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
Wu Wei: Join our story circle and practice of "effortless action"
As the seasons begin to change, we find ourselves wrapped in the afterglow of a snowstorm — a perfect time to foster our aspirations and face the hurdles ahead. Join us in a heartwarming journey where we embrace the art of grounding ourselves through meditation, connecting deeply with the earth and our innermost dreams. We'll navigate the ancient philosophy of Wu Wei or effortless action and learn to trust the natural flow of life. With art from Beckie Masaki, we explore the transformative power of story circles within communities like Mending the Arc. Together, we'll reflect on exciting collaborations and the fresh growth they promise, mirroring the renewal we seek in our own lives.
With the brushstrokes of Michael Heiser's "Double Negative" and the silent majesty of a winter forest as our backdrop, we reflect on the profound effects of art and nature on our spirit. Solitude, often a catalyst for creativity, becomes a central theme, inspiring introspection and aligning with our intentions for the year.
We close with the soulful strains of "Sorrow" by Windows Seat as we also look forward to an enriching collaboration with the Democracy Center, continuing to weave a narrative that celebrates the courage found in both love and sorrow.
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.
If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave us a 5-star rating and review. Your feedback is valuable to us and helps us grow.
Share your thoughts and comments by emailing us at hello@gratitudeblooming.com. We love hearing from our listeners!
Hello Belinda.
Belinda Liu:Hey, omar, it's so lovely to be with you and Arlene together in studio as we navigate this year that is unfolding in front of us.
Omar Brownson:It feels like a lot of momentum, which for me feels good. I'm loving it.
Belinda Liu:Well, we just got our first big winter snowstorm, so from the land in Mount Shasta I'm getting messages of stay cozy, stay warm, stay rested and incubate into your dreams. Arlene, I know that this has been a little bit of a hectic time for you, with family and everything. How is it unfolding?
Arlene Kim Suda:Just hoping to keep family members like healthy and in good spirits. So yeah, it's definitely been kind of a rough start. I think I was ready for a easier start to the year, but I guess you don't always get what you want. You get what you need. Is that how?
Omar Brownson:it goes. I'm feeling this like momentum, stillness and rockiness, all within the same time.
Belinda Liu:And I love that for our listeners and our viewers. You get to really experience us living in real time with the seasons of nature and the seasons of our lives, and those things oftentimes can be in rhythm, aligned at the same time, or they can be very different seasons within us and what's going on outside of us. And we were so inspired to start this year with a practice, and what I have to share at this time is just really around this idea of tending to our intentions. We're starting this new beginning altogether with a lot of hopes and dreams and wishes and things that we want to change, things we want to accomplish, and so I'm going to really hold us in this meditation to really be with the tending of that, knowing that this is more of a marathon rather than a sprint. So just inviting us to just take a pause in this moment in our day and just really making a connection with our feet to the ground, no matter what is happening in life.
Belinda Liu:This is such a beautiful way to remain connected to the earth, to find our stable ground, and just inviting you to breathe with that awareness, with your feet, just receiving energy from the trees that are all around us in different parts of the world, Breathing that energy in through our feet, breathing our feet soften, with the ground to receive and exhaling, let go of any stress or worry, your tension.
Belinda Liu:Just for this moment, from this place of anchoring, holding your dreams, your intention for this year, how you want to feel, holding this in your heart, just remembering that, just letting your feet anchor you in that dream, understanding what it is that you really need right now to tend to yourself and to your intentions. Just with each breath, letting that be a way to feed you and nourish you. You connect in and deepen into your feet and your grounding, no matter how this year unfolds in the moment, how can you find stability with the ground in your feet, anchoring into the ground Anytime you feel stressed or distracted or off balance? Just taking a moment to breathe in, remembering how you want to feel in your heart and that soft stability in your feet. And I'm curious, omar and Arlene, as you sit with your intentions around creativity and effortless action and connect in with your stability of your feet, what is coming up, regardless of what's happening around, what is it that you're most needing or what is helping you remember to tend to your intentions?
