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
To Bloom Is to Remember: On Simplicity, Awe, and the Heart
What if awe begins with remembering?
In this episode, co-hosts Belinda Liu and Omar Brownson are joined by Dr. Paul Wang to explore the seasonal shift from budding to blooming—and how the heart holds the wisdom to navigate both. Rooted in Daoist philosophy, plant medicine, and the Gratitude Blooming card of Simplicity, this conversation offers a gentle invitation to slow down, feel more, and choose what truly matters.
Don't miss the guided somatic practice at the end of this episode to support your emotional resilience and heart-centered mindfulness this spring.
🌼 Support our podcast by subscribing to our new home on substack. We offer bonus seasonal practices, new art, and reflections at:
gratitudeblooming.substack.com
Join us on Big Island, Hawaii for our special Summer Solstice sabbatical week with Dr. Paul from June 16-22: https://www.hestiamagic.com/summer-solstice
Use this special promo code for 10% off your ticket: gratitudeblooming
Create an intentional practice with your own Gratitude Blooming card deck, notecards, candle and much much more at our shop at www.gratitudeblooming.com.
Learn more about our co-hosts and special guest for Season 4:
Co-host Belinda Liu | Hestia Retreat Centers
Co-host Omar Brownson | Trickster's Guide to Immortality on Substack
Special Guest 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, welcome folks to the Gratitude Blooming podcast. We are exploring the art of wayfinding through this season and the most recent episode was around budding with spring and I can't tell you how much I've paid attention to the little buds on trees and plants like I have never before.
Speaker 2:And I'm excited to continue the journey of the grad two blooming card practice to draw one card inspired by the original plant drawings from our co-host of the podcast, arlene Kim Suda, and just seeing what wants to emerge from just taking a pause with nature, what is happening in this moment, in this season, in this cycle in this cycle.
Speaker 1:It's been beautiful to have the cards guide us and now really paying attention to how nature is guiding us, and to be joined by our special guest, dr Paul Wong, so that way we really are drawing from sort of ancient traditions as well. And so now we have cards, we have nature, we have lineage, all these tools no-transcript.
Speaker 2:And it's so cool now, omar, we've been doing this podcast for a couple of years, and so we've had many seasons throughout the years, and this spring is different from the spring last year, and I remember going back to our origin days when I invited you to come for the first time to our land in Mount Shasta, california, to explore a new possibility of bringing our passion for gratitude into a collaborative effort. I mean, that was a couple years ago, 2021. Can you believe it?
Speaker 1:Well, I think we're at over 120 podcast episodes at this point, so I can absolutely believe that we have been through some seasons together.
Speaker 1:But I think what's exciting is that things keep growing right, like new ideas kind of keep coming and then new soil sort of appears for us to plant those seeds and then new partners to help us sort of water and nurture this ecosystem. And I think that, for me, is what subsac has been, this place to kind of really expand our ecosystem. I know that I've been having a blast with my tricksters guide to immortality. I've got new comic characters with monkey, king and the heart, and then I've just created a whole meme series without soot called the forgotten footnotes of the dao, and so I can't wait to welcome gratitude blooming onto substack so that we can grow this ecosystem even more. And that's going to include dr paul's daology work, and so I I think in the Tao and Paul you can correct me this is that in the beginning there was one, and one created two, two created three and three created 10,000 things, and so I think that's really at the level of growth that we're starting to play out.
Speaker 3:I love that you quoted the Tao. So you know the one is kind of inert. The two creates a possibility of relationship, which is actually the three right. The two is kind of maybe they're just sitting there the yin and the yang, but like in that diagram we've all seen before, like the circle with the s-curve. The s-curve is that dynamic relationship between the two. So it's cool that us as a trinity are able to kind of co-fertilize and co-create.
