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
Look for buds: Transitions, Friendship, and Ancestral Wisdom
How might simplifying your focus create space for what truly matters to flourish in your life this spring?
A delightful spring energy infuses this conversation as co-host Omar Brownson shares his transformative experience with the Ubuntu Climate Initiative in South Carolina's Gullah Geechee lowcountry. His beautiful poem "Purple Sarongs" captures the essence of gathering on historically significant land where Dr. King dreamed his "I Have a Dream" speech—a powerful setting for visioning 150 years into our collective future.
The synchronicity of simplicity emerges as an unexpected through-line when co-host Belinda Liu reflects on her annual community spring equinox experience in Mount Shasta. She picked the simplicity card in the opening ritual when exploring the threads between money, resources and exchanging in community.
Dr. Paul Wang, our special guest for this season, illuminates Daoist cosmology's approach to seasonal change, explaining how April serves as an intentional transitional month and rite of passage towards flowering through the process of budding. This cycle is an ideal time for us to reconnect with our values and honor what's shifting within and around us. He describes spring's budding energy as concentrated potential—focused rather than dispersed—and offers a powerful three-step simplification process: 1) essentialize core values, 2) eliminate what doesn't align, and 3) embrace what remains by braiding it into unity.
When they collectively choose the Gratitude Blooming card represented by the Nasturtium flower with its theme of friendship, the conversation deepens around how self-friendship forms the foundation for authentic community connection. Omar visualizes this as a vessel—a "friendship" carrying us forward together through periods of growth and change. They reflect on how trust accelerates transformation, noting that "change moves at the speed of trust," and how the clearer we can envision possibilities beyond current challenges, the more effectively we can practice that world today.
Join us for our first Gratitude Blooming retreats in Mt. Shasta and on the Big Island. Use this promo code to get 20% off your retreat ticket >> BIGTHANKS
Whether you're seeking to navigate personal transitions, deepen your connection with natural cycles, or find community in uncertain times, our podcast and in-personal gatherings offer practical wisdom for concentrating your energy where it matters most.
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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
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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:Hey Omar.
Speaker 1:I can't believe spring is already here. It is in the air, and even though you and I didn't get to celebrate the spring equinox together, I feel like we were both on the land and really kind of just tuning into this new season.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny to go from the dormancy of our caves in the winter and now we're kind of fully into the budding energy of spring and I can't wait to hear from you what emerged on your retreat.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad that we have a podcast so that we can swap land story. And you know I was in South Carolina with the Ubuntu Climate Initiative and about 30 movement leaders, wisdom guides, creators, musicians, artists. We were gathering in Gullah Geechee Lowcountry Gullah Geechee are the African-Americans have been there since almost right after slavery, and so a lot of the culture has been kept intact, and we really just had an opportunity to reset and re-envision the next 150 years. That was really the intention of like how do we reimagine the public comment 150 years from now? And like what do we need to do today in order to make that happen? And then, on the flight back, this poem just emerged for me, which I would love to share.
Speaker 2:Yes, please do, let's hear it.
Speaker 1:All right. So the name of the poem is called Purple Sorongs and it goes like this the elder found her purpose around a fire, feeling the spirits of change, in a circle of movement leaders, wisdom guides and culture keepers who, on the spring equinox, accepted her call. Ubuntu, she said. I am because we are one all on hallowed ground of Gullah Geechee low country, where Dr King dreamed an impossible dream, where Harriet Tubman built a different kind of road, where we now gathered, speaking into existence a seven generation on the long horizon, where the commons was not tragic but sacred space and magic. We knew this place was true because we shared sexy poems, with purple sarongs hanging on lampshades and kisses flew on the wings of freedom. We knew this was more than a fantasy because we filled our bellies with fried fish, collard, green stewed, lima beans and, of course, peach cobbler, the kind that warms your soul. We knew this horizon was possible because we sprinted through designs, feeling into the enoughness that breaks the chains of fear, of scarcity, of doubting whether or not you belong with your chosen kin in your own skin. All is not ease, making a social disease obsolete.
