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
Embracing Seasonal Living and Fearless Gratitude with Dr. Paul Wang
Discover the profound insights of seasonal living with the esteemed Dr. Paul Wang, whose extensive experience in martial, medical, and mystical practices illuminates the path to a life in harmony with nature's cycles. Join us as Dr. Wang reveals the art of dancing through life's changes, emphasizing the importance of aligning with the natural rhythms of birth, growth, maturation, and dormancy also known as spring, summer, fall and winter. Explore the necessity of stillness and the magic of connecting with one's center, as we reflect on the releasing time of fall. Together, we challenge the influences of technology and artificial light, urging a return to rest and the inner world.
We also delve into the dynamic balance of yin and yang during seasonal transitions, examining its impact on our communities and personal relationships. Through the symbolism of nasturtium in the Gratitude Blooming Card deck, we invite you to embrace the darkness and the hidden treasures it can unveil in your life. As we navigate the powerful emotion of fear, Dr. Wang shares strategies to not only face it but thrive amidst uncertainty, drawing on astrological insights and the guiding intelligences of mind, intuition, and instinct. Finally, we celebrate the concept of fearless gratitude, underscoring the role of self-trust and inner confidence in personal transformation and resilience.
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Hello Belinda.
Speaker 2:Hey Omar, I am so excited about this special episode today.
Speaker 1:We have the wonderful teacher of so many different practices the martial, the medical, the mystical, Dr Sifu Paul Si Wong, joining us again and really we're introducing kind of a new kind of flow to the conversation which is really paying more attention to the season that we're in, and so maybe, Belinda, share a little bit of why you felt like this was important for us to kind of integrate into the Gratitude Blooming podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, I feel like, with Gratitude Blooming, we're constantly tuning in to what's happening in nature and it's so beautiful to have someone who comes from a lineage where it's all about studying what's happening with the natural world and embodying the cycles, and with Dr Paul, we've been collaborating around our community gatherings around the equinoxes and the solstices and just really trying to understand. How does that help us master change in our own lives and to have a system of Chinese medicine and Taoism and just all the lineages that you've studied, dr Paul, I'd love to hear from you just what does seasonal living really mean from your perspective as a healer and a teacher.
Speaker 3:Thank you, belinda, for the invitation to come back. It's been a little while, but offline we connect a lot, but to be here with the Gratitude Blooming audience, it's really an honor to share some transmissions around these themes, this collaboration, words, gratitude and blooming. And sometimes we think of blooming, as maybe, like just you know, the summer flourishing. But I think in every season spring, summer, fall and winter there are new insights or lessons that bloom, if you will, that we can be thankful for right, no matter what happens in what season. And so the seasonal part, I would say, is just an acknowledgement that there are these four main phases, at least if we look at nature, for the mapping of birth, and then a growth and development, and then, at some point, maturation, and then a harvesting, and then a point where we want to contract and even descend into more of a seed or dormancy stage, and that as sort of a human animals that actually come from nature.
Speaker 3:Anytime we sort of bias towards one or the other, let's say, you know, like perpetual growth right or forever in dormancy, right is not optimal. And so the living part of seasonal living is to be able to I use the verb a lot dance. I'm not the greatest dancer, but at least an idealization of making every moment a possibility to flow, no matter what is happening, based on and this is a little bit into the alchemical aspect, alchemical anatomy, based on connection to your center, so sort of implicit to seasonal, which is about phases, living, which is a sort of the kind of the application of that into your day-to-day. Is this implied center of you can call it stillness or silence, or space of you can call it stillness or silence or space that is really necessary in order to live well with the seasons?
Speaker 1:And before we pick a gratitude blooming card, are there any things that you want to share about this sort of slowing down dormancy and maybe speak to a little bit of what are we coming out of in this transition? Because I think sometimes we can look forward and like, okay, this is what I'm going to go do, but I've been learning more and more that there is a letting go process that needs to happen in some ways before we can even enter into this next transition.