Omar Brownson:I love how you always integrate the feet into your meditations, belinda, and just that reminder to not just drop in but drop down and sort of feel the earth holding us, appreciating gravity kind of surrounding us and holding us in this time. I am my intention this year of Wu Wei, effortless action and just really how to trust that the harmony is already there and it's just being present to it and not letting my own sort of interests, ambitions, wants, desires to sort of disrupt that harmony that already exists. And so one of my practices is with a community of folks called Mending the Ark, part of the Resonance Network, and we just did story circles and so I'd love to share them with you all, and it's a little bit different than a Grad II Blooming Card, but I feel like it has a similar intention of just like how can we use art to help us reflect on the stories in our lives. And I'm not going to read all 10 of the circles, but I invite the three of us to each pick one that feels resonant for you in this moment. And, as you really invited us to connect to the ground, I really felt this sense of renewal.
Omar Brownson:And so the circle that I like is. It's a drawing of a tree and it has the words it's in the world, renewed, and it's really about creativity and celebrating the ordinary things that are so extraordinary. But it has, like, written in tiny little words at the bottom and it says even weathered trees bloom. And like when I was in Yosemite and looking up at these giant sequoias they've been blooming for a thousand years and there was this one sequoia that I think it was called like bear sequoia or something, because it was just like this big, big tree and its branches were so thick that they look like trees growing out of a tree.
Omar Brownson:And, as I think about, even a weathered tree can bloom. It's like even the branches of something can be where there's new growth. And so I feel like maybe effortless action in this season for me is just continuing to deepen down, deepen also with the roots, recognizing that the roots are just connected with other people. And that's part of the effortlessness is being in communities, whether it's this community Gratitude Blooming and the work that we're doing together and the collaboration we have with the Japanese American National Museum and the Center for Democracy in our Empathy and Democracy series, or it's this Mending the Art community that's part of the Residence Network. It's like how to find renewal and growth by sort of deepening the roots and then letting these branches, these different collaborations bloom and kind of fun in unexpected ways.
Arlene Kim Suda:Well, it's really interesting. The one that you mentioned, omar, was definitely on my top two list, and since you already picked that one, it's sort of very obvious now which one for me stands on, and it was the In a Seemingly Impenetrable Ravine. And I have to say why it jumped out at me is it reminded me of this famous land work artwork by Michael Heiser called Double Negative, and it's an actual. I mean, it sort of looks like that impenetrable ravine, and so that's what drew me to that. I think it's an actual land work in Nevada somewhere, and to me it's always been so fascinating because it's like it's Earth scale, right, it's like large, and I always saw it as sort of a real life example of negative space. Like you think that the negative space is in the drawing and in the actual earth work is as present as the non-negative space, and so it's sort of interesting that that's the one I was drawn to visually and then. But the words feel kind of scary, don't they? And in tiny letters.
Omar Brownson:On the bottom it says a terrific struggle.
Arlene Kim Suda:Right, right. So this is not for the lighthearted, I think.
Omar Brownson:I love that. For groundedness, you picked the one that is almost. It doesn't show the ground.
Arlene Kim Suda:So, it's.
Omar Brownson:It is that open space.
Arlene Kim Suda:I do sort of feel like 2024 is kind of starting out like this for me. It's not like I really don't really want to struggle, but I mean, sometimes life just puts you there.
Belinda Liu:And Arlene, what helps you when you're feeling the struggle or the distractions that can come from really unexpected things. Nature is very unpredictable sometimes and our lives are too. Do you have any advice for people who are striving to cultivate more creative spark this year and then also feeling like how you're feeling of, just like it's really challenging right now for different reasons out of your control?
Arlene Kim Suda:When I am under a lot of stress, I do seek out solitude, Like I think solitude and stillness is. In some ways it's a way to feed your creativity. There's some inner strength in our life that happens in that stillness that it doesn't feel. It feels like it feeds the creativity in a different way, in a quieter way.
