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Join us for a special episode of the Gratitude Blooming Podcast as we explore the theme of forgiveness with author and optimist Simon Sinek. In this captivating conversation, we delve into Simon's personal and professional experiences with forgiveness and how it has impacted his life. 

Simon also shares his thoughts on the concept of heartfulness as the new mindfulness and offers some valuable advice on embracing chaos and finding direction without a map. As we enter the new year, this episode is particularly relevant as we reflect on how we want to show up and what we want to experience in the coming year. 

The anemone flower represents the theme of forgiveness in the Gratitude Blooming card deck. Remember, forgiveness can be one of the greatest gifts we give or receive. Take some time to consider how you can express gratitude for being forgiven.

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!

Send us a text

As we transition to a new year, we revisit the concept of tenacity and how it is represented by the dandelion.

The dandelion is a symbol of transformation, going from a yellow flower to a white puff ball to seeds. Similarly, we can transform our minds by practicing gratitude and shifting our focus from negative thoughts to positive ones. This helps us to cultivate a growth mindset and become more resilient.

As we enter the new year, it's a good time to reflect on this theme of tenacity and how we can cultivate it in our own lives. Remember, we have the power to choose which thoughts we want to focus on and to transform our minds for the better.

Please consider making a donation to support the Gratitude Blooming Podcast at https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XB4YL5S75X6S2

 Every donation helps us continue to bring you inspiring stories — and as a thank you, you'll receive a digital card deck subscription worth $200!

Go to www.gratitudeblooming to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date with new episodes and other exciting updates. 

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!

Send us a text

In this intimate conversation, we look back and look forward on the year and the lessons our team has learned from being in close connection to nature. 

Belinda talks about how nature has been a profound and lifelong learning experience for her and how it is accessible and universal to everyone. 

Omar shares about the importance of gratitude and mindfulness in allowing us to adapt to change and be present in the moment. 

Arlene reminds us of the eternal and our shared humanity through nature.

Nature is a source of stillness and presence, and  it can help us to understand the cycles and transitions of life. Experiencing nature allows us to deepen our practices of stillness and presence, and provides an anchor points for understanding the world around us.

This week we invite you to take a moment to go outside. Find some soil to put your feet or your hands in. And remember that connection that we all have to the earth that is always available to us.

Please consider making a donation to support the Gratitude Blooming Podcast at https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XB4YL5S75X6S2

Every donation helps us continue to bring you inspiring stories — and as a thank you, you'll receive a digital card deck subscription worth $200!

Go to www.gratitudeblooming to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date with new episodes and other exciting updates. 

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!

Send us a text

In this podcast episode, author and therapist Jor-El Caraballo talks about the importance of presence, permission to grow, sensitivity, memory, security vs. safety, and belonging. 

He compares himself to an orchid, a plant that needs very little water, and encourages listeners to focus less on creation and more on spontaneity. He also mentions the importance of consent, disclosure, and reflection in order to save us from the shadow, which is more than the addict of our psyche.

We hope you'll join us on this journey of connecting with nature, culture, and self. 

Please consider making a donation to support the Gratitude Blooming Podcast and sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date with new episodes and other exciting updates. 

Every donation helps us continue to bring you inspiring stories — and as a thank you, you'll receive a digital card deck subscription worth $200!

Support our listener-driven podcast with a donation today!

More about our guest:

Jor-El Caraballo is a licensed therapist and cofounder of Viva, a therapy practice with locations in New York, California and Pennsylvania. Caraballo earned degrees in psychological counseling from Teachers College at Columbia University and is the author of the recently published The Shadow Work Workbook: Self-Care Exercises for Healing Your Trauma and Exploring Your Hidden Self now available wherever books are sold.

You can keep up with Jor-El and Viva on Instagram. @jorelcaraballo and @vivamentalhealth

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!

Send us a text

At the heart of Gratitude Blooming is art. All the art is an attempt to bring some kind of healing into the world. 

According to the artist and co-founder Arlene Kim Suda, even if the expression of a work reaches just one person at a time, it feels like the slow work needed to build the momentum to create the world we hope and dream to live in.

This week we talk more about the power of art - both creating and interpreting it.  Inspired by Oren Slozberg, the Executive Director of Commonweal, we explore Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) as a process of looking at art that leads to deeper understanding and interpretation. The first step is simply to look at the art. 

• What do you see? 
• What colors are used? 
• What can you describe of the plant?

Once you have a good sense of what you're looking at, the next step is to start asking questions. 

• What do you think is happening in the illustration? 
• What might the artist be trying to say?
• What does this remind you of?
• What is the plant saying? 

There is no right or wrong answer in interpreting art. It is a practice of making meaning.

We appreciate your support and help so we can bloom! 
Please take a moment to give us 5-stars and share a review. 

You can always email us at [email protected].
We want to hear from you! 

For the holidays or mindful gifts, check out the Gratitude Blooming shop at www.gratitudeblooming.com.  Use code: BLOOM22 to get 20% off everywhere in our shop!

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!

Send us a text

What can bloom from your vulnerability?

This week, we explore the theme of vulnerability represented by the winter rose with zazen practitioner Angela Oh. She invites us to imagine vulnerability as choosing the unknown, even if it’s scary. Being vulnerable means walking hand-in-hand with courage. 

Angela Oh is a renowned civil rights lawyer (though she would never say that of herself) turned Zen priest turned mediator. She shares how to listen to nature and to be in “right relationship”. More and more her practice is trusting the silence. 