Speaker 2:So look forward to that continued process and I have definitely been, uh, enjoying springtime in mount shasta, california, after a pretty long, wet, cold winter, and it's been really beautiful to see our forsythia, which is kind of the begin of springtime, bloom for like two weeks and then now all the yellow flowers have gone and now it's our lilac bush. This year we have two that are blooming so beautifully in the purple flowers and it reminds me of Arlene's lilac branch illustration that represents like winter and the shedding. And now we've got this really beautiful lilac bush that is fully in that blooming, fragrant, expanding kind of cycle, kind of cycle. So I'm curious to hear from you, omar, what is this feeling for you to go from the budding that we talked about last time to now this opening up, and we're not even at the maximum height of that season of summer opening and blooming. But I'm just curious, what has that opening energy been like for you?
Speaker 1:I so appreciate that question, belinda, because just this morning I harvested my first two mushrooms from my garden. You know, I have this dream of becoming a farmer, you know, and in some ways this is a very long dream, like I used to when I was, you know, right out of college. I remember I was like I either want to be a monk on a mountain or a farmer in the valley, and somehow I got stuck being a real estate developer in the city.
Speaker 1:So, now, you know, as I'm reaching my peak Gen X, you know, life span here I'm kind of getting to do all of them all at once Right, like I am really kind of creating the space for kind of a little bit more contemplation. I am creating this like edible food forest in my garden and, you know, probably two or three months ago I had a hay bale delivered to my house and you know I have a couple of areas that are more shaded, so they're not like great for growing plants, and so I was like oh this would be perfect for mushrooms.
Speaker 1:And so I laid out the hay, watered it. I got these I think they're called wine mushrooms, something like that and so I put the spores into the hay. More water, more hay, inoculated it I don't even know what that word inoculated means. And now, like yesterday, my daughter, simone was like Dad, you have two mushrooms growing. And so this morning I harvested one of them and, like, sauteed it with a little garlic and butter and made my daughter's omelets with fresh mushrooms and basil from the garden. And so, you know, I just and that's, you know, the mushrooms. What you see is the fruiting part, right, you're not seeing the mycelial network sort of below ground. And I feel like that's a little bit of what this wayfinding practice is is like, oh okay, the mushroom is just like little fruit. It's actually not the tree, right, it's not this mycelial network below. And so how do we start paying attention to these things? And this season, you know, we're getting to do it with an expert, with Paul.
Speaker 2:So, Paul, before we go into our Gratitude Blooming card practice, I'd love to hear from you a little bit of just what is going on in the Chinese wheel of time this season as we transition from spring to summer. What does that mean in your lineage?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think last time we talked about the budding process, right, which is sort of the transition from spring to summer.
Speaker 3:Spring is about the germination and sprouting and so now the bud is growing bigger and actually starting to reach that transition where the potential energy in the bud starts to open and to flourish.
Speaker 3:And also, a lot of people I want to bring in also have heard of the year of the snake.
Speaker 3:There's not just an animal related to the year but also the month, so there's actually 12 months, also the 12 animals, so we're actually in the month of the snake, so a lot of kind of double snake, year of the snake, month of the snake, so that energy is very strong, so, just like the snake perhaps relates to this kind of twists and turns, which this year has certainly brought a lot of twists and turns and also a lot of sudden stops and starts, right, kind of this unpredictability, right like a snake that suddenly stops and then certainly maybe lunges.
Speaker 3:So, and also that relates to another symbol, right, mythological or shamanic or chemical, which is fire, which also has a kind of nature of like dancing and expanding and contracting and moving in different directions. So in this month I would say what I'd like to tie to to make it more embodied right. All these are kind of symbols that we can think of expanded as cosmological or a little bit more contracted as natural in nature or even social applications and also like for our own physical, individual health and cultivating our own personal energy.
Speaker 3:So that relates to the center, the fire center in our bodies, which is the heart center.
Speaker 2:And how do we take care of ourselves as we are going from the budding to the blooming? I mean, how is that on a very physical, primal level, paul Like, do you have as a Chinese medicine doctor? You know, how do we take care of the heart in this season?
