The WaterHole

Chapter 5 Part Two | Sarvabhauma | Turning the Wheel

The third place is opening under our feet.

In this second half, Nunchoga leads Kham Moon to the middle ground, a grandmother banyan whose roots, the elephants know, run beneath every forest Nunchoga has ever stood in.

There, in the cradle of the roots, she gives her the small, old ritual: the ache, let it sit with you exactly as big as it is; the reaching, watched until it crests, falls, and passes like weather; the setting down; the walking.

But the ritual doesn't stay with the elephants. Uncle Somchai has been following at the distance of brush-strokes and fifty years and the middle ground leaks into humans the way ground-water leaks into a well. He never hears a single word of it. He doesn't need to. He just watches his own reaching pass through like weather, sets down the brush, and lives the rest of his life unable to explain what he learned.

So gather close. The banyan is listening. And if you've ever carried a hunger you couldn't name... tonight, you get to watch it pass.

Show Notes

Sarvabhauma guards the northeast of the world—"he whose feet rest upon the whole earth." In Part Two, his secret becomes yours: every ground you've ever stood on was always one ground, holding you the whole time.

In this episode:

• The middle ground : not a place, but a way of walking through every place
• The grandmother banyan : the tree whose roots touch every ground at once
• The ritual, fourfold: the ache, the reaching, the setting down, the walking
• "The ritual is not the never-falling. The ritual is the returning."
• Uncle Somchai's wordless turning ... the teaching that arrives without a single word
• The seasons that come after: unroped ground by the river, tourists who come simply to be in the presence of, and an elephant man telling anyone who will listen: being loved for what you perform is not the same as being seen.

Words & traditions behind this chapter:

• Tulimak : the pause between heartbeats, where the deepest knowings arrive
• The fourfold ritual : ache, reaching, setting down, walking. Listeners familiar with the first turning of a certain ancient wheel may recognize its shape underneath. We'll let the banyan keep its secrets; the show notes honor it quietly here.
• The setting down, rendered as it was on the far-north ice: "the way dust sets in a sunbeam" still there, always there, but no longer being carried.

Produced by Emerging World Project | www.emergingworldproject.org 

Soulful Sips by nature practice guide Natasha Deganello Giraudie | www.rosaguyaba.earth  

Rate, Follow and Share Us | www.thewaterhole.podview.com

In Hindu cosmology, eight elephants uphold the eight directions of the world. Tonight, the northeast stirs: Sarvabhauma—the one whose feet rest on the whole earth.

In this episode, Nunchoga wakes in Thailand—wet dawn, monsoon green, a tuskless matriarch of a riverside camp called Mae Boon by the humans who love her. And if you've been wondering how one matriarch could stand in so many worlds at once... tonight, she shows us, without saying a word about it.

This is the story of Kham Moon, the clever one, the praised one, who eats past full and performs past tiredness and is still hungry—and of the old walk Nunchoga gives her: first to the sweet place, where every comfort asks only one small price, then to the bare place, where the herd's whole memory lives in the flinch at the sound of rope. Somewhere between them, a third place is waiting. And an elephant man named Uncle Somchai is about to set down his brush without knowing why.

Show Notes

Chapter 5 | Part One | Sarvabhauma | The First Turning

In Hindu cosmology, the Ashtadiggajas are the eight guardian elephants who uphold the eight directions of the world. Sarvabhauma guards the northeast—his name means "he whose feet rest upon the whole earth." This chapter is his.

The story so far: Nunchoga is not one elephant. She is the remembering that every elephant body holds—waking again wherever elephants have carried the meaning of humans. You've walked with her across the dry red earth, through the temple smoke, and over the ice. This dawn, she wakes in Thailand.

In this episode:

• Mae Boon, "Good Mother" — Nunchoga's waking in the riverside camp
• Kham Moon, the performing elephant whose hunger no praise can fill
• The sweet place — the camp, where being loved for what you perform is not the same as being seen
• The bare place — the ancestor memory: the logging trails, the saddles, the phajaan, the war banners at Angkor
• Uncle Somchai, third-generation elephant man, and the brush that stops mid-stroke
• The tulimak — that imperceptible pause between heartbeats

Words & traditions behind this chapter:

• Mae Boon (แม่บุญ) — Thai, "Good Mother/Meritorious Mother," an honorific given to elephants
• Phuu Khaw (ผู้เฒ่า) — Thai, "the elder/ancestor"
• Kham Moon — "Gold of the heart," a name given to Thailand's beloved performing elephants
• Phajaan — the traditional "crushing" ritual used to break young elephants to work; its memory lives in the flinch at the sound of rope
• Tulimak — the pause between heartbeats, carried with Nunchoga from the far-north ice
• The banyan tree and its spirit house — Thai animist tradition, where the land's guardian is garlanded by humans who have never asked why they are right to do so.