Speaker 3:I'll use a very practical frame that all of us, I'll very safely assume, can relate to, and it's drawn from my personal but also interpersonal relationships, working with a lot of thousands of patients and students over almost three decades, and that is sleep, and so a lot of, let's say, my clients find it difficult, as you said, to let go and let go of what these external projections, right, and expectations, stories and fears, right, that sort of prevent them from bringing their energy and awareness in and out, right, so stuck in the sort of external consciousness. Whereas for sleep, right, we talk about sleep and dreams, for instance, instance, right, that's kind of more moving into the subconsciousness. So if we map that onto the seasons, we can say, okay, fall, right, we should. We should start to let go right of the busyness, the craziness, uh, the concerns of the day and prioritize the inner world, if you will, or prioritize rest to simply stated, and because there's just so many, and I would say one of the big factors is the highly sort of accelerating and amplifying aspect of what technology is like 24-7, in the middle of the night, right, you can pull your energy back out, right, and so our relationship to technology has to be sort of rather than it using us, right, rather us kind of leveraging it in a healthy way. So that of, rather than it using us, right, rather us kind of leveraging it in a healthy way. So that's one of the main things right, for instance, to become, you know, turn down the lights, right, to turn off the artificial lights.
Speaker 3:Because, again, back to seasonal living, back in the day, the fall part of the day, right, not the fall part of the year is, let's say, after sunset, right, Maybe late afternoon, sometimes I make it very explicit, like you know, the six hours, right, the one-fourth of the day, which is 3 to 9 pm, right Is the time, oh, maybe set an alarm, okay, 3 o'clock time to wind down, right, and definitely after sunset, right, turn off the lights, right. So one of the frames related to this, this philosophical idea of yin and yang. Everyone knows that. So there is a yin deficiency due to, in this context, using sleep as the practice, if you will, of too much artificial light, which is kind of a false yang, if you will, rather than the true yin of this beautiful darkness that you can say, even in a more mythic frame, a descent into darkness, and so, if you look at it, even expand like frame, a descent into darkness, right. And so, if you look at it, even expand like that, like a lot of us really suck at that, right, we're not good at like slowing down, quieting down, let alone going to stillness, right, the really depths of that.
Speaker 3:And so in this kind of current timeframe, right, we're here in sort of November, december season, it's the winter season, and so the upcoming, what I just talked about is the fall season, right, and so the winter season is about, like we said, dormancy, or cocooning. Or sometimes I use another simple metaphor like, okay, we all want to be successful, rise high. But if you think of a simple action like jumping, what do you have to do before you jump? You have to get low, connect to the ground, feel that gravity, and then, boing, rise higher, versus starting with your legs extended, trying to jump up. And so winter is that kind of talking about the next season afterwards, that season in preparation to literally spring, right.
Speaker 3:So fall, right, what beautiful literal word.
Speaker 3:Fall is to fall down, right, again, all connotations of the word.
Speaker 3:We're in this kind of culture where I think this is sort of not a skill or something that's really deficient.
Speaker 3:So that's how I would frame it. Yeah, fall into winter, and fall is sort of trying to release all those externalities that allow us to then come down and inwards. And then, elementally, winter is about the element of water, which always seeks the lowest place right To allow yourself to seep into and pull into, even physically, instead of your head right and deeper into your chest, maybe even using your breath to flow into the belly, which in alchemical practice relates to the subconscious, and during that winter phase, actually you can even use the word intelligence, right. So by being afraid to go into the depths, actually it's a pity because we also divorce or disconnect or atrophy the aspect of intelligence which is the subconscious intelligence, and even in Western medicine they talk about it as the enteric brain or vernacular is the gut instinct. So a lot of people are just trying to use their head to decide and calculate and they're so disconnected again from the depths, from their instinct, from their sort of deep, deep resources of vitality and wisdom.
