Gratitude Blooming Podcast
In Season 4 of the Gratitude Blooming podcast, Wayfinding Through the Unknown, a monthly conversation hosted by Belinda Liu and Omar Brownson, we slow down to explore wild, emergent living, guided by the rhythms of nature and the wisdom within.
Joining us as a regular guest is the brilliant Dr. Paul Wang, whose deep knowledge of Chinese medicine, Daoism, and alchemical traditions expands our understanding of transformation beyond the elements. Together, we embrace the practice of pausing, noticing, and feeling—grounding ourselves in presence as we navigate life's unfolding.
The Gratitude Blooming card deck was inspired by the artist Arlene Kim Suda and her 100 Days of Blooming Love art project. Please rate, review and subscribe. New conversations each month. We want to hear what you're grateful for. Learn more at www.gratitudeblooming.com
Gratitude Blooming Podcast
Embracing the Cave Life: Finding Peace Amid Chaos
The world around us can feel chaotic and overwhelming, especially in the face of social and environmental challenges. In this episode, we delve into the value of finding sanctuary within ourselves—the importance of the "cave life"—and how it can lead to restorative growth. Our conversation invites you to explore the connections between solitude and community, embracing gratitude while acknowledging grief.
We reflect on the transition from winter to spring and how these seasonal changes may impact our mental wellness. Our hosts share personal stories of their own transformative experiences in nature and the significance of finding our inner sanctuary in a fast-paced world.
Listen in as we announce exciting upcoming retreats designed to foster connection with nature and one another. Each of these in-person gatherings are designed to grow our inner capacity to navigate the chaos of outer change.
Join us on the land this May in Mount Shasta, CA or this October in Hawaii by registering at: gratitudeblooming.com/retreats
We are reminded of the resilience we can learn from nature—specifically, the lessons embedded in trees that thrive despite harsh conditions. Join us as we navigate our innate wildness and uncover the pathways toward restoration and community.
Don’t miss this profound journey toward self-discovery and connection—subscribe, share, and leave us a review!
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Create an intentional practice with your own Gratitude Blooming card deck, notecards, 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.
Learn more about our co-hosts and special guest:
Belinda Liu | Hestia Retreat Centers
Omar Brownson | Trickster's Guide to Immortality on Substack
Dr. Paul Wang | The Dao Center
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, hey Omar, I can't believe that it's nearly spring. Winter felt like a blip in the radar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this seasonal time, this year in particular, has been so challenging. I have literally wanted to stay in my cave and not come out. That's the only way I've been keeping sane with all the intensity of the world. What about you? How are you managing?
Speaker 1:Hashtag cave life. I like it. We went to Greece over Thanksgiving break last year and we actually slept in some caves in Santorini and I hadn't slept so well, and then, even coming back to the States, I slept for like two straight weeks, and so I'm feeling you on the importance of finding that cave. And this year has just started with a bang on so many different levels and obviously the political environment, the fires here in Los Angeles, the storms across the world, and we're seeing it really even in the gratitude blooming community. I think we've held probably four gratitude circles in January and February alone, and really from all different communities. You know, yesterday I was at the Stoneview Nature Center as part of its Black History Month, and so it was a combination of community and nature, and then last week we recently just hosted with folks in philanthropy, and so really just I think people are feeling the need to come together.
Speaker 2:And I love that you added this theme of grief with the gratitude, omar, because I feel like sometimes we have this misconception that gratitude is just all the good stuff that we're happy about and are grateful for. But really, especially with gratitude blooming, I mean it is about leaning into the hardships of life and, like how do we find gratitude in the struggle?
Speaker 1:Or to quote Charlie Brown, good grief, right, like, really like. You know, how do we look at grief as this space of like coming together, right and acknowledging all the turmoil and the challenges. You know, because I you know, I feel like in the circle that we recently held, like half the people were in tears. People lost their homes, people lost friends or family. How do we create these containers to process, to alchemize all that is happening? We offer the Gratitude Blooming Circles on a sliding range fee. We offer the Gratitude Blooming Circles on a sliding range fee, and so if your community is interested in having us host a Gratitude Circle, please reach out to us and we have a couple more offerings. I'm super excited about some upcoming collabs with Hestia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the things I've been reflecting on in my solo sabbatical is what is the world need right now that we can uniquely offer? And I think one of those things is this connection, this connection that we can only get when we're in person and in nature. And so Omar and I are excited to offer two in-person retreats this year for our community, to offer two in-person retreats this year for our community One in May for Memorial Weekend in Mount Shasta and another one in October on the Big Island of Hawaii for us to really kind of tap into the seasonal shifts. So those are kind of the midpoints of bigger seasonal shifts, seasonal shifts and how can we just receive and restore together.