Coming in Part Two: The middle ground. The braided roots. And a small, old ritual—the ache, the reaching, the setting down, the walking—that turns a young elephant, and leaks into a human, without a single word.

Produced by Emerging World Project — ⁠www.emergingworldproject.org⁠

Soulful Sips by nature practice guide Natasha Deganello Giraudie — ⁠www.rosaguyaba.earth⁠

Follow | Rate and Share us | ⁠www.thewaterhole.podview.com⁠

Supratika, the elephant of immense beauty, doesn’t just hold up the world—she reminds us that the most sacred moments are the ones that shimmer with grace.

In this second half, Nunchoga and her herd form a circle that stretches into eternity, as the stones hum in harmony with their heartbeats and the stars bend down to listen.

This is a story of beginning—not with words, but with the kind of silence that’s louder than any trumpet. So gather close. Mother Earth is humming, and the conversation is just beginning.

Produced by Emerging World Project — www.emergingworldproject.org

Soulful Sips by nature practice guide Natasha Deganello Giraudie — www.rosaguyaba.earth

Follow | Rate | Share us www.thewaterhole.podview.com

This story uses Indigenous names, time concepts, and numbering systems drawn from Inuktitut and Gwich'in languages, reflecting how Arctic peoples understand time through natural cycles rather than abstract measurements.

Time flows with the land: ullaaq-wake (dawn), ukiuq-wheel (full year), nuna-memory (generation), auksalak-melting (spring months).

Numbers carry meaning: pingasut (three/sacred triangle), malrugnik (seven/dancing number), qulit-sisamat (fourteen).

Names honor Indigenous languages and Arctic flora.

The story maintains scientific precision where it serves authenticity - elephants naturally understand acoustic frequencies, while humans experience time through seasonal rhythms.

References: 

Tusaalanga 

Inhabit Education

Elephant Voices

Supratika is one the guardians of the eight zones of the universe. An ashtadiggaja elephant known for their immense beauty. And in this episode, we meet a valley that does the same.

Nunchoga leads her family into a land that doesn’t just shelter them—it welcomes them with the grace of a the guardian, Supratika.

The dust settles in a sunbeam. The water giggles. The stones remember how to sing.

This is a story of arrival, of learning to trust the land’s voice, and of the quiet beauty that holds us all when we finally find a place that says, Yes. You’re here.

Pull up to The WaterHole and let’s listen to the world’s most ancient lullaby, together.

Produced by Emerging World Project — www.emergingworldproject.org

Soulful Sips by nature practice guide Natasha Deganello Giraudie — www.rosaguyaba.earth

Follow | Rate | Share | www.thewaterhole.podview.com

This story uses Indigenous names, time concepts, and numbering systems drawn from Inuktitut and Gwich'in languages, reflecting how Arctic peoples understand time through natural cycles rather than abstract measurements.

Time flows with the land: ullaaq-wake (dawn), ukiuq-wheel (full year), nuna-memory (generation), auksalak-melting (spring months).

Numbers carry meaning: pingasut (three/sacred triangle), malrugnik (seven/dancing number), qulit-sisamat (fourteen).

Names honor Indigenous languages and Arctic flora.

The story maintains scientific precision where it serves authenticity - elephants naturally understand acoustic frequencies, while humans experience time through seasonal rhythms.

References: 

Tusaalanga 

Inhabit Education

Elephant Voices

Chapter 3 Part Two | Vamana | The Kneeling

The truest test of who we are isn't in what we build, but in how we respond when we've caused harm. In this second half, a moment of crisis cracks open everything that came before it - and asks Anik, Silla, and the herd what it really means to be trusted by something wiser than ourselves. This is a story about humility, and the kind of grace that has to be witnessed to be understood. Join us for the conclusion, and a reminder that a gentler world is still within reach - if we're willing to kneel for it.