Speaker 2:I so love learning about the cycles of the seasons with you on the land and it's been so beautiful having Omar You've come for a couple of our equinoxes and you know, this weekend we got to practice together in LA Just this, even the practice of going from the head down to the heart, and then you know you're kind of taking from the head down to the heart and then you know you're kind of taking it to another level, of going down into the gut, which feels very primal. And one of the beauties of just working with the land, especially in Mount Shasta where there are such distinct seasons, is learning how that is so natural to embrace darkness earlier and earlier and stillness and quiet. Like you know, on the land it gets literally more quiet as the birds are migrating. And I know, omar, you and I have been really thinking about how these cycles map onto creativity and business and all these things that are very, you know, modern world has us thinking like we've got to be going 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year round, to cultivate a successful business and that is so much.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's an artificial way of just like always living into summer, almost like where it's that peak energy time, but in reality in the natural world that is only one fourth of the whole year, and so in many ways I feel like it's been helping me, at least you know lean into the slowness and the patience that's required for depth and to really get clear, like what are we doing here and why? For depth and to really get clear, like what are we doing here and why. So, omar, I'm curious how has it been for you embodying this way of living and creating and being in relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just as you were talking, I was imagining the earth, and I think, paul, you shared this last time that the earth is in some ways like the yin-yang symbol, and when you think about it in that sort of three dimensional standpoint, there's somewhere on earth, there's always somewhere, there's summer and there's always sort of winter, you know, always happening at the same time, and I think part of the challenge is that we try to do everything by ourselves now, and so then we flatten it, and I think that we can sort of hold these seasons in a healthier way when we do it in community.
Speaker 1:So maybe someone is sort of moving a little bit faster, while someone else is slowing down, and I think that too is just sort of like the in young.
Speaker 1:It's not just this one sort of entity by itself, it's multiple entities, and so I think for me it's learning when to step back and be like okay, let someone else take the lead on this, and then, okay, now I've gotten a chance to rest, now is it my turn to kind of step up and like, push in. And I think that's also what's just been so great about our collaborations. You know from you know, melinda, you have not just the graduate blooming but the Hestia Retreat Center celebrating your 10-year anniversary this year, hopefully closing any moment now on a second retreat center on the Big Island With Paul, you have the daology, and we've just started convening a group of people through that practice, and so I love this idea that we can just wear many hats. But we can only wear many hats when we learn to like take some off and then put some on, and so just kind of becoming aware of not trying to do it all all at once.
Speaker 2:So I'd be curious, dr Paul, as someone that is constantly cultivating this practice, thinking about fall to winter, and we're going to get to ask the grads who blooming cards for some insight around that inquiry or intention.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for, let's say, this season of winter and we already touched on some of them, I think what we need to sort of highlight in terms of Chinese medicine, in terms of health, or, let's say, a lot of the patients I'm working with now, the days are getting, I mean, the days are getting shorter, yes, and the nights are getting longer and longer, and eventually we're going to reach this maximum yin time called the winter solstice, and so I'm really emphasizing something I think is really important and not really focused on. It's getting a little bit more popular. But this is part of my studies from undergrad in integrative biology, which is circadian rhythms. Most of us are completely out of sync, both internally, like our liver and our heart and our brain. They're not working in, let's say, optimal symphony. There's a lot of cacophony, and I would say right if, as an alchemist, the inner is reflected or projected into the outer and then reflected back to us, and so this sort of inner out of sync state is also, you know, shows up as like fragmentation in our relationships, lack of communication and coordination.
Speaker 3:And so one of the first things that I always start with now with my clients in terms of and we already talked about it too is again yin, how to bring in more yin into their life. We already talked about it too is again yin, how to bring in more yin into their life. How can we add more time in darkness and just a little bit of physiology? Is that everyone? I think it's popular now the idea, or the idea of the hormone melatonin right, some people pop the melatonin and this is not just a sleep sort of hormone. This is actually one of the primary, if not the most powerful, antioxidant.
