underneath you can see little glimmers and changes, the snow melting, there's flowers popping up. So I think that I just paused there for like 10 minutes just watching the snow drip and watching the changes. And so it's given me permission, it's given me just the opportunity, invitation to pause and to really be in nature a little bit more than normally I would have been.
Speaker 2:Such a beautiful reflection, susie, and your yellow that you're wearing. That's just the daffodil, I can't help it. Call that out too for people that are not able to see you. And yeah, this card just feels really resonant for these times like this change of the season, so moving into fall, and just the uncertainty that maybe some of us are feeling. So I love how this is like a way to kind of be with the unsettledness that might come from the change that's happening internally and externally. So with that, I'm curious. We normally do like to pick a card for our listeners and our community. I wonder is this the card? Do we feel complete? Do we feel like people need one more message? Or is this like the message?
Speaker 1:Let's pick another card.
Speaker 2:I feel like it's been a couple weeks. I love it. Omar, you want to pick for our community? Pick two numbers.
Speaker 1:I'll pick the first one and then Arlene can pick the second number. I'll go with five, row five.
Speaker 2:Okay, here we are, and Arlene.
Speaker 4:I feel like, am I on mute? I'm going to go with one.
Speaker 1:All right, ooh, number 30, geranium, representing harmony and balance. Can you see the harmony that arises from making peace with your choices? And we're looking at this long stock, sort of angled and angle, and it's got five heart shaped petals really at the center and then it extends and I guess maybe it's actually leaves that are in the center and then it's sort of much smaller flower petals on the top, and so I love that this is emphasizing the leaves, which leaves are sort of like the Cinderella flowers, right.
Speaker 1:Like they don't get the same kind of attention as the flower petals, but in some ways they're the ones that like absorb the sun that allows the photosynthesis and growth and all of that to happen, and I love that. It sort of relates to the story that I shared about the Mayan family at the beginning, which was really about how do we live in harmony. And you know, when we can live with water that is clean, then we are clean. If we can live with trees that are healthy, then we are healthy. And there's it's all in relationship, and I think that harmony comes from being in dialogue with the world around us and that it dialogue is a living conversation. The shooting star is like. It's like can take our breath away and like move us because our hearts are open to everything that is happening around us so.
Speaker 1:I love this card for our community.
Speaker 3:I love how kind of that fork leading to the five leaves all end with like a heart shaped leaf.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I love that we started the conversation with harmony and we ended it with this card. I think that's great.
Speaker 2:Well wishing our listeners and our community, you know, just more peace with what's present. I mean, isn't that all we can ask for really, at the end of the day?
Speaker 1:Well then, to recognize that these changes do come with beautiful sadness, oftentimes right, and that you know how we deal with uncertainty, make room for uncertainty, be in dialogue with uncertainty, that we can have harmony with uncertainty and the unknown and let things go and know that they're going to sort of thrive in their own ways. So it's beautiful to be back, it's beautiful to see you all and you know so happy to be reconnected.
Speaker 2:And thank you, susie, for being, you know, brave to step into this. You know the foreground because you know. Now everybody knows the amazing person that brought these t-shirts and totes into the world and helped us get the candles like into people's homes. It's incredible, so we hope you check it out at gradsubloomingcom in our shop to see the beautiful shirts of nature saying we're rooting for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Lovely to be with you as well.
Speaker 1:Cheers, cheers.
Speaker 4:All right, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye you.
