079: [TRAILER] - Welcome to the Fall 2024 season! Tune in for a quick update + themes

Welcome back to The Other Way! I'm Kasia, your host, and I'm thrilled to reconnect with you all after our season break. As many of you know, I wrapped up last season during a challenging time. My mom was diagnosed with cancer just days before our last episode, and I've been in NYC since mid-July, supporting her, navigating this uncertainty, and celebrating the moments that matter—like my brother’s beautiful wedding, which we brought to New York so my mom could be a part of it.

While I have many personal updates to share in a solo episode soon, we’re celebrating the start of a new season today. We’re transitioning into fall, or as Chinese Medicine calls it, “Late Summer.” This Earth element season is a time of transition, marking the shift from the active Yang energy of spring and summer to the Yin introspection of fall and winter. I can feel the change in the air here in NYC, with cooler mornings and the subtle natural shift. We’re only here until Sunday before returning to California, so I’m soaking up every moment with family and the last hints of East Coast summer.

In this new season, we’re diving deep into the paths less traveled, all through a feminine lens. We’ll explore themes that resonate with my life journey—women’s health, fertility, career, spirituality, and more. This year has brought about significant shifts for me, both personally and professionally, and I’m leaning into surrender and presence in ways I never imagined.

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the themes we’ll be exploring this season:

• Awakening Fertility: We’ll dive into preconception, conception, and beyond, with insights on how to optimize our bodies, minds, and spirits. Expect conversations with experts in Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and herbalism.
• Cultivating Creative Fertility: Exploring the powerful link between our wombs and creative potential.
• Modern Spirituality: Applying Zen lessons to our contemporary lives, especially in balancing aspiration and contentment for the ambitious among us.
• Transitions: Finding peace through life’s stages, from birth and death to identity shifts.
• Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome, and Creativity: Navigating these common challenges with grace and self-compassion.
• Releasing Addictions: Tackling our dependencies on tech, stimulation, shopping, and even our own bad habits.

And that’s just the beginning! We have an incredible lineup of guests whose wisdom I can’t wait to share.

Thank you so much for tuning in and being a part of this beautiful community. I’m beyond excited to embark on this journey with you in the Fall 2024 season of The Other Way. Let’s dive in!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:17

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Other Way. Welcome back to the Other Way. I'm Kasia, your host, and I'm so happy to be back with you after our little season break. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll know that I wrapped up last season in a really difficult place. My mom was diagnosed with cancer a few days before our wrap-up date, and so I've been in New York City since now mid-July supporting her being with my family celebrating a wedding. We moved my brother's wedding up from September in Poland, moved it over to August so we could kind of have my mom there and the entire family there. And you know it's been really interesting, navigating a lot of grief and uncertainty but, as I mentioned in that episode, also celebrating our family connection and this incredible wedding. So there are a lot of updates I have to share and I'm definitely going to do that in a solo episode in the coming weeks, but for now I just wanted to celebrate the start of a new season with this trailer.

Speaker 1: 1:40

We're transitioning into fall or autumn or, in chinese medicine, actually a fifth season, known as late summer. Late summer is a earth element season and a season of transition, really marking that shift from the active yang energy of spring and summer to the more introspective and restful time of fall and winter. We actually had Ann Woods, who is an incredible acupuncturist and herbalist, on last year. We did a full kind of episode for every single season. So I'm going to hyperlink our summer, late, late summer episode below. But I can definitely feel it here in New York city. I woke up this morning to cooler temperatures and even this week we had some 80 degree days, but the air felt cooler and I just love, love, love that there's that touch of the season here present on the East Coast. We're only here in New York City until Sunday, flying back to California. So I'm definitely soaking up all of these subtle shifts and spending some time with family and with these shifts. I definitely spent a bit of time reflecting my intention for this fall 2024 season and for anyone new, tuning in the Other Way covers the paths less traveled from a feminine lens, from women's health, which was a primary focus last season.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Everything from fertility, perimenopause, herbalism, ayurveda, kind of all through that lens, but that was kind of the focus last season. But we also cover career, spirituality, personal growth and more, and these topics and conversations they usually connect to areas of my own life in some way, because I do want to bring a bit of my own heart into this expression, and this year has shifted a lot for me. I'm in a very different place than I thought I would be right now on a professional and personal level, and I found myself leaning into surrender and presence and getting new forms of perspective that I've, you know, really wasn't expecting. But anyway, this isn't a solo episode. I'll share more about that later. I just want to share a bit about the amazing guests planned for this season and just share some teasers of the themes that I hope to explore, also fully knowing that I allow a lot of like kismet energy into this. Very often I will meet and have conversations with incredible authors or researchers or guests and just want to bring them in to the season. So I'm not locking myself into a specific set of themes, but I do want to talk about the things that I do have planned. So we're definitely going to be covering fertility and awakening fertility, yes, from a body, preconception, conception and beyond side of things. We'll be talking about Ayurveda, chinese medicine, herbalism yes, but also the spiritual side I want to get into spirit babies. I think that would be really cool. And then I also want to talk about cultivating creative fertility. When I read about this topic right now in my own life, there's this essence of the connection between our female womb and, yes, birth and but also creative fertility and creative potential. So I definitely want to dive into that topic.

Speaker 1: 5:40

Modern spirituality is going to be a core theme for sure for the fall season. I've been really into Buddhism and Soto Zen tradition, meditating a lot, and I really am curious about how to bring more of that into our modern world. One of the things that I personally struggle with is I have a lot of ambition, I have a lot of aspiration, but I also want to feel content in this moment, and I sometimes feel like those two things are at odds. Right, like striving, manifesting, grasping, like how does that work with also just feeling equanimity? I will say and I'll get into this in my solo episode but crises and these, like life shakeups, I think are great lessons for that. Okay, so that's, that's definitely going to be a theme.

Speaker 1: 6:31

We're going to be talking about bringing peace to transitions and uncertainty. I think that we often forget that life is not stagnant. It is always evolving and changing. And how do we surrender into that and find grounding in these groundless experiences? We're going to be talking about anxiety, imposter syndrome and creativity and putting things into the world. We're going to be talking about anxiety, imposter syndrome and creativity and putting things into the world. We're going to be covering addiction. I think that our world is so wired for addiction right now, and so I would love to dive into that topic, not just through the lens of substances, but really substances, shopping habits, like how to break the things that feel so good but are harmful to us, how to bring awareness to them, release them and maybe even look at them from like a spiritual lens. I think that'd be kind of cool.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Anyway, I have some incredible guests lined up. I cannot wait to share their wisdom with you all. So to you, my beautiful community, thank you, thank you. Thank you for tuning back in. Welcome back. I am beyond excited to be here with all of you and, without further ado, let's dive into this fall 2024 season of the Other Way. I hope you enjoy our upcoming conversations. Let's do this.