Speaker 1:My cup overflowed, overwhelmed, escaping to the sound of a hum. The sea, island waters reminded me to ebb and flow. To ebb and flow under the trees, dripping spanish moss. A healer spoke prayers with a flower awash over my body. Throat released the unsaid and a breath low and slow. Low and slow guided me home. Home is love, home is you, home is Ubuntu. Wholeness to wholeness. We dared to practice, through full laughs and tired tears. Emergence revealed inexhaustible abundance. The oracle of simplicity called us beyond sunsetting willpower and ego depletion to a power of regeneration of each one. Teach one, one step at a time, gathering steam from a kind of heartfelt presence that supersedes bounded overthinking until the inevitable beloved is believed. This was not a passing of the baton. This was the rising tide of ancestral, guided permission, of mutuality. On a Wow podcast on replay, so I could hear this a few more times with your voice, omar, I mean you brought me back to a couple things.
Speaker 2:One is, you know, most of my American cultural experience was in. North Carolina. So just even the nourishment that you described it reminds me a lot of my younger years in North Carolina and the food that I learned to eat and love, and I also felt like there's a lot of hope in the possibility of what can come. And right now in particular, it feels like every day there's some heaviness that's in the air and it feels almost impossible to escape. And in your poem, in your experience, it sounds like there was light.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was pretty amazing to be on land, literally I was sleeping steps away from where Dr King wrote his I have a Dream speech and this is one of the stops on the Underground Railroad that Harriet Tubman built. And so it's just. You feel that ancestral power where people dream that impossible dream and progress has been made, even though you know they were arguably in circumstances way worse than we are in today.
Speaker 2:I'm curious for you what did you see when you visioned out 150 years from now?
Speaker 1:You know I'm so focused on a farm in the next few years and I think that you know part of it was. I just finished reading Parable of the Sowers by Octavia Butler, which is so fortuitous because it takes place in this year of 2026. And she talks about fires and she talks about things falling apart, and so you know it's this journey outward and you know, I just got some books around like how to identify edible wild plants, how to sort of live and survive in the woods, and I think there is some of that just really knowing how to resource ourselves more directly right now. You know, I think that's what's so interesting is that people have this conversation around tariffs, which is really a conversation around supply chain, which is really around a conversation about, like, where do things come from? And so I think, hopefully, in that time period, we really know where things come from, right, and there's like a deeper connection to that.
Speaker 2:I love that how you frame things, Because I feel like what's beautiful is we see the world differently in similar essences, but the words and what we use to frame that reality is very different, and so I like that our listeners get to hear different ways of seeing and perceiving.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting because I got to sink back into the land in Mount Shasta for the spring equinox and community with Dr Paul, our guest here on the podcast, and it was just such a beautiful reminder of.
Speaker 2:You know, this is what our ancestors did for so long was return back to the land together and honor these shifts in nature and really kind of look forward. And I think our ancestors were probably more dependent on their you, on their survival with the land. And more recently I've been kind of sitting with the community around just what do we need money for? This is a tool to give us the physical things that we need to live well, and so what if we stopped fixating on the numbers game with money as the currency and more like what do we need the money to give us? How can that shift, even subtly, how we exchange as a community or even how we cultivate things for the future. So I love that you're on the farm track because I'm very much now a mother of 3,000 coffee plants and trying to learn how that works on the big island of Hawaii.
Speaker 2:Because you know, what do I need money for? It's that organic coffee. So let me just go straight to the coffee.
Speaker 1:Now definitely. I can't wait for Hestia coffee to be in the world.
Speaker 2:Well, before we go into our gratu blooming practice of setting an intention and picking a card, I'd love to hear from you, Dr Paul, just a little bit around this idea of budding into the springtime.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, nature has this great diversity right, but it doesn't get complicated because in a way, quote unquote remembers the simplicity which is a presence of essence, it's an intelligence, let's say, that we can connect to, and it's great that we have the opportunity to do that together, like Belinda or Omar, in our own ways on the land, as a connection, a communion with the great teacher that nature is, and in the sort of natural seasonal calendar that the Chinese culture has observed for millennia. We're here around April, which is a transition month, so each of the seasons are three months. So each of the seasons are three months and you could say the first two are the polarity of the element of the season. So, for instance, spring is yin and yang, wood as the main symbol, which is sort of more linear, one-dimensional, sprouting, germinating, and then summer is moving into another dimension where the flowers kind of spread their petals more in a planar rather than linear dimension, expansion, and so that happens in the seasonal sort of the archetypal seasons of may and june.