Speaker 1:This is so exciting A gratitude blooming retreat, our first ones, and, just you know, I feel like this is the culmination of all the online practices that brought us together during the pandemic and then hosting the podcast and then doing these in-person workshops. We've now done hundreds of these workshops with thousands of people and now our own retreat, and so look forward to updates on our website. You can probably go to Gratitude Blooming Retreats retreats and find more information. But, in the spirit of alchemy, we have Dr Paul Wong, who has become a regular guest and he's really bringing his practices the medical from acupuncture, the martial from Wing Chun, and the mystical he just spent some time in Indonesia, and the mystical he just spent some time in Indonesia, so he is fresh from his own trainings. And so, you know, I think, as we look at this new transition of spring equinox which is really when day and night are even right, when there is this sort of balance before we move into another cycle, you know, I'm excited to hear what Dr Paul has to offer us today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you as always for having me join your gratitude-blooming circle, and what I'd like to offer to the community this time is from the Chinese medicine or Chinese cosmological, even Chinese astrological frame. A lot of us know about year of the snake that's almost mainstream knowledge and the element associated with that is yang fire. So there's a 12-year cycle and this is the year where it's yang fire, and so just to contextualize that, that's acknowledged in sort of the longer cycles, of course that come from the more chinese or daoist culture. So it is what is yang fire? Yang yang fire? Just kind of radiant, illuminating, and even if you associate it with a snake, right, that kind of awakening ascending energy as well. So that seems to be emphasized and highlighted this year so far, and it's it can be a painful process, right, some of the things that we're realizing, and also the fire aspect of burning away maybe old, old ideas, old structures, kind of um, it's part of a creative destruction. So that's the energy of the year that's gonna be highlighted through the next 12 months, right, starting chinese new year's, like end of january, beginning of february, right until next january, febru, february, and this particular month or two months is wood energy, right, so that kind of adds fuel to the fire, if you will like, spring is that energy of initiation and activation? And just to as a reminder, because we're talking about balance too, we just mentioned equinox is the image of a tree, and that's an ancient universal image as well, right, and a reminder of the rootedness that a tree cultivates. So trees are tremendous teachers, especially here in california the tallest trees, the biggest trees, the oldest individual trees.
Speaker 3:So connecting to the depths and connecting to, to gravity, connecting to mother earth, right, and that stability, that that confers even the darkness, as we also simultaneously reach up towards the solar energy and the light, just finding ways to balance the yin and yang, you could say culturally there's a lot of yang energy, so we have to be even more strict of infusing our days, even scheduling it in time to go into the yin where we can be quiet, or maybe make a formalize the cave time every day, even if it's just, you know, 10-15 minutes, just to for whether it's solitude or going into stillness, or in things like going into water or swimming, or or even like a hot bath.
Speaker 3:Those are kind of simple ways to add energy into your life. So just a reminder, yeah, of this time, astrologically, a lot of energy, fire, expansive, and even the spring energy adding more momentum to that, and then culturally, right, whatever cycle that is, you know 250-year cycles where empires rise and fall, so there's that kind of a lot of destructive energy, let's say dismantling. So we can't maybe control that at that skill, but just a reminder that we can infuse it into our personal, interpersonal, at least within our community circles, practices that are attuning more to the yin energy our community circles, practices that are attuning more to the yin energy.
Speaker 2:I love that, paul. I mean, I think what you're saying kind of gives us permission to claim that personal power through going inwards. And, omar, you reminded me because I kept using this word like retract, retract, retract not retreat but retract and you reminded me that that word actually means to take back, and I didn't realize that was what I was actually. It was very unconscious to do that, but it felt like the only thing I could do because there's just seems like so much out of my personal power and control right now and there's so much suffering and my normal kind of achiever mentality would be to go in, get started, start doing the work and alleviate some of the suffering. But it felt like this winter in particular, it was like, no, just honor the dormancy, honor the need to go more deeply inward and take back that space.
Speaker 1:I love that. You know the last two circles that we had. So the one on Friday, we ended with the grace card, right, and just giving ourselves grace. And my favorite definition of grace is that which is unadorned, and it's just this sort of reminder that our original state is good enough, right, and sometimes we add all these accoutrements that we think enhances things, but in reality grace is just sort of acknowledging that original state.