Speaker 3:So if you aren't getting sufficient darkness, if you're absorbing artificial light after sunset to the extent it's not like one glance at your phone is going to destroy you, but a lot of my clients long-term develop things like Alzheimer's, parkinson's, fibromyalgia, these kind of especially neurodegenerative diseases due to yin deficiency, and so one of the shortest, easiest low-hanging fruit to continue the botanical metaphor is in your sleep environment, and I even touched on things like darkness and coldness and silence and stillness. Are there ways? I guess this is the inquiry. Are there ways that you can increase those qualities? And one of the cheapest but most powerful ways is to get a blackout curtain right, and so that's just one example. I would inquire around that. What ways can you add more, you know, rich yin into your life?
Speaker 2:And yeah, and what I hear from that question is you know, what does that darkness have to tell us? You know like what does Mother Earth want us to know about that kind of darkness?
Speaker 1:So we have the Gratitude Blooming Card deck up Seven rows, six columns and, paul, just let me know when you want me to stop.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's stop right there.
Speaker 3:Upper row or bottom row here.
Speaker 1:The top row, the top row, top row, all right, and then one through six. Um, let's do five, okay. How to invite yin, and what is mother nature asking us? In the dark card, number 32, the nasturtium representing the theme of friendship. Think of a friendship you cherish. What makes that friendship so special to you? So, as you see this plant, this art by Arlene Kim Suda, and that question of how do we invite Yin in and what does she have to say, what comes up for you?
Speaker 3:Is the verb befriend, and most people are afraid of the darkness, right, afraid, and we sometimes throw things into the dark or hide things in the dark in the closet, under the rug. Psycho-emotionally, right, and since earth was mentioned, this soil idea, right, there's such richness in the darkness, right, and for some people, maybe they've done a lot of whatever therapy or cultivation, so they've already excavated a lot of the hidden wealth, if you will, wisdom in the darkness. So they only have maybe, you know, sort of 10% of darkness left to excavate. But I think a lot of us, the average person, there's maybe at least 50%, if not.
Speaker 3:This idea of an iceberg, right, the yin part of the iceberg is unseen under the water and that's, like you know, depending on the mass of the iceberg, 80, maybe 80%, and so most of us have this enemy, if not frenemy, relationship with those scary, hidden, dark parts of ourselves, and so can we develop a budding friendship and start to at least be able to sit in the same room or at least reach out to these hidden parts of us that are maybe wanting to talk to us, but we're the ones pushing them away. Guide, I've seen so much, just like someone you randomly meet, let's say at the farmer's market or whatever, and then you get to talking and boom. Five years later you've shared so much, you've learned so much from each other and there are aspects of ourselves within that can be like these kind of new friendships.
Speaker 2:I love that, and what is really present looking at the artwork from Arlene, is the relationship to me between the flower and the leaf.
Speaker 2:It's almost like you need to be friends with this aspect of yourself to be thriving, which is such a hard thing to embrace, right, I can be a more whole person, I could be a more wise person if I am friends with all of these sides of myself and what comes up for me around, like what are the emotions that I need to be better friends with? And I'm going to ask you guys the same question, so I'm going to give you some think time as I'm sharing. I remember, you know, back in you know Omar, you said 10 year anniversary of our land. I remember the first five years of my relationship with the land.
Speaker 2:It just somehow would always work out that I would get to spend a month from Oakland to stay in Mount Shasta for the month, and I remember being really scared of this fall season in November when it would just get so dark and so cold and having all this time and space to be with myself was kind of scary because it's like all the things that you don't want to think about or all the ways that you can distract yourself. Living in a city, you cannot do that in nature when it's so quiet and still, and I remember these feelings of like insecurity every fall would come up and I think it would happen. You know, looking at like, well, what have I accomplished this year with my business? Or looking at social media and seeing, like how amazing somebody else is doing compared to me, and you know all these stories that would come out, which might be true, maybe not. So I would say, like learning to understand what is that insecurity?
