Howling at the Moon and Slowing Down with Snail Juice
In this episode of Viral Mindfulness the Podcast, I invite you into a season of slowing down, reflecting, and reconnecting. From howling at the full moon in Provincetown with Harvey and Nova Rain to embracing the calming metaphor of snail juice, I share stories and insights from my 31 Days of December at-home-retreat. Together, we explore themes of reweaving ourselves, cultivating silence, and resisting the allure of constant digital distraction. Plus, I have an exciting announcement about my new limited-edition watercolor prints inspired by rainwater and nature's gentle beauty. Tune in for inspiration to embrace winter’s stillness and steep in life’s deeper rhythms. Podcast Soul Siblings: Enjoy 20% Off WATERCOLOUR PRINTS, Enter Code at checkout: BLUE20 → www.viralmindfulness.com/gallery/prints
Key Points: Reweaving, Silence, and Snail Juice
Opening: Wind Chime & Full Moon Inspiration
Begins with the sound of a wind chime, setting a reflective tone.
Shares a cherished memory of howling at the full moon in Provincetown with Harvey and Nova Raine.
Invites listeners to join in howling at the upcoming full moon as a joyful, communal practice.
December Retreat: Slowing Down and Reweaving
Reflects on embracing winter through a self-imposed 31-day retreat.
Practices meditation, exercise, writing, and limiting digital distractions.
Shares insights about entering a phase of "reweaving" one's self—embracing transitions, reflecting on accomplishments, and opening to mystery and uncertainty.
Snail Time & Quotes from The Emerald Podcast
Introduces concepts from Joshua Michael Schrei’s podcast episode, “Snail Juice and Bear Fat and Werewolf Moons,” emphasizing slowing down and embracing mystery.
Quotes highlighting the importance of silence, primordial spaces, and disconnecting from the "alluring, addictive metaverses."
Shares the story of Obatala calming the universe with snail juice, offering it as a metaphor for finding calm amidst chaos.
Seasonal Reflection: Silence and Noble Practices
Plans for a deeper period of noble silence between Christmas and New Year.
Encourages listeners to reflect on time spent in unknown or unplugged spaces and to seek harmony between digital life and mindful presence.
Announcement: Limited Edition Watercolor Prints
Launches the "Romance with Rainwater" limited edition prints, inspired by Alexandra Stréliski’s album Neo-Romance.
Paintings created using collected rainwater from Southern California and Kauai.
Special podcast listener offer: 20% discount with code BLUE20 on viralmindfulness.com.
Key Themes
Reweaving & Reflection: Personal growth, transitions, and integrating life’s threads into a cohesive whole.
Silence & Slowing Down: The power of retreating from distractions to reconnect with mystery, imagination, and inner calm.
Inspiration from Nature: Drawing lessons from the natural world and its metaphors, such as the snail's slow spiral of time.
Creative Expression: Highlighting the connection between mindfulness and creativity through your rainwater painting series.
TRANSCRIPT
Hi. Aren't those bells beautiful? I'm going to start my podcast now with that little wind chime that's right above my office desk where I record. And then I'll also start and finish with that cute little chime. Soul sibling, oh, how I have missed you.
I've had a wonderful time away, and I'm ready to winter. And I'm ready to teach and share with you lots of juicy, beautiful insight. So first up, I got to see Harvey. The last time I saw Harvey was in Provincetown over the full moon weekend, November 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th. And Friday night, when we all got together, we were walking back to the house we were staying in.
Harvey was with her sister cousin, same age, her name's Nova Raine. And I grabbed my audio because we were walking back to where we were staying down the main street in Provincetown, and we were howling at the full moon. So I thought you should hear it because it's so wonderful. Not to mention the full moon is this week, Saturday, Sunday, early Sunday morning, December 15th. So I thought you could use a little inspiration.
Maybe you and some loved ones should howl at the moon this weekend for the full moon. I will be. Let's do it together. Here we are from p town howling at the moon. Welcome to Viral Mindfulness, the podcast.