Speaker 3:So that's coming up. So we're here in this transition and it's great that this system builds in timing for transition and then kind of checking in what are the main principles and values that you want to reflect on from the last season and then also invoke for the next season. And I think simplicity is a great one, because there's so many sort of chaotic, complicated things happening in the world. So the image of spring is that sprout and then the rite of passage into flowerhood, if you will, is that stage of a bud, and the plant doesn't maybe know what it's going to look like yet, but it's concentrating, it's kind of focusing its energy in these nodes, and so this is a good time for that.
Speaker 1:And I forgot that Dr Paul also pulled, or at least spoke about simplicity in our Nagong class, which was also on Monday. So all three of us invoked, or were invoked, simplicity, invoked in us the same theme, which is pretty amazing to have all three of us align around this idea of simplicity. And so, you know, I kind of wonder, when we go to the grad two booming card deck, now, what do we want to name in a way? And I think you know I've been thinking a lot lately about this trickster voice that is emerging in me. Or maybe, you know, am I invoking the tricksters, the trickster invoking me? I'm not quite sure, but I've thought about it some more and I think part of it is.
Speaker 1:I have a great t-shirt that someone bought me and I was like, let me overthink this. And so there's a part of me, you know, growing up, you know, particularly with, I had a fairly strict Asian American uncle, who's mathematician, so very logical, and he would always tell me Omar, think before you talk, think before you talk. And so it like had this very like admonishment tone on me and so it sort of pulled me inward. And then I have this other side of me is like F it, let's just do it Right. And so the trickster is like can I balance? You know this tendency to maybe overanalyze versus just like jump all in, and so, naming this transition, I'm wondering if something is emerging for you too, for us to focus on.
Speaker 2:Well, I love this idea of rite of passage to focus on. I love this idea of rite of passage. It's something in our culture, in Western culture, that we don't really practice anymore, and to me it's like this idea of honoring a bigger change that's happening, and it feels like the seasonal cycle. I love that. In Chinese cosmology, there is always a month that is about honoring the transition between seasons, and so it's like when I feel into this idea of budding, which I'm starting to see on the land in Mount Shasta, like early signs of things coming out of the ground, breaking through the soil and connecting it with simplicity, for me it's like, well, what is it? How do I need to concentrate my energy? Which also means like what am I not going to let pull me into distraction or, you know, leaking energy and resources? Because I feel like that's part of the thing that I'm balancing.
Speaker 2:Personally is I get, I fall in love with ideas, and when I get an idea, I sometimes think like I should do it right now and I lose the maturity of discernment around timing. But when I imagine myself as a bud, it's like, well, I can't be budding like 50 million branches, it's got to be really focused. So yeah, that's what comes up. How would you summarize that intention, omar?
Speaker 1:That's what comes up. How would you summarize that intention, omar? Well, I think we'll just say because this season is really about wayfinding. And so what are the buds trying to tell us as a lesson for transitions? Seven rows, six columns. You want to give me a number or tell me?
Speaker 2:I think dr paul should pick for us okay, let's stop at that row.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure, okay, and then let's do the fifth card left to right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that one okay, let's see what nature has to say. Card number 32 the nasturtium. And so when arlene the artist illustrated this nasturtium, the word friendship came to her and the prompt is think of a friendship you cherish. What makes that friendship so special to you? And and we're looking at, you know, if you ever noticed, in nasturtium they're kind of like spread out, they like to kind of like follow the land and that their leaves are as prominent, if not more prominent, than the flowers, and so there's probably like eight or so big kind of lily pad, almost type leaves and only like three little flowers which are a little peppery too. So as you look at this flower, the nasturtium, and this theme of friendship, anything come up for you as you think about these periods of transition and what to pay attention to. Attention to.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting because I feel like we picked this card pretty recently.