Same moon. Story continues.

In Memory of JackieThis chapter is dedicated to Big Bear Valley Bald Eagle patient 26-519, known to so many of us as "Jackie." Her recent passing has touched many hearts, and we want to take this moment to honor her - a truly remarkable eagle - and to thank every person who cared for her, loved her, and stood by her during her time here with us. Though her wings are still, her spirit soars on. Carried by the wind, remembered by all who loved her, forever a part of Mother Earth.

Produced by Emerging World Project — www.emergingworldproject.org
Soulful Sips by nature practice guide Natasha Deganello Giraudie — www.rosaguyaba.earth
Follow us | www.thewaterhole.podview.com

This story uses Indigenous names, time concepts, and numbering systems drawn from Inuktitut and Gwich'in languages, reflecting how Arctic peoples understand time through natural cycles rather than abstract measurements.

Time flows with the land: ullaaq-wake (dawn), ukiuq-wheel (full year), nuna-memory (generation), auksalak-melting (spring months).

Numbers carry meaning: pingasut (three/sacred triangle), malrugnik (seven/dancing number), qulit-sisamat (fourteen).

Names honor Indigenous languages and Arctic flora.

The story maintains scientific precision where it serves authenticity - elephants naturally understand acoustic frequencies, while humans experience time through seasonal rhythms.

References:
Tusaalanga
Inhabit Education

Elephant Voices

Chapter 3 Part One | Vamana | The Kneeling

There's a stillness that settles over the ice just before something changes, a held breath in the land itself.

In this episode, we return to the herd, to Anik and Silla, and to the quiet, patient work of learning to see the world as it actually is rather than as we expect it to be.

It's a morning of small lessons — plant identification, patterns, presence — but underneath it, something is observing, and waiting.

Come sit by the waterhole with us and let's listen together.

New moon. New voice.

In Memory of Jackie
This chapter is dedicated to Big Bear Lake Bald Eagle patient 26-519, known to so many of us as "Jackie." Her recent passing has touched many hearts, and we want to take this moment to honor her - a truly remarkable eagle - and to thank every person who cared for her, loved her, and stood by her during her time here with us. Though her wings are still, her spirit soars on. Carried by the wind, remembered by all who loved her, forever a part of Mother Earth.

Produced by Emerging World Project — www.emergingworldproject.org
Soulful Sips by nature practice guide Natasha Deganello Giraudie — www.rosaguyaba.earth
Follow us | www.thewaterhole.podview.com

This story uses Indigenous names, time concepts, and numbering systems drawn from Inuktitut and Gwich'in languages, reflecting how Arctic peoples understand time through natural cycles rather than abstract measurements.

Time flows with the land: ullaaq-wake (dawn), ukiuq-wheel (full year), nuna-memory (generation), auksalak-melting (spring months).

Numbers carry meaning: pingasut (three/sacred triangle), malrugnik (seven/dancing number), qulit-sisamat (fourteen).

Names honor Indigenous languages and Arctic flora.

The story maintains scientific precision where it serves authenticity — elephants naturally understand acoustic frequencies, while humans experience time through seasonal rhythms.

References:
Tusaalanga
Inhabit Education

We're back at the water's edge for

Chapter 2, Part Two | Puspadanta | SoulMates

If you caught part one, you know where we left off. If you're new here, pull up a seat the circle's always wide enough for more.

An extraordinary meeting is happening between an Arctic island and the heart of the Congo basin. Two voices, worlds apart, are finding each other - not through any road or wire, but through color, sound, and something older than either.

And Puspadanta's quiet conspiracy with the aurora? It's about to bear fruit.

This is the episode where the song finds its full shape. Where what felt broken turns out to be exactly the right instrument.

Where the forest itself expands.

Come find out how it ends. Or maybe how it begins.

New moon. New voice.

Produced by Emerging World Project www.emergingworldproject.org

Soulful Sips by nature practice guide Natasha Deganello Giraudie www.rosaguyaba.earth

Follow us | www.thewaterhole.podview.com

On this new moon episode, we gather at the water's edge for Chapter 2, Part One | Puspadanta | SoulMates

A girl named Silla has always heard the world a little differently. Colors carry melodies. Light has a tempo. And somewhere deep in the heart of the Congo basin, something ancient has been dreaming her up right alongside her.