Belinda Liu:I'm just loving that there is this metaphor of art and nature that's very present in this community that you're part of, omar, so I'm appreciating being able to be a visitor in this moment of your space outside of gratitude blooming, and for me, I'm literally walking on land daily and connecting in with the trees and tuning in that way, and it has been an interesting message this week of with my intention of I just want to be open to receiving unexpected opportunities, miracles that are not within my own planning, mind or effort, and it does feel like it's more in alignment with that one that says connecting and flowing in harmony and it there is this kind of spirally energy of water or it could be like sound, and I feel like right now with the creek, it's just going really loudly with all the snow that came and that's been melting, so just been a lot of change on the land and even despite all the big energy of snow, I see how still the trees are amidst all that movement and I love that in this visual it's there's a tiny words that say whomever hears this melody joins me, and it is very sweet.
Belinda Liu:I feel like this is what's going on with the land right now. It's like really quiet. The birds have left, the creek is very loud. Every all the trees seem like they're just listening to the water and then every once in a while you'll hear a snow falling off the tree and hitting the ground. I feel like I'm a part of something that is very sacred and special, like to be a part of that kind of winter quiet, with some soundscapes of unexpected things.
Omar Brownson:I'm really loving to this, like whomever hears this melody joins me.
Omar Brownson:I feel like there's something very resonant about like this is not for everybody, right? Like not everybody's going to hear the silence in the forest, right? Like not everyone's going to hear that thump of the snow dropping because maybe they are distracted by other things, and so it's also just I don't know. I feel like it's this invitation to just trust that whoever's meant to hear will hear, and it's okay to sort of. I feel like sometimes we live in a time where it's like more listeners, more followers, more this, and it's just like. No, it's like whomever's meant to hear this is with us and that is enough. That is the connecting and flowing in harmony. So I'd be curious if we were to pick a gratitude blooming card as sort of a counter point to these beautiful drawings by the artist Becky Masaki, who is from the East Bay, and so I want to just acknowledge her work.
Belinda Liu:Yeah. So for those of you are that are listening to this tune that we're singing, I'd love to hear what nature wants to tell us about tending to our intentions in this new beginning. So I'm going to just scroll down and see if any of you are called to stop any of these rows.
Arlene Kim Suda:I'm kind of feeling something in that center column where the negative space I feel like on the bottom we should go, we should go, we should go, we talk about groundedness.
Belinda Liu:I don't know what you're talking about. A lot of negative space on this row.
Omar Brownson:Card number 16, touch Me Not, representing the theme sorrow. Sorrow can come from the courage to love, acknowledge the bravery behind any sorrow you notice or feel For those that are listening. We're looking at the Touch Me Not flower, which is like a white flower with like a red dot in the middle, and there are four of these flowers that are illustrated, that are kind of like spread across the card, with leaves kind of interspersed delicately between them and just, I don't know, there's a tenderness to this art and obviously to this theme. And and you began the podcast, belinda, by saying how do we tend to our intentions? Right, and so there's the tending to. Is this a gentleness? Right, like sometimes we set these intentions and maybe things don't go as we plan, and then we can be Harsh in our judgment, right, like, oh, I didn't do this, I didn't, this didn't work out the way I wanted, and then, and then that's, I feel like you move from, you sort of skip sorrow and you go just straight to pain, right, and and I feel like sorrow sort of invites a little bit of of that Space to just sort of acknowledge like, hey, I can feel these things.
Omar Brownson:I'm watching the Netflix show brother's son, which is the Michelle Yao and its classic sort of Chinese mafia, but with like A different sense of humor and cross culture conversations. And there's this moment where the son of the triad leader he's this like tough guy and he and his brother got separated when they were young and his brother grew up in LA, he's interested in improv, he's like in touch with his emotions, and that knows nothing about the triad life that His family's actually a part of and they're coming together for the first time. And the younger brother is looks at his older brother and says I see some sadness in you. And he's like the older brother's like no, there's no sadness. And he's like yeah, just because you have an anesthetic Doesn't mean you don't feel the pain. The pain is there, you just You're just covering it up, and so I feel like sorrow allows us to feel the pain without covering it up.