Speaker 2:Or like lack of worth, or needing to feel like I have done more with my time all year, like's underlying that and trying to also cultivate some self-compassion. I would say befriending myself in the way of like, yeah, you don't need to show the world that you've done all these things, to be clear with yourself about your gifts and your talents. And so it was a lot of letting go of this external need to show that I've done all these things or I'm so successful doing all these things. It was more of learning to cultivate this internal sense of self-worth, which definitely was not easy. So I'm curious for each of you what would you say is the emotion or the side of you that you're learning to befriend in this season, or the side of you that you're learning to?
Speaker 1:befriend in this season. Well, I love that this came up a little bit in the cacao ceremony that we did together, where for me, the invitation was to release control from the mind and invite friendship into the heart and that is the best definition I've ever heard of self-compassion is to be a friend to yourself. Right, and because when you're a friend to yourself, you're just accepting who you are, you know, as you are, without judgment. Season right, and really thinking about winter, and this in some ways was inspired by the podcast, the Emerald, and the last episode was about fire.
Speaker 1:And so I'm going to start a weekly fire in my backyard and this is a way to really kind of switch from those digital lights, kind of switch from those digital lights and really kind of really invite the sort of the light that was probably around the longest at night, which was just fire.
Speaker 1:And so for me, it's just like I'm just going to be curious as to like what happens to my eyes as I watch fire dance in the evening and I create this sort of ritual. I'm imagining this is going to be probably like on a Friday or a Saturday night, so really kind of a close of a week and just really like, how do I just settle in and just sort of not watch the television, turn on the fire and just sort of let that be the way that I kind of just close, you know whatever happened Monday through Friday and just be like, okay, this is a different moment, let me be in the dark, let me be with the smoke, let me be with the fire and just sort of, yeah, I'm excited to sort of see what happens.
Speaker 3:For me and I'll dance with Omar a little bit, since he mentioned fire, I'm going to invoke water again to stay with the current season, and I would say, you know, people have different relationships to water. Let's imagine sort of a river or a pond or a lake or a stream or even the ocean, and for some people there's a lot of fear. They stay away from the water, they can't experience, let's say, the qualities of water, because they have this fear, this boundary, and maybe it's a healthy fear. I want to throw that in. Some people are very black and white, like fear, bad love, love, good, right, but as a yin-yang alchemist, it quote-unquote depends on the context and, let's say, the quality of that kind of, let's say, energetic pattern we call emotions. And so, you know, we recently went through an election cycle here in the US, so there was a lot of fear that was explosive, almost right, like, to keep the water metaphor, it's almost like avalanche, you know, or the iceberg sort of breaking and splash, and a lot of people were really freaking out. And not as a criticism, I mean, that's just an observation, and maybe they have every sort of you. You know, everyone has every right to feel what they feel, of course, and the inquiry, though, then, is how much of these fears are sort of projected or or due to the dissolution of an expectation right, and it's very, very difficult. So maybe there's a reminder there, like in terms of cultivation, is that can you hold multiple realities at the same time and the whole? You know, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Maybe you can have five baskets right. So if one gets crushed right, you can still make your omelets right.
Speaker 3:And so the back to the water relationship. Is water an enemy? And maybe, because you know, you had a childhood friend that drowned right. And so ever since then and when you went down to save them actually this is a personal story I had a trip to Mexico with my sisters and the three of us almost drowned, and so this is a bit of autobiographical, and I could say forget water, I don't need water, I'm going to just hang out with wood element or fire element, much safer. But as you can see, this fear can also relate to fire as well.
Speaker 3:So my point is or, for me, when I relate to fear, and I have as strong fear, energy as the best of them, and I try to use that tremendous power, because fear is sort of very primal energy of survival. We wouldn't be here if our ancestors didn't feel fear. But did that fear freeze them? Or were they able to sort of melt, if you will, that fear energy and channel it as a powerful current towards a certain purpose? And so that depends on cultivation, and you can say in this context, your skill, or lack thereof, of swimming. So if you're a surfer or a good swimmer, then when you see water you're like running towards it, right. Or if you're a free diver that even overcomes more, you can be butt naked without any snorkel or scuba gear and you're fine. You could dive into the depths just based on what you were born with your birthday suit, if you will. So yeah, I would say fear.