Speaker 2:I'm like really remembering the graphics for this, so it's very recent and it's interesting that it's repeating itself.
Speaker 2:So I always find that that is a clue as well, like, hey, let's not move on to the next theme too soon, like let's really sit with a theme for longer, which I feel like is about that kind of honoring of transition.
Speaker 2:And what it makes me immediately think of is someone who came on our retreat this past week who kept pulling this card in our circle for springtime, intention setting in the heart, the grove of the heart chakra on our land. She picked this card and so I think of her and her journey and she ultimately realized that this card was about self-love and self-friendship first, right, and then, you know, extending that to other people. And so it makes me think of also that delicate balance of like, when we're in a growth spurt or budding into flowering, it really does take a really deep friendship with our bodies, with ourselves, with all the parts of us, us. Like how do we like love and nurture that in order to blossom? And then also, then, if we're kind of well resourced and taking care of ourselves how much more we can be in good relationship with others. So it's kind of an interesting reciprocity card for me in this moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm appreciating this idea that change moves at the speed of trust and gathering on the land with these almost 30 people. There was one person actually, adiel, who we've been collaborating with for Gratitude Blooming, who I've known online for I don't know three years this was the first time meeting her in person and then a few other folks who I've only really experienced online. I'm now actually getting to meet in person and so I'm appreciating how much trust can get built and then, when that trust gets built, how much ease there is in moving things forward. And I'm just thinking about the three of us, right that we've now been collaborating together for long enough. Now that we all pull the same card on the same day in three different places, I don't you know. I feel like there's something there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that we're bringing these old lineages from our culture into the world. That feels also very important. Dr Paul, what's coming up for you as you sit with all of these nutrients?
Speaker 3:I go back to the simplify, simplification and friendship, I think is a reminder of that Life can just be so simple if you just focus on these values of trust and relating and we make it so complicated. And the way I plug in friendship as a value, my simplification process is kind of three steps. Friendship as a value my simplification process is kind of three steps one is to essentialize and then to eliminate and then to to embrace or integrate. So some people maybe just start by cutting out things, the eliminate process. But I have a pre step one which is essentialized, like what are my essential values that I want to presence right, otherwise you might accidentally throw out the baby with the bathwater, right? So what is the baby? What is the baby? Right? Identify that first.
Speaker 3:Essentialize according to first principles, and I think friendship is a great one to plug into this. Three steps and then it helps you eliminate okay, situations or time or relationships that don't build friendships. Let me just eliminate, let me cut them out, right, and then embrace is basically integrate. Let's say what remains is three variables. Can I, the third step of simplification, make it simpler? Can I, can I braid them together into more, more unity, so that? So I going to use friendship as my main meme. To simplify the next let's say next season, especially as in my personal life, I'm trying to build a center where it'll be a sacred space where we can cultivate alchemy and art and music and community together, so yeah, and generate hopefully a lot more friendships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you said it, like immediately, I just had this visualization of a ship, right, like what is that space we're like? We want to be together, you know, and I feel like, at least for me, I'm finding myself in spaces where my networks are networking and so the ship is getting bigger, right, or maybe we're now moving to a fleet or something like that, because, you know, we had the Ubuntu Climate Initiative, we had the collective acceleration with, you know, norma Wong. We had the Resonance Network. We had met someone who was at Commonweal, where I serve on the board of Commonweal and he runs one of the programs there and I'd never met him and all of a sudden we found that we had that connection together, and so there is this sort of beautiful web that I feel like no one's forcing these relationships right. People want to find each other.
Speaker 1:I've been I think I even might've said this on the last podcast where, like, I'm obsessed with this song and Mac Miller and it was like what I'm looking for is looking for me, and I feel like maybe the clearer we are at what are we looking for, then it's easier for that to look for us. And so, with this wayfinding season, when we can be clear like, okay, I'm looking for a transition, then it's easier to make this transition. And I think you know what you said, dr Paul, about essentialize, you know, and then eliminate, and then we can embrace. You know, that's just a powerful way to really kind of be clear on what are we paying attention to.
