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Book cover for 'Living the Spiral with Alison Dale,' featuring a woman with red hair wearing a black top and a wide-brimmed gray hat, overlaid on a starry night sky with spiral star trails, and an astrological chart showing zodiac signs.

(formerly called Cycles of Time Podcast)

To anyone wanting to live with more rhythm, presence, and engagement with yourself and the world around you: Living the Spiral Podcast is for you.

Sometimes modern life feels like it is moving far too fast. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, and grief are everywhere, and many of us feel a sharp lack of connection to each other, to the living earth beneath our feet, and to ourselves. We sense there is a rhythm underneath the noise, but we are not quite sure how to find it again.

Our ancestors across the globe found grounding and meaning through intimate relationship with the earth and the sky as they changed throughout the year. From the Medicine Wheel in present-day North America to the Pagan Wheel of the Year in Europe, from the Babylonian Zodiac to the Chinese I’Ching, our foremothers and forefathers cultivated beautiful, complex mythologies that place us in relationship with the beauty of the turning seasons, as participants, not just bystanders.

A woman standing in a sunlit forest with trees and grass, looking up towards the sunlight filtering through the branches.

Living the Spiral with Alison Dale is an invitation to remember that you also move in cycles, not straight lines.

Drawing from astrology, the I’Ching & Human Design, the Indigenous medicine wheel, the Pagan Wheel of the Year, and the Daoist five-element cycle, Alison weaves these lineages into grounded conversations about real bodies, real emotions, and real lives.

Each episode explores how cosmic and earthly cycles show up in your mood, your relationships, your work, and your rituals, so you can gently transform mental and emotional patterns by attuning to the rhythms you are already part of.

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For those of you who, like me, appreciate someone who can skillfully weave together several archetypal modalities to make sense of our lives and our world, I highly recommend Alison Dale and her podcast. I have felt very blessed and enriched by what she offers.

-Bryan

Meet the Spirals of Time

The Earth's Revolution Around the Sun

We all know that seasons on Earth are caused Sy our revolutionary journey around the sun. Ancient people knew this story too, bit it was told as the Sun’s revolutionary journey around the elliptic in the sky. The Equinoxes (equal day and night) and Solstices (longest day and shortest day of the year) are beautiful markers of seasonal moments in the cycle of time. Many ancient traditions focus on these powerful days within the wheel of the year that mark transition points between seasons, plant growing cycles, and the weather.
The Tropical Zodiac

Around 5,000 years ago, ancient cultures of Babylon and Sumer were the origin of our modern Zodiac signs. At that time, the constellation rising at the spring equinox was Aries, the ram. The stories that evolved in Greek and Roman times aboot ut each of the 12 Zodiac signs reflect the seasonal changes that unfold from the spring equinox to the summer solstice and on around the wheel. Other systems of astrology (Vedic & Sidereal) base the Zodiacal signs on the current position of the constellations. Neither is “more correct”, but I use the Tropical zodiac based on my interest in the connection between seasonal attunement and origin stories of the signs.
The I'Ching: The Book of Changes

The I’Ching, a system of divination originating around 5,000 years ago in Ancient China, uses combinations of 8 elemental symbols called ‘trigrams’ to form 64 hexagrams whose meanings span the wheel of the year. The Fuxi sequence begins on the Spring Equinox with 8 “Thunder”-based hexagram, and the sun trans ts around the wheel of the year through the 7 other elemental trigrams. The modern syncretic ystems of Human Design and the Gene Keys have popularized this ancient wisdom, wherein the hexagrams are known as “Gates” and “Gene Keys”,
The Pagan Wheel of the Year

In Pagan (pre-Christian) Europe, the Equinoxes and Solstices wer considered holy days, as were the 4 mid-points between the solstices and equinoxes, known as cross-quarter days. Some of these holidays have continued to be widely celebrated in the modern era, such as Halloween (aka Samhain or Sowe’en), Mayday, and Yule. Others are less commonly-known in popular culture, but continue to be celebrated in their European countries of origin.
The Taoist 5-Element Wu Xing Cycle

Widely used today in the popular practices of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) , Qigong, Tai Chi, and Feng Shui, the Wu Xing cycle originated with the ancient Taoist idea that world is composed of these five elements the relational nature of change among them. The 5 Elements or Phases correspond with the seasons of the year, with Mu (wood) aligning with spring, Huo (fire) aligning with summer, Jin (metal) aligning with autumn, and Shui (water) aligning with winter. Tu (earth) aligns with the transitional time between seaIons, as well as late summer/early fall. Each phase or element is associated with parts of the body, and balancing these elements is a big part of Chinese Medicine.
The Indigenous Medicine Wheel

The Medicine Wheel, a sacred wheel of the year originating with people indigenous to Turtle Island (modern-day North America) and Siberia, is also known as he Sun Dance Circle or Sacred Hoop. It is an ancient and sacred symbol used by many different Tribes. It signifies Earth's boundary and all the knowledge of the universe, with each direction of the wheel being associated with a stage of life, an element, a sacred plant and animal, and an aspect of human experience, from physical to mental to emotional to spiritual. There are many versions of the Medicine Wheel, and their specific symbols vary by region and tribe.