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. So a lot of my patients actually are coming in with like to their heart, physically but also psychoemotionally. So, especially in Chinese medicine we say that the yin and yang valences of the quality we call emotions related to the heart you can say the yang fire emotion and the yin fire emotion are this interplay between anxiety and one of my favorite awe. And so that kind of feeling of budding and expansion and flourishing can, if you frame it a certain way or or maybe it's in its raw form, can feel like anxiety, like oh, there's too much energy kind of radiating outwards. But with certain practices or with certain alchemical reframing or playing with this energy, you can transform it into rather whoa, whoa, whoa off instead of overwhelm, and even very sort of tangibly blood pressure right and heart rate, which then affects all the organs and tissues because that's the circulation system.
Speaker 1:So my understanding is that in Chinese the word xian means heart or heart, mind, and I always thought it was sort of interesting, that sort of maybe Western culture said oh, let me focus on the mindfulness part and maybe less so on the heartfulness part, and so is there something in the concept of Xian that is appropriate for this season as well?
Speaker 3:That's beautiful and that's true, and that's true. Yaxin is translated as head center, or mental mentation, cogitation, as well as our sentiments, our affectations, and so what's great for this, to use that as a meme is that a reminder to bridge the two? It's not either or. So the way I put it, it's not just to be in your head as this kind of philosopher, sage, but disconnected from what I call the healing or the artistic or the poetic aspect in our hearts. For some people that's a huge ravine or gulf between the head and heart. It feels like light years distance, even though for most people it's just maybe a foot or so or 30, 40 centimeters.
Speaker 3:For our, for our non-usa metric system, people, um and so xing, and actually a lot of chinese characters have the xing as a root. So, for instance, emotion is qing, right. So on the left side of the character for qing is xing, which is this heart, mind, uh sort of synergy, and on the right side is Qing, which is the color green, which is my favorite color, partly because it's the midway of the rainbow right. So it's kind of the balance from red, orange, violet, these kind of warmer colors, on the left side, let's say, and on the right side is blue, indigo, violet, right going into the ultraviolet Green. Qing is actually right at the center. So this character, qing, which incorporates, like you said, qing, heart mind, is actually playing with that frequency of balance. Can I actually manage, can I actually acknowledge, can I actually offer capacity and space or cultivate it for all my emotions, but be able to find where that kind of seesaw point is?
Speaker 1:You know I love about that is I think I saw a meme that humans can distinguish more shades of green than any other color, and it's because we're supposed to be in nature and so really being able to distinguish whether something is ripe or not ripe, or you know, you know what is sort of safe versus what is poisonous, and so, yeah, I love this connection between the heart, this color green, and like how do we actually connect to nature? I'm deeply curious what gratitude blooming card is going to be revealed given this setup, and I love that our green back of the card is literally the peak springtime green.
Speaker 2:It can feel a little too much for some people, but I remember when Arlene and I were looking at what color to choose, we really wanted it to be something that was very alive. And so, as Omar, you're showing us the digital card deck for us to do our practice, I'm feeling inspired to work with what Paul had framed. In this season there's a little bit of that stop and go, traffic, energy or this sense of anxiety and overwhelm, but also this potentiality for all. So I feel like maybe the inquiry is something like how do we, what does nature want to tell us in terms of like when we're in that moment of overwhelm? How do we shift it into and any numbers.
Speaker 1:We got 39 cards in in our digital deck six columns, seven rows any number speaking to you or row speaking to you.
Speaker 2:This is my vanna white moment I say, stop here in this row and, dr paul, we'll have you pick what is going to allow us to be more in awe so let's do column number four from the left all right right here.
Speaker 1:Yes, here we go how to navigate anxiety and awe. And we're speaking that to one of our favorite plants. For me, it's the lavender card, number 18, represented by the daisy. So when the artist arlene kim suda illustrated these two daisies that you're kind of have an aerial view looking down on, they looked back at her and said the word simplicity. And the prompt is if you were to simplify your life, what would you choose to keep? Well, I feel like with your question, belinda, if you're presented with anxiety or awe, what would you?