Speaker 1:And then yesterday at the Nature Center, in a community center, we pulled the community card as our closing card and that one is represented by the bleeding heart and I always remember when we pulled that card with the doctor and he took the bleeding heart medicine and he was a heart surgeon specifically, so he actually works on hearts and that's what the bleeding heart medicine targets. And so just there's something about grace and community medicine targets. And so just there's something about grace and community. And so I'd be curious, Paul, as we pull a gratitude blooming card, what might be an intention or question we would ask. And lately I've been inviting folks to think about a favorite plant that they have or a plant that they're familiar with. So if you want to share a question or intention and speak it to a plant that you are familiar with, and I'm going to share my screen here so we can pull a graduate blooming card together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the one that immediately came to mind. I was actually hiking in San Francisco at Land's End and they have these amazing windswept cypresses and so I was feeling into their ability to alchemize the elements. Right, it's kind of, in a way, harsh, right, windy and kind of cold, and finding a way to thrive and creatively adapt. If you've seen these cypresses, it's like these sculptures, very serpentine actually, so kind of like woody snake energy, and so it's not just like tree energy in the sense of like rimrod straight, but also being able to adapt to the needs of oneself or the community.
Speaker 3:Right, after all, it's been shown that any sort of grove or trees that grow together, their roots are in community. Any sort of grove or trees that grow together, their roots are in community and community and in the way they don't resist the elements but very gracefully just uh, attune to them and kind of alchemize them. Each tree is unique in the way that some are more kind of angular, with like almost like elbows to it, some are more spiraling you a vertical way. So it was a beautiful model, in a way archetype that exists in nature, of the energy, I think, of this year that may be required staying connected, staying rooted, connecting to resilience, but also rooting together and then dancing with the elements, rather than trying to resist.
Speaker 1:And so it might be an intention or question that you would ask these windswept cypress trees.
Speaker 3:Like how the hell are you doing that?
Speaker 1:All right, that's perfect, that's the perfect question. How the hell are you doing that? And so I'm going to scroll. You know we have seven rows, six columns, and just let me know what the sacrifice trees want to tell us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I climbed a couple of them, so it was amazing to feel into their energy of rooting and rising. So let's pause right there at that row. And then we have six cards. Let's do that one. The fifth card.
Speaker 1:The cypress trees. How the hell do you do that? Card number 35.
Speaker 2:Oh man.
Speaker 1:Represented by the lilac, and when the artist arlene kim suda illustrated this lilac it was in winter, and so it it's a very sparse tree for those are listening, and you know. So it's very woody in its orientation because there's not a lot of flowers on it. So this is kind of coming out of winter or in winter, and the prompt is we left this wild card for you to imagine your own words of wisdom and gratitude. So what do you think the cypress trees in responding to your question, how the hell do you do that? What comes up for you when you see this card?
Speaker 3:comes up for you when you see this card. I take it literally right with the idea of wild, right, and there's this idea of rewilding. You know, as homo sapiens sapiens like used to be a species that was wild, and now we live in these kind of overly domesticated, basically, zoos. Right, and very comfortable, but I think we've lost touch with our, our nature, and so some some measure of ferality, right, I mean, these trees grow like near urban area, right, but they've maintained their wildness.
Speaker 3:And sometimes I talk about that in terms of, like, alchemical cultivation, as not just, you know, we talk about head intelligence, intellect, or even emotional intelligence, intuition, but but there's a natural intelligence that I think we, a lot of us, have forgotten, that we've forgotten, and so I think it's as simple as just returning to doesn't mean, you know, you run naked in the, in the woods, but even very simple things like we've already talked about, like grounding barefoot, or, you know, touching, or going into the waves if you can, or feeling, you know tapping into the, the wildness of the breeze from where it comes, I don't know, where it flows, I don't know, but just tapping into that kind of non-linear, right and uh, connective communal states where we're kind of not just in this linear analytical. I think that's what would be a good way to summarize with the Cypress, where we kind of communicate.
Speaker 2:Well, when you were talking, Paul, I just had this very primal feeling. You know, it's like how do we access that primal instinct that animals have so much Like they will never lose that? It's like humans, we overthink and we forget very quickly that primal instinct. And I almost feel like those cypress trees are saying you pick your own adventure. We're not trying to root and rise in cool ways that you see us, we're just doing our thing. And it feels like we're in a time of more questions than answers than ever before.
Speaker 2:And, omar, I remember I picked this card in our philanthropy circle and it really to me feels like too. It's like validating the winter shedding and the dormancy and the not trying to fill our time and our energy with more things. It feels like it's like let it be barren right now. It's it's not bad to not keep doing, you know, let it emerge. And so I'm really taking this for myself as a message of trust, like if I don't feel like there's something, you know, that's inspiring me to move forward, like not to move forward right away.