Belinda Liu:And, arlene, you have often mentioned that to you. This is the love card of the deck because we don't have a card that's explicitly on love. But you know, you see it in the prompt courage to love and I'd be curious how you would Explain that connection to love in this card.
Arlene Kim Suda:It's always a little weird to take your own medicine, but, like sorrow, is the reminder that, at least for me, most of the sorrow in my love, my life, has come from From love and losing it right. Whether it's losing it in the people that you love or the things that make you sad, it really is such a nice reminder that that sorrow is About love and about for you, belinda, what comes up.
Belinda Liu:It is edgy to kind of say what you believe in, what you want to see in the world, what you want for your life, and that takes a lot of courage and and you have to Hold it with love. So I feel like there is something there for me around that like the power and the gentleness of this, of this flower, and it's so gentle and it's in community and it's not weak in in how it holds its gentleness. So there's, it's just really potent, that word. And every time people pick this card In all the circles that were part of it's edgy, it hits your heart Like a bullet, just like in that center pink circle in the middle of the flower. It's. It's very, it's very strong reaction that you can kind of get from this plant and this message.
Omar Brownson:There can't be community without love. And when we know that there's so much loneliness now in the world and there's so much disconnection, and we're in election cycle year, presidential election cycle year, and so there's just going to be so much noise and divisiveness, things that want to separate us.
Omar Brownson:And so how do we both feel some of the sorrow of what's happening in the world, but also acknowledge that, like we feel that sorrow because we actually Trust a deeper belonging, we trust A deeper harmony, even if it feels like we're in a ravine those of us who are in LA.
Belinda Liu:We're so excited to have another gathering with the democracy center on February 10th and To really hold space for the spaceholders and ever in all of the communities that are at present people that are really trying to create, tend to to the community, tend to the healing that's needed right now we thought, oh, who's holding space for those people? And so I'm excited that gratitude blooming will be able to serve the needs of the spaceholders and community builders in LA on on February 10th and hope some of you will join. Us will include that link in the podcast episode for you to register. And, omar, I'd love for us to hear the song of sorrow. It sounds weird to be like I want to hear that song, but I'm now very curious how Ariel, low of window seat, expressed this melody of sorrow.
Omar Brownson:And so here we go, sorrow by windows, seat and gratitude blooming.
Belinda Liu:I tried to listen to that song with my feet really grounded on the earth and it was yeah, I was like really captivating to savor every click of the piano, and I remember in the podcast episode with him when he shared about this imperfect piano that he found online and it was exactly what he was looking for and and how much he loved that piano, and so it feels like perfect that it's connected to the love card of our gratitude blooming deck.
Omar Brownson:So I just got my 2023 Spotify unwrapped which sort of shows you like what you've been listening to, and the number one artist that I listened to in 2023 was Windows Seat and the top song that I listened to from Windows Seat is this song, sara. I thought it was beautiful. Like I was actually surprised. I know I listened to it a lot, but I didn't realize I was listening to it that much.
Belinda Liu:Wow, it is one of my favorites in the collection of three albums.
Omar Brownson:Well, we appreciate you listening to us on Spotify. Apple, please Like Star Review. We continue to do this as a labor of love and really as part of our everyday creative practice, and you know, when we hear those comments, you send us emails. Hello at gratitude blooming. It reminds us, in some ways, why we're doing this right like, yes, we enjoy the conversation with each other, but we really appreciate this growing community and the harmony for those that hear it.
Belinda Liu:Thank you so much, everyone.
Omar Brownson:Cheers.
Belinda Liu:Cheers.