Right relationship is like the murmuration of birds. Collective movement can happen when we are not too close or too far from each other. 

Learn more about her at https://gocompassion.org/

We appreciate your support and help so we can bloom! Please take a moment to give us 5-stars and share a review. 

You can always email us at [email protected]. We want to hear from you! 

For the holidays or mindful gifts, check out the Gratitude Blooming shop at www.gratitudeblooming.com. Use code BLOOM22 for 20% off everything in our shop!

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!

Send us a text

We're taking a step back this week to explore the question of "Why gratitude?".  

One answer is self-care. The brain has a biological bias to focus on the negative and gratitude disrupts this bias. This negative instinct sits in our amygdala, which while only the size of an almond is nearly as old as the dinosaurs. 

The other "why gratitude", and the one that is truer to our hearts, is because we are human beings and yearn for a deeper connection to each other and the world around us.

Gratitude is the bridge where we can cross from our own self-care to the care for each other.

Yes, we have this “reptilian-brain” that is often quicker to respond to the unexpected than the prefrontal, executive decision-making part of our brain. Yes, gratitude releases dopamine and serotonin, which give us both motivation and emotional stability to disrupt our default settings of fight-flight-freeze.

Gratitude makes visible what you value. It’s proactive and prosocial.

We hope you take some real-world lessons from today’s live gratitude practice with the Gratitude Blooming team, Belinda Liu, Omar Brownson and Arlene Kim Suda.   The themes of discovery, growth and patience feel super resonant this time of year! 

Remember, the most important practice is the one that works for you.
 
And to dig deeper into the complex colonial history of Thanksgiving in the United States, check out the Bioneer's website.

We appreciate your support and help so we can bloom! Please take a moment to give us 5-stars and share a review. 

For your holiday and end of year gifts for loved ones and colleagues, check out the Gratitude Blooming shop at www.gratitudeblooming.com.  Use this code to enjoy 20% off everything in our shop:  BLOOM22


You can always email us at [email protected]. We want to hear from you! 

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!

Send us a text

Our Full Length Conversation with VC Tang on Self Care inspired by the Allium Triquetrum/3-Cornered Leek (Card #10) 

We're cooking up some gratitude this week with this long-form interview with VC Tang on the theme of self care as it relates to community care.  We hope this conversation inspires you to nourish yourself by cooking and eating with others!

VC is an author, cook, and martial artist who happens to have an MBA and an entrepreneurial spirit.  She just released her first cookbook and it’s got tasty stories and recipes from her Thai community.

For her, cooking is an artform that is as much about bodily sustenance as it is about feeding our spirits with stories.  When not in the kitchen, VC has spent most of her career in nonprofit program management, and is also a Taiji and Zen practitioner, and a proud alumni of the Berkeley Thai Temple’s performing arts program. 

Find out more about VC and support her work:

• IG @stirfrystories
• www.stirfrystories.com
• Crowdfund the book tour at buymeacoffee.com/vctang

We appreciate your support and help so we can bloom! Please take a moment to give us 5-stars and share a review.

You can always email us at [email protected]. We want to hear from you!

Get your holiday shopping done early at www.gratitudeblooming.com and enjoy 20% off with code: BLOOM22 

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!

Send us a text

Our full-length conversation with Pastor Keith PK Jenkins on Growth and the Grapevine (Card #33)

This week, we’re excited to preview an upcoming episode on the theme of Growth and the grapevine by sharing our long-form interview with Pastor Keith PK Jenkins.

Keith is a strong leader who through humility and compassion gains access to the hearts of other leaders. His honesty and integrity creates opportunities for him to be a bridge builder. He effectively communicates cross-culturally and bridges the  generations. He’s a seasoned leader and father in the faith who ministers with a prophetic anointing.  He is passionate, inspiring, bold and humorous. Through his personal testimony and transparent delivery of the gospel many come to faith in Jesus, are healed and inspired. 

Follow: 

Instagram - @pk_pastorkeith

Facebook - @KeithPKJenkins

Twitter - @Keith_O_Jenkins

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!

Send us a text

Teacher and thought partner Norma Wong (Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi) joins us to reflect on everything from ancestry to neuroscience to her own childhood influences. Abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple of Chozen-ji, Norma articulates the Collective Acceleration of this moment, which also serves as the title and inspiration for the second season of our podcast. 

Inspired by the Gratitude Blooming theme of remembrance and the poppy, Norma challenges us to exercise more choice. She asks, do we choose to bloom or stay in the ground? Plus, she shares how together we might rise to the occasion, and not get swept away by the tide.

Wong serves practice communities in Hawai‘i, across the U.S., and in Toronto, Canada. Among her areas of teaching: waging peace; leadership and strategy in the 7 generations context.

Wong served as a state legislator, on the policy and strategy team for Governor John Waihee, and community organizing and policy work in the Native Hawaiian (indigenous) community.  

She is a Native Hawaiian and Hakka who lives in Kalihi Valley on the island of O`ahu in the Hawai`i archipelago.

For more info: 

Zen resources at https://kaweloku.com

Read the book Bankei Zen by Peter Haskel 

Sign up for Collective Acceleration monthly talks:  email [email protected]  

We appreciate your support and help so we can bloom! Please take a moment to give us 5-stars and share a review.

You can always email us at [email protected]. We want to hear from you!

Check out the new Gratitude Blooming journaling notecards at www.gratitudeblooming.com.

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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.

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 [email protected]. We love hearing from our listeners!