Speaker 3:Fear is actually something very strong in me, and a lot of people would look at me and say, oh, you don't seem like a very fearful person, but I would say I definitely froze when I was in a younger time, even in this kind of situation, to speak no, I would fall mute very readily and find it very difficult to express myself and so I've worked a lot around this winter watcher emotion of fear, by developing skills, by learning to swim in these kind of scary or unknown situations or, like Belinda said, uncertainty.
Speaker 1:I love the invitation or the paradox between for me at least embracing fire so that I can be with darkness and in some ways the heat of the fire will help me be more present to the cool air of the night, not creating these, like you said, fear is not bad, it's like no. How do you work with that energy and then find your way to thaw it so you're not frozen? Frozen, yeah, and I'm just kind of curious. You know, this has been a not just a tumultuous year, it's been a tumultuous period, I feel like, for a while now, and so even maybe taking a step back from the season of the year that we're in, would you say metaphorically, you know, maybe, what season are we at? Maybe even a more global level?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I explored that question because I do astrology too Chinese astrology or Tao astrology for individual human beings. But you can also look at the birthday of a nation, like 1776, whenever the constitution was drawn, and at this moment I can't remember, I didn't delve that deeply into it, but it's an interesting question. So you can use the birth chart. Of course, I don't know when the planet was born, so I can't speak at that level. And I would just say then, back to this mapping of the seasonal change, that once you have this and this is, of course, my bias, like why I think it's really important to have these alchemical maps is and to tie back to what you said earlier, omar is that it's like that movie everything everywhere all at once, right, and? But the mapping just gives you options, like even, like I said about the different intelligences, right, like you're racking your head intelligence, your intellect, your your pro and con analysis to try to figure it out, because you think that's the only sort of element that you can work with, and that's really it's the metal element to try to chop, chop and try to cut through things, and you realize, oh, wow, there's also a sort of a fire intelligence related to the heart, right, which is this kind of intuitional intelligence, and then, like I said earlier, this water intelligence. That's your gut instinct. And so now, if you can practice, first of all, take that as a hypothesis and then apply it to your life, like, yeah, that's true, I felt like in some situations I didn't figure it out by thinking or overthinking, I actually just immediately just chose something and, lo and behold, most of the times when I followed that first impression, that instinctual impulse, I was correct. And then so can you kind of recalibrate how you move through this, and these are kind of seasonal intelligences, if you will. Hopefully this is making sense that I'm not just gonna just like some people, right, like we said earlier. Right, they want to be in that kind of fire, expansion, growth, right, which is kind of tiring to always be in that state. Or even cancerous, right, if we think about the body, if a cell wants to always be in that state, that's cancer and that kind of can metastasize. And so what's going on? Everything is going on.
Speaker 3:I think in our 300,000 year history as Homo sapiens, sapiens, we've definitely had situations where we cut it kind of close. There were certain bottlenecks for our species, where I don't know how many were left. So we have it in our ancestry, in our genetic and epigenetic sort of heredity, to find that creativity and no matter what is happening. And this is again the advantage of being an alchemist is because you have all these dynamic maps and you learn to do that seasonal living and, like I said earlier, you also cultivate a center which never moves, sort of like a pendulum. Right when you're swinging a pendulum you can't swing the, the top part, you got to keep one part still, and then the, the bottom, where the stone is or the crystal is, like that, that kind of back and forth yin and yang say. You're spinning like that pendulum. The pull of that kind of momentum actually helps you feel the center a bit stronger.