Speaker 2:choose to keep. Well, in some ways, what I love about this question and the way that it's framed is it is just focusing on what's core, what matters most, and clearing the rest out of your field, your focus. In some ways, that's kind of an easier way to look at simplicity, right Like what matters the most, and it's interesting, this idea of working with potentiality, of summer, right Like what happens when you've got 10 things slightly budding, like how do you pick which ones have the most potential? There is a little bit of prioritization. I think that's required. I feel that sometimes I'm in a cycle of my life where I'm not going to go after all 10 buds. I'm going to maybe pick three or two. I feel like there's this wisdom of discernment here.
Speaker 1:How about you, paul? Anything? Come up for you, as these two daisies stare deeply into our eyes or maybe I'm projecting.
Speaker 3:This theme right simplicity has come up a lot for us in the last season, so it's amazing that it's come up again as a reminder to. I think last time I talked about essentialize and kind of like Belinda said, like choosing which of the 10 buds are most important to you based on your core principles, and say three of them Right and let the other seven maybe prune them, and so you can invest in sort of less is more qualitatively.
Speaker 3:And then also just as a kind of a share in terms of working with my clients that, like I said, anxiety has come up a lot and one way that I've sort of alchemized that with them is that say you have anxiety because you know to catch a flight or even something more serious perhaps, like one of my clients, his mother is diagnosed with cancer and has a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 3:One of my clients, his mother is diagnosed with cancer and has a lot of anxiety about the uncertainty and that can be overwhelming if it's just framed as that.
Speaker 3:So to fully acknowledge that cultivate capacity, that the anxiety has arisen. But can you also kind of circumambulate that say flame of anxiety, shame of anxiety, and instead of just seeing it in one angle, see it from another side and say that what is it that actually is at the core of this anxiety? Is actually that you love your mom so much, there's so much concern and care for her. And that can then maybe expand you to say like wow, I'm so lucky to have a mother like this that I care about so much, because not everyone does have a mother like this that I care about so much because not everyone does. So it's like okay, maybe not good riddance. But, like, the relationship isn't this beautiful, and so there's a beauty to the anxiety if you can see that at the core is a steep love and care and concern, in this case for the uncertainty right of someone that you don't want to lose.
Speaker 1:I feel like you gave us a very Taoist answer, paul, when you said between anxiety and awe, I choose love. That's what I'm choosing to focus on and I love that you reminded us that we did pull this card Simplicity a couple months ago, but we were all in three different spaces and times times and yet all kind of pulled this card. And I just had this experience a couple weeks ago on a medicine walk and we had the gratitude blooming card decks with us and as I was shuffling, one fell out and it was the destiny card and I was like, oh, wow, okay, this is is beautiful. And then my friend shuffled the card and he got destiny. And then the third person that was hiking with us, she shuffled the card and also got destiny. And I had never experienced that. And I and I feel like one of the lessons that I've been taking from your focus on wayfinding with us this season is that the reminders come over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:you know, and and yet we, we continue to forget over and over and over again, and so you know maybe, paul, it'd be great to hear a little bit about how does simplicity help us remember.
Speaker 3:Wow, the essence of the plant is invested from root to stem, and then the leaves are sort of these solar panels that again eventually concentrate like an elixir to use a comical term at the bud. And here we are, and we can think of it as not every bud blooms, and also we can think of it as this we can imagine it is it an annual or is it what I prefer, like a perennial blooming, right? And so the reminders are that there's these cycles, right, and there's actually something called perennial philosophy and, to use another metaphor that was actually not a metaphor, you mentioned the mushrooms, right? So the idea of perennial philosophy is that there is a forgetting and there is a reimagining and a remembering throughout different cultures and time.
Speaker 3:Sometimes I say that you know, sort of as a mystic, and everything that can be said and needs to be said at essence has already been said.