The days are getting shorter. It's getting colder, darker. The solstice approaches. I'm deep in and at home retreat, 31 days of December. Yes, I started on December 1st.
It's going just beautifully which means lots of breakdowns, lots of distraction, lots of just wanting to throw it all down and burn it all down and start over. Ups and downs and spirals. It's a perfect retreat. So today is December 9th in real time. I decided that I wanted to really settle into a month of meditation and exercise and nutrition and reading books and trying to coax myself from social media and watching too much television.
I also had a writing retreat this week with my winter intensive with Natalie Goldberg. And I want to bring you all along with me. I really think there's great opportunity for us to simmer, to slow down, to steep. Steeping like that tea, Boiling the hot water, taking the time to steep. So, I wanna talk today about 2 ideas First up is the idea that I'm in a phase right now, a season of reweaving of myself.
Reweaving of myself. It's clear to me that there's been a lot of changes in my relationships and friendships. It's clear to me that there is a natural transition happening for me as I look down towards 52 years old next summer of where am I at in my career, where am I at in my home life, Where am I at in, focusing my time with relationships? Can I open myself up to more mystery, more uncertainty, more stepping outside of the lines or my comfort level? And I feel like the season right now is just calling me to slow down, to rejuvenate and rest, and to think about all that I've accomplished the last 10 years.
I say 10 years because I approach my 10 year sober anniversary this next June it starts. So there's just a lot on my mind and heart. And I love to practice and I love to seize the day. I heard someone say re weaving of yourself. Re we re weaving of myself, and it really just ring true.
I know that in my sober journey, often there are ideas about listening for threads and taking those threads and learning to incorporate them, and stitch them into your quilts, into your sobriety journey, and it's such a beautiful metaphor. And this idea of reweaving myself just really stood out. So I love it. I'll tell you more about it as it unfolds. And the second thing I wanted to share with you in this episode is snail juice and snail time.
I love it when my friends send me cool stuff and shout out to my friend Janelle who introduced me to this really great podcast. And so I wanna read a couple quotes from the Emerald is the name of the podcast. The host, his name is Joshua Michael Schrei, if that's how he pronounces it. And it's really amazing. It's one of those experiences in these two episodes where the way that he speaks, the way that he's presenting information is really taking me back, taking my breath away, really pushing me to think and, like, do a complete turnaround or complete inversion, go upside down, and really resonating on a very deep level within my bones, my gut, my body.
So, here are a few of the quotes. It's really beautiful because the the episode is called snail juice and bear fat and werewolf moons. Let's get started. So, the first phrase is starting with workplace shame around being off of work emails and the alluring addictive metaverses that are always open, devices that always promise a fountain of distraction. So that at all costs, we never experience that single moment of calm, quiet.
That moment of imaginative breath. That place where underground rivers run through the deep places of the world, through measureless caverns, down to a sunless sea. That is so beautiful, so beautiful. I love the idea of tapping into imaginative breathing, But, man, I am a slave to the 24 hour working, the 24 hour soldiers, always connected to the digital realm. And I love how he says that these alluring addictive metaverses are always open, and these devices promise a fountain of distraction so that we never experience calm and quiet.
It's another reason why I really am pushing myself into this 31 days of December. Maybe you're thinking, I could invest some time. I could set myself up with some sort of retreat at home. Great. Do it.
Email me. Let me know what you're doing. I would love to hear from you. Carrying on with the podcast episode from Joshua. Here he says, yes, the dark, silent, mysterious, unplugged, primordial spaces, they don't fit with narratives of higher, better, faster, more, more.
It's just giving me pause to breathe. It's like exhale. It's like release. Oh, yes. This is another reason to drop into my 31 days of December.