This is a story about soulmates - not in the small way we usually mean it. We're talking about the kind of recognition that moves across oceans and continents, through the roots of forests and the colors of the sky.

The kind that makes you wonder whether what you always thought was broken in you was actually just waiting to be understood.

Puspadanta, keeper of the western direction, and the aurora have been in quiet conspiracy - today that conspiracy comes to light.

Come sit with us and let's listen together.

Produced by Emerging World Project | www.emergingworldproject.org

Soulful Sips by nature practice guide Natasha Deganello Giraudie | www.rosaguyaba.earth

Follow us at www.thewaterhole.podview.com

Every story has a moment where the thread pulls taut - where everything learned must be lived.

This is that moment for Ray.

In this final part of Chapter 1, Ray must do the hardest thing the day has asked of him. Not the physical labor of a man alone in the Yukon. But something quieter, and far more difficult: letting go of what he loves. Trusting what he cannot control. And opening the door for the first time in a very long time to his whole self.

When the world arrives at Claim 47 in the form of Dr. Sarah Chen and her team, Ray doesn't know what to say or how to explain what has happened here. He only knows that he has changed, and that the change requires something new of him. Not performance. Just honesty, and the willingness to say: I can't do this alone. Will you help me?

What unfolds is a quiet reckoning between science and mystery, between the need to understand and the need to simply honor, between the old Ray who drove north to disappear and the man now lying on his back in the road, feeling the earth hold him, whispering thank you to the beloved.

Ray's story ends not with answers, but with something better: an open hand. A new fire, tended by more than one.

Ray's chapter is complete - but The WaterHole's journey has only just begun. Seven more stories are waiting at the water's edge.

Come back and hear what other stories Nunchoga wants to share.

The WaterHole is where the earth returns its storytellers. Eight stories. One deep thread.

Follow The WaterHole on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.

Produced by Emerging World Project | emergingworldproject.org

Follow on Instagram: @emergingworld_project

Woven throughout this series we are gifted with Soulful Sips by Natasha Deganello Giraudie — filmmaker, proud member of the Nun Cho Ga fan club, and creator of the Nature Practice method.

Her intention with this offering is to help us soak in the mystery and the gifts of the Earth all the way in, until they reach the very center of our hearts. In this place, nature’s wisdom, beauty, and love can flow through us abundantly, encouraging us on our journey of caring for the wellbeing of all beings.

Something impossible is happening in the Yukon and Ray is right in the middle of it.

In this episode, the world around him begins to respond. The creek, the wind, the light, the earth itself, all of it moving together in a way that feels less like coincidence and more like ceremony. And at the center of it all, something so tender and so unexpected that Ray can barely hold it.

He is learning, slowly, what it means to feel again. Not just sensation but the full, frightening, necessary landscape of emotion. The joy and the grief and the love that has been waiting beneath the numbness all along. Airavata is beside him, patient as the sky, offering something Ray has never quite been able to receive: the truth that he was never meant to carry any of this alone.

And then comes the ancient story of sky and earth, of separation and longing, of eight great beings at the edges of the world whose sacred work is to hold what would otherwise drift too far apart. It is a cosmology, yes. But it is also a mirror. Ray begins to see his own isolation differently. Not as strength. Not as self-sufficiency. But as a fire tended alone, slowly going cold.

This episode asks the question at the heart of Ray's whole journey: Will you trust others to help tend the flame?

The answer requires courage. And a radio. And a baby mammoth who wraps her trunk around his finger and waits.

Ray's story isn't finished - one more part of Chapter 1 is still to come, and the most extraordinary part of this journey may be just beginning. Don't miss it.

The WaterHole is where the earth returns its storytellers. Eight stories. One deep thread.

Follow The WaterHole on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.

Produced by Emerging World Project | emergingworldproject.org

Follow on Instagram: @emergingworld_project

Woven throughout this series we are gifted with Soulful Sips by Natasha Deganello Giraudie — filmmaker, proud member of the Nun Cho Ga fan club, and creator of the Nature Practice method.

Her intention with this offering is to help us soak in the mystery and the gifts of the Earth all the way in, until they reach the very center of our hearts. In this place, nature’s wisdom, beauty, and love can flow through us abundantly, encouraging us on our journey of caring for the wellbeing of all beings.