Speaker 2:So with that I'm curious. You know, I kind of also feel like there's a pick, our own adventure aspect to gratitude blooming. So in the past we've, you know, listened to the song of the theme. I believe we have played the friendship song. So we could continue to deepen into that practice. Or we could have Dr Paul offer us a seasonal practice to help us kind of create our own rite of passage going into our budding cycle. So I'm curious if any of you have a calling that you're drawn to.
Speaker 1:I feel like maybe we pick a song but Dr Paul give us something that we can focus on as we listen to that song.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's use the bud. I love the space. You said the ship, and maybe in that bud you can imagine it instead of a spaceship there's a friendship, and especially an inner friendship, like what do you want to include, what's the field of energy that you want to include or the value that you want to to generate?
Speaker 3:so, as we listen to the song, kind of close the pedals, uh and, and sort of ravel rather than unravel for all rather than unfurl, go in for a moment and maybe, for you know, say a few breaths, three breaths, five breaths, ten breaths, and really just contact that, maybe in your heart space, what is that essential principle value that you want to? Then, maybe at the end of the song, then open your eyes and see with in this transition?
Speaker 1:Thank you, and again, just the appreciation for Ariel Lowe for creating this song for us.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate this invitation to imagine the bud kind of closing and being anchored into my heart. And it wasn't until the very end of the song that I got a word which is unity and community, got a word which is unity and community, and it does feel like this is my season of coming out of hermitage and really tending to the relationships that are really important. And then also, just how do we start creating that new way of living and exchanging and co-creating together?
Speaker 3:Thank you. I felt into the budding relationships that are going to unfurl and the image I had is sometimes what keeps us tight in those buds is fear of being seen, fear of our potential being actualized or making mistakes or looking stupid. But when one of us sort of ripens and allows that kind of overflowing of heart energy and dares to expand, it encourages, I think, others to do so as well. So I look forward to that kind of synergy unfolding.
Speaker 1:You know when you talk about budding. I've got two budding teenage daughters at home, one of whom my youngest, kenzie, is 14 years old. Norma Wong, who's been a guest at Zen Master, has a new book release when no Thing Works. She did a book reading here in Los Angeles. I brought my 14-year-old daughter with me and Norma talked about this long horizon, this 150-year arc, and the clearer we can see what is possible beyond what's collapsing around us, the easier it is for us to practice that world. Today, and Kenzie afterwards, she's like Dad. I want to read this book. What she said makes so much sense to me. We need some distance to sometimes see things more clearly, and so I just appreciate that budding wisdom in our next generation.
Speaker 2:And I look forward to all of these different touch points that people can have with us moving forward. I love that we are practicing this way of connecting on land. Omar and I will be offering a May Memorial Weekend retreat in Mount Shasta for three nights to really practice what it means to be in self and community friendship, and we'll be gathering on the Big Island in October to do a similar gathering, but with a different season of fall harvest. And we also have our online experience that's starting at the end of this month and March 30th, really going into the seasonal alchemy of spirit and emotion and physical and mental well-being. So we look forward to gathering there online. And, omar, where can people find you on Substack these days?
Speaker 1:Trickstersguidesubstackcom, and I really appreciate all the different ways that we're getting to express ourselves, because I think that's really sort of the beauty is that when we can bring the wisdom of the mind with the beauty of the heart, then that sort of full potential that's within us that you said, paul can really blossom. And I feel like it's appropriate. I'm wearing my Norma Wong t-shirt, which is be a good ancestor, and I feel like that's kind of all that we can try to do is be a good ancestor.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. And one more plug for those people that are in the Bay Area go visit Paul at his new center for art and healing. Where can we find you there, paul?
Speaker 3:Go to daocentercom. I'll have the information there. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:And Belinda, you got any new offerings for us with Hestia?
Speaker 2:Well, we're always available for people to come for a week on sabbatical in any of our lands in Mount Shasta and Big Island, and if you're looking for a place to host your family reunion or group retreat, come on over to Hestiamagiccom H-E-S-T-I-A-M-A-G-I-Ccom. So we'll put all of those notes in our episode show notes and, wishing everyone well in their springtime budding, cheers, cheers, thank you.