Speaker 3:I don't know if that makes sense. So we're always going to have elections and wars, more or less inner and outer conflicts, and I found no final solution in the seasons themselves. The seasons are sort of the diverse changes. The only real solution that I found which is permanent and reliable and sustainable is in the unconditional, is at the center, at the center of being. That, when you can identify more with it, allows you not to feel so insecure. It's almost like you develop a part of you that says this to you with confidence, which is I got you. Can you develop that part of you that improves to you right, like a good friend in many different, especially difficult situations? That they do got you. But this part I'm talking about is you can call it your inner self, or your higher self, or deeper self. That sort of self-trust is, I think, the most powerful medicine to navigate the change.
Speaker 2:I love it. This is the season of coming back into our center always and getting more and more practiced with that, with all the polarities that pull us out of our center. And it's so perfect how everything just synchronizes, because Omar and I have been talking a lot about this idea of fearless gratitude and, omar, you have such beautiful ways to describe what that is. We had a previous episode from our collaboration with the Democracy Center where we were really unpacking that idea of fearless gratitude and it does map to this winter season element and I'm really excited to invite all of our listeners into the practice, into the experience of leaning into fearless gratitude as a way of living, as a way of coming back into our center. So we have two offerings coming up for this holiday season.
Speaker 2:One is we created a fearless gratitude medicine bundle which has a candle to ignite our inspiration around the good, the bad, the ugly of life, just trying to bring in that spirit of gratitude to all of these things. And a soothing tea to kind of bring us back into the senses, into our bodies, into the present moment. And also the fearless gratitude note cards, which are so beautiful because there's the stories of the podcast that are related to each of those themes and those are kind of the, I would say, the darker shades of gratitude blooming, you know, like working with humility and vulnerability. Those are not easy things. Courage, it takes a lot of self-friendship to even want to sit at the table with yourself and be with those emotions and those themes. Omar, do you want to speak a little bit to the second offering that we have, which is our online journey? We're getting ready to start that soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're really trying to curate.
Speaker 1:We've created so much content. I think we're at over 117 podcast episodes. We've had hundreds of gratitude circles with thousands of people, and so we feel like we're at the stage now where we're like how do we curate some of this content into an online learning journey? We invite you to sign up at hello at gratitudebloomingcom, to get on the wait list so that you'll be the first to know when we're ready to release this series.
Speaker 1:And I love, paul, what you said about just the unconditional. I was just writing about that today and it was my wife who first told me, like what does unconditional love mean? And we were in high school, so we were just at puppy love. But I remember asking her and I was like, well, what does unconditional love mean? And she says no strings attached. And so, just when no strings are attached, it's not the logic of love, it's not if you do this, then I will do that.
Speaker 1:I just love you because, right as you are and as you said, I got you, and so when you feel that level of belonging, then you can have that centeredness, right, like you can be that anchor to the pendulum, you can be that sort of center in the eye of a storm, and so I just I love that, as we think about seasonality, it is both about this recognition that change is constant, and there's also this invitation to find stillness in that change. Right, and how do we sort of be? And that's what I think this sort of seasons just help us do is to kind of keep in practice. And so I know I'm looking forward to this new series. That medicine bundle sounds amazing and I know I'm going to be lighting a weekly fire in this upcoming winter season.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, dr Paul, for joining us, and how can people find you if they want to get their Tao astrology, which I love?
Speaker 1:And I just recently did myself it's incredible, just to learn about yourself?
Speaker 2:elementally, how can people find out about you and your work and practice with you?
Speaker 3:My website is daocentercom. There we go with the center. I'm on Center Street in Berkeley, california, so D-A-O-C-E-N-T-E-Rcom and my email is info at daocentercom, so you can reach me there for your questions or requests.
Speaker 2:And for those of you that want to meet me and Paul in person, we're going to be in Big Island, hawaii, for the New Year's for a winter element, water element, sabbatical, so we'd love to see some of you there.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Well, I'm certainly grateful for my friendship with each of you and all the different ways that we get to dance with each other. Wishing you all well.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you, bye-bye.