Speaker 1:You know what I love about this too, with this illustration in particular, which is just the branches and the twigs coming off the branches, is that this is grace, right? This is the tree unadorned, right? The tree doesn't have the beautiful leaves and the flowers, it's just back to basics. And so maybe that's also part of this. Back to basics, like how do we just remember, right in that full sense of becoming a member again of the wild?
Speaker 1:And just, you know, I always when I think about the wild, I go back to the first time I went to the Arctic Circle, which was in Norway, and I was at this World Wilderness Congress and it was right when the environmental movement was trying to engage young people. So this was in the early 90s, and this woman was a 18 year old and she gave the keynote speech because they wanted to highlight younger people and she said the connection between youth and the wilderness is that both are uncultivated, right. And so you know, I guess maybe, paul, that's like kind of a great question for you, because you are in the business, in some ways, of cultivating, right, of cultivating these practices. But what is this card trying to remind us of the power of being uncultivated?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean the model for cultivation, right, sometimes I use the word culture and I use like probiotic culture versus antibiotic culture, meaning enhancing life, at least from Taoist frame, is nature. So sometimes I say, nurture nature culture. That's what we're cultivating. Like you said, a remembrance of our nature.
Speaker 3:A lot of our problems are due to, like you said, overthinking or over-contriving. A lot of our issues are man-made problems, if you will, and a lot of the cultivation is a return to simplicity, right from the 10 000 things to the, you know, the three, to the two, to the one and uh, going into the being state, which is how trees are. They're not, they're like stressing or worrying about, you know, the rain, or they're just completely being nature as nature, and so that's probably the hardest thing actually for us, you know, with ai and all these kind of you know, like you know, and even even like we're doing now, right, sometimes the linguistic you know or the verbosity of things kind of gets in the way. So so that's calling in maybe silence and stillness and undoing, and the problems may naturally resolve itself. Right, sometimes, you know, trying to solve problems is another doing. Maybe the solution, the remedy is actually being.
Speaker 1:So that's I mean, that's in some ways what, belinda, you know you started talking about, right with your cave life is like, hey, let me retract, let me go back in, let me sort of dwell in this space that allows me to regroup, right. And so there's this like obviously, frame, like rest, is resistance now, but I really liked your take on this, belinda, which is resistance feels like you're just trying to like hold ground right, right, whereas retraction is like there's a taking back, there's a reclaiming that's involved. And so what is that? Maybe in this, like nature versus nurture this culture versus nature framing, what is it that we're having to take back in ways that are overanalyzed minds? You know you spoke a little bit about silence, but I feel like there's something more fundamental that you're inviting us to really revisit, right, like maybe there's some basic assumptions that we thought were foundational, that we thought were foundational, and maybe there's something even before silence, like to actually appreciate silence. Maybe there's something else that we need to actually process and digest to even appreciate silence. Wow, that's very deep.
Speaker 3:I think everything arises from even the words that we're sharing here. The thoughts that we're sharing arises from a ground right, whether you call it silence or whether you call it being, we can call it whatever right. In a way it's like it's wordless right, it's beyond the names of it. But experientially, and again Belinda shared in her own way, right Taking a kind of maybe just taking time off right To go somewhere where you can just be with yourself, be with your own, just ask yourself what's present, where am I right or even who am I. So you can call it what you want silence, stillness or space, but it's just intentional right, seeking a kind of remedy, antidote, in a way to counterbalance, like any moment right, 24 hours a day, like you can tap into whatever you want to call the opposite of silence, noise and and be immediately saturated right.
Speaker 3:A lot of people talk about nervous system regulation right or or fight or flight, sympathetic, and so one of my primary ways is is to to tap into into breath. Right, you could say that a lot of people are breathing unnaturally, in the sense or in a state that is inducing and aggravating the issue. Let's say short and shallow breathing by breathing deeper, right. I use the mantra even when I teach kids in low, out slow. That usually is enough, if you can. Of course, the more you practice it, the more potent it becomes right. In the beginning it may take you, you know, 20 minutes before you activate your, your parasympathetic nervous system, inhaling as deeply as you can to your center of being usually that's more like near your navel area and then slowly and intentionally releasing with the exhale the out slow part, usually clear some of that, let's say adornments or accoutrements, which are often maybe conceptual or just part of that overthinking phase, to get underneath those superficial waves and connect more to your nature, the grounded nature of being. So, whatever you call it.