Speaker 3:You know, since time immemorial, since time immemorial, and the mystics, even though they tune into the ineffable, can't stop effing Because we have this kind of forgetting and going back into the mystery and then also the awe of remembering, like, wow, I totally forgot that story, but the way that you told it, as a trickster or as an artist, is in a very unique and new way. And so, as we're on this threshold of spring, because summer solstice, right is midsummer the max. So here we're at early summer, right, say in May, and late summer will be July. So we're on that threshold of budding and again this word blooming, right, gratitude blooming Every time we have a choice to remember and then connect to those people, places and things like pilgrimage or like, say, a sangha, right, assuming that you don't know what you don't know or you don't know what you forgot, right. So, in my kind of connection to my teachers, like sometimes it would be eight years in right, and then they say something I'm like, oh my God, I totally forgot that.
Speaker 3:But there's a moment of like relief and joy and all like wow. I don't beat myself up for forgetting, but I actually have a joy and enjoying the remembrance.
Speaker 2:I love that reminder, Paul. I mean that's part of the reason why you and I, with the Hestia Magic Retreat Center, we're always going back to the land for these critical turning points where it's the peak energy of each season, and I'm getting excited now for our summer solstice on the Big Island coming up in middle of June. To keep remembering together because I feel like this is also something that's very alive for me right now is just this idea of a global village. You know, how can we feel deeply connected to each other and share similar values and not live in close proximity to each other?
Speaker 2:You know, we are living in times where there is a lot of reinvention of the old ancient ways, and just the fact that the three of us can be in three different lands and be connecting to Earth at the same time and getting the same message from the daisies is kind of a miracle for our times.
Speaker 2:So I'm just feeling a lot of gratitude and also noticing a lot of daisies on the land and how they Omar. I remember there was this one episode where we were talking about the dandelions and I realized, hearing you talk about how dandelions open and close to the sun, the daisies are kind of their cousin and they do the same thing, do the same thing. And it's just such an interesting practice of how do we open ourselves up to possibility and to the light and even as simple and literal as going out into the sun in the morning. I was able to do that this morning with one of our sabbatical guests and we literally just stood there facing the sun in the morning for like five minutes and it was like that was an awe moment.
Speaker 1:What I appreciate is this balance of remembering and forgetting. You know, and as you were telling your reflection, paul, you know it reminded me that the science is that you create the three R's, the reminders, the routines, the rewards, right, and you know it's like what are reminders and that's what the Gratitude Booming Card decks are. They're these physical reminders and this routine of like allowing us to sort of reflect. But then how do we celebrate that as well, and one of the cool things that we have to celebrate is incredible music. We have the Grammy-winning artist Ariel Lowe produced several songs, including Simplicity, which you can find on Spotify or wherever you listen to music. But we will also share in our sub stack in our sub stack.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we're excited to have you all go to our sub stack at grad2bloomingsubstackcom to find out more of the stories of the plants. We're going to be literally excavating all the stories of the plant itself, the artwork and previous podcast episodes, and also just the story of the now and what's unfolding in this moment through Season 4 of the podcast, and that's also a great way for you all to support us. We do have a paid subscription on Substack where we will have bonus practices. Dr Paul will be sharing a special practice for the season.
Speaker 1:Arlene's got new art coming. She's been working on these amazing watercolors, so there's just a lot of richness in this soil.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we hope to have you all continue that conversation on Substack. Follow Omar's journey as the trickster. Where can we find you on Substack, there, omar.
Speaker 1:Trickster's Guide to Immortality. So trickstersguidesubstackcom, and we'll put all of this in the show notes, and we are also welcoming Hestia to Substack as well. So the retreat centers there's lots of blooming happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're going to have discounts for all of our friends here for our on-land time as well for summer solstice. So we'll put that in the show notes for those of you that want to practice on the land.
Speaker 1:Well, if something resonated with you today, we'd love to hear it. Leave us a message, a review, or simply share this episode with a friend.
Speaker 2:We look forward to seeing you for our next episode. Until next time, may your heart stay open and your way be guided by gratitude.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Until next time, cheers, cheers, bye, thank you.