He continues on by saying, Sigmund Freud was terrified of such spaces. He just had to interpret every inch of dream space, sleep space, trance space, had to pathologize and primitivize all of it because what could be worse than having 1 third of our lives and consciousness exist in mystery? And I mentioned that I really wanna be open as I reweave myself to mystery, to be more trusting of unknown, of new pathways, completely new terrains, new parks to explore, new trails to hike. Continuing on, quote, so yeah, if there is a 'they' then they are certainly coming for our quiet spaces, coming for our caves, for our underworlds and other worlds for that single moment of silence and space where we put the phone away for a minute. Put the phone away for a minute.
He repeats it. He says, feel the twinge of ancient ancestral longings, and exhale fully, and remember death and the passage of time, and sit quietly amongst our ancestors' bones, and sit in silence with all that sleeps under the blanket of winter. Yeah. So I've been sitting a lot in silence, and I've been practicing periods of noble silence. And I'm pushing to having several days up towards a week of silence between Christmas and New Year's.
And I'm going to podcast regularly over the next few weeks, and I wanted you to know that this is where I'm at. So I wanna read to you a couple more quotes from his podcast. He says, we need unknown spaces. Defined articulated access to primordial space time, to true unknown wild is essential to maintaining the human alignment to the greater rhythms of the world around us. In everyday terms, it's what keeps us from losing our freaking minds.
Now, how much time do we spend in unknown geographic or temporal spaces? How much time not producing or consuming? How much time in imaginal wildness not spoon fed to us by our devices, not conceived and architected by some human engineer. And mind you, I'm sitting here as a human engineer podcasting to you. These are just questions to think about, to ponder, to write.
I'm finding for me that some type of harmony and balance is the answer and path for me. He continues on and says, the man made environment in which we spend most of our time is specifically designed to keep the unknown out, always lit, always on, always plugged in, always mapped. Is it about safety, convenience, or is it about something deeper, anxiousness, fear, the attempted management of forces that have always been and will always be beyond our control. Is this not just amazing? All right.
So finally, I wanna share with you how Joshua says in this episode, he talks about the snail juice, the snail, and says that, to the West African traditions of the Obatala, this traditions of people, that 1,500,000,000 years, that the snails are sacred. And that 1,500,000,000 years, science tells us transpired between the beginnings of life and the first creatures with spines. So, the snail with its slow smooth movement, the spiral of its shell, the snail invokes slow spiraling time, calm, cool, power, snail time. Once upon a time, he says, the the Ifa stories, traditions tell us the forces of the universe became agitated and there was a great tumult in battle and Obatala cooled the agitation, calmed the entire universe with snail juice. What?
And he repeats it. Calmed the universe with snail juice. So he says Joshua, yeah, maybe the next time at the I'm at the four way stop or talking to that customer service agent or navigating the intricacies of holidays with family, ding ding ding, I can remember the one who calmed the universe with snail juice. So sending you lots of calm snail juice like love. Yours, bluely, always and in always.
I will be right back soon with a new episode. And in the meantime, I have a special announcement. I'm so excited and honored to introduce to you my first ever series of limited edition prints. These watercolor prints are from my romance with rainwater collection, which I launched early this summer. And each of those original rainwater paintings was created with rainwater collected in Southern California and also in Kauai.
And these paintings capture the gentle beauty and tranquility of nature. My romance with rainwater series was inspired by Alexandra Streleski's beautiful album called Neoromance, and each one of the original paintings in the series corresponds to a track from her album, drawing inspiration from the titles and the subtitles of her 14 different compositions. So I have 5 different prints to choose from in 3 different sizes, and they are printed on gorgeous paper. And the 2 smaller sizes are 8 by 10, which is a real common framing size. It's easy to frame them.
So I'm offering for you podcast followers a 20% discount. So you just head over to my website, viralmindfulness.com, look for the navigation menu where it says watercolors. If you follow prints, you can also see the original watercolors. You can read more about the rainwater painting series. And all you need to do is enter code blue20 at checkout, and you can save 20%.
So there's your special offer.