Speaker 2:I love that reminder of like going to the, the essence of life, which is ultimately our breath. Right, like that is the reminder that we are here and we are still alive and we are continuing to feed our aliveness. And, yeah, it would be great to actually practice that conscious breathing with the song of gratitude blooming for wildness. How does that sound, linda is?
Speaker 1:that I would say it's breath and ground right, it's levity and gravity right as what? The containers, the boundaries or the edges. And yeah, as I pull up this song, there's something about. You said this grove of cypress trees. Paul was that a place called land's end. Paul was at a place called Land's End. And so there's something about what is that edge right that we have and why maybe it's important to find our edges.
Speaker 1:And then, at that edge, what I hear you and this is sort of the gratitude blooming way I would say is to pause, notice and then feel right, like to take a moment to really kind of appreciate where you're at by noticing what's there, because you've paused to actually notice. And then when you do that, then you can actually sort of feel into like oh, am I distracted or am I? You know how am I sort of connecting to my breath or the ground around me? So I'm going to pick the tiger lily wild card that feels like a sister card to the lilac. I love you. So. So, just listening to this wild card, how was pausing? What did you notice? What did you feel?
Speaker 2:really appreciated the simplicity of the stroking of the guitar like it. It's not a very complex tune but almost in the simplicity of it you can kind of feel it more strongly, like I felt like it was like, you know, like a little gentle caress or like a a little gentle caress or like a holding feeling.
Speaker 3:I felt those waves too, Speaking of the cypress, the wind element, as it kind of plucked the branches Also. It was near the shore, so also the waves.
Speaker 1:so these multiple frequencies, kind of felt that in the strumming. It's been amazing. We got to collaborate with Ariel Lowe, who is the artist behind the music. They just won a Grammy first Asian American transgender woman to do so, and it was in the social justice category and so I just really appreciate the opportunity for us to just pause, to notice, to feel and to feel that strumming right, whether it's the strumming of the wind, the strumming of our fingers, just the strumming of life, like if we are the strings, like how are we being strummed as we move into spring, where there's going to be even more movement Maybe? You know, the invitation for us is to just bring some awareness of, like, what is moving us right now and what do we want to move us and what do we not want to move us. And so when do we sort of intentionally take a step back and when do we intentionally take a step forward? Are there any other things that are moving you right now?
Speaker 2:before we close, I'm just grateful for the opportunity for us to pause together every month and just return back to our natural rhythm, which is not so natural to do.
Speaker 2:So I feel like that's what I'm taking away is reclamation of the pace that I need to move in in order to sustain everything sustain my life, sustain my energy, sustain my relationships. I feel like maybe that's the message from nature is like to really be a you know honoring of that pace, like in Shasta right now. We just had a team meeting and we've had so much snow more than we've ever had and it's all started to melt, and our land steward there was just describing how it felt like this water was just being received by the land like a sponge and that maybe the land just needed that much water to nourish it. And there has been a big dormancy from all that snow and and not to question it or judge it like it's bad that there was so much snow or there's so much ice, but just to just honor that that was what this winter cycle wanted to be and it was different from other winters.
Speaker 3:That makes me feel into. I was tuning in and the word sort of reserve and resource came in, and if you think about the snow and ice, it is kind of a reservoir of potential energy that gets liquefied in the warmer seasons. So that's what I'm taking as my main reminder is cultivating, continue to cultivate and retain much of what I cultivate. Don't feel bad about keeping it as potential energy rather than always having to. You know, spend it, spend it, spend it. So I go by the 80 20 rule, so maybe retain reserve 80 of what I I cultivate, but also be careful about that 20% that I then actualize or activate as kinetic energy and be more careful about what I curate, spending that on things that are meaningful and beneficial to myself and my community.
Speaker 1:There's this song called Slow Up by Jacob Banks that I've been playing on repeat and the opening lines are what I've learned from the ocean hard to dance and rejoice in the motion. Let the sun have its moment, the moon will come. And that has just given me just such trust. The moon will come, so let the sun have its moment. And so my friendly sort of amendment to you, dr Paul Wong, is let us both cultivate and let us uncultivate, right, let us sort of reclaim some of that wild as a practice, because the wild knows that the sun will have its moment and the moon will come. Well, I appreciate getting to practice with you, to cultivate with you, to like figure out these things with you and and super excited that we're going to get to expand the different ways with the circles and now retreats. There's just lots of ways that the cards that you know are behind the gratitude blooming card deck can come alive. Appreciate you joining us on this journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, stay wild cheers, bye-bye, thank you.
