Retelling the History of Psychedelic Mushrooms: From Ancient Rituals to Modern Healing (83)

Welcome back to how the Wise One Grows. So you've probably heard the rhetoric before that psychedelics are going to fry your brain like you would fry an egg. But today we are going to learn about the storytelling behind that rhetoric through the history of mushrooms. So today Liz Bowden is going to speak to us all about the stories that we have been told and tell ourselves and the history of mushrooms and the role they've played on the evolution of the brain and in society, from the ancient Greeks to microdosing today. But before we get started, let's take a moment to land here, together with 3D breaths. So just take a moment to notice where your body makes contact with the earth and you can gently rest your eyes, if it feels safe, and take a big breath in, fill your chest, fill your belly with air, exhale, open your mouth, let it out Again. Inhale, fill the chest, fill the belly with air, exhale, let it go One more, inhale and exhale and return to where your body makes contact with the earth as you open your eyes and return to this space. So if you missed the first conversation we had with Liz, you need to go back and listen. It's episode 5 and Liz talked all about microdosing in earth medicine, and today she's going to lean into this conversation a little bit more. So I just dive right in. I think you should just dive right in. I'm ready for it, I'm ready to soak it in, yeah. So let me just spray this a little bit. Everything that is about to come out of me and be channeled out of me is actually this beautiful workshop that was pieced together over many years of living in the jungle, living off of the lands and being taught and learning under really beautiful herbalists and wise women and how they interact and have a relationship with medicine and what that means for them and the earth. And so I also want to say everything that I'm about to say is also a story, just like anything else, right? And it is Liz's story and Liz's picture of the history of mushrooms and how we treat the earth and use medicines. And so to just have an open mind, right? Just an open, curious mind about everything that I'm about to say, which I'd hope we do anytime any human tells us anything, right, because it's always coming through a frame, it's always coming through a filter, and I just want to rewrite and retell the story of mushrooms, which can also be known as the psychedelic mushrooms as they've been painted in other ways in the past, and a few guiding questions for this particular transmission, if you will, or workshop on mushrooms that I like to ask One is if we were to zoom out and look at the universe and look at the world right now, what do we think would be an answer for all of us, or a medicine that we could all really use right now? Now, what can we as a collective community, what do we need right now, in this particular moment in time? And the other question is what does the feminine mean to us and how does that play out and express itself in our lives? For me, the feminine has a lot to do with. It's not just female or woman. I definitely see the feminine, everything right, and it's more about slowing down and softening and listening and observing before acting Right and so and this is just to kind of bring us into the beginning of this workshop, and so I'll just I'll pause there and I'll move now into a quote. That really was a magnetic moment for me, where all of these little points came together and made like a big whoa moment in Liz's life and it was actually to my own, which is an amazing permaculture center in Costa Rica, letting off the land, living in community, and one of my teachers and dear sister, it's Seuss, held a health sovereignty workshop. This is the first time I've ever heard of the word health sovereignty or this phrase, and she was actually leaning it with Amanda Sage and, if you don't know, she is just an amazing artist and they were doing this amazing fusion of art therapy and health sovereignty. So learning about how to make your medicines and learning how to express creativity creatively through paint, through painting and the quote was plants and fun guy are wise beyond our understanding and have helped us to shield many times over. Reconnecting with this takes the intention and willingness to remember, to remember that we have sovereignty or the decisions we make for our body and spirit, to remember that medicine can bring vitality rather than treat illness, and to remember that the plants, sun-dye and microorganisms are allies willing to support our health journeys. Yeah, and it was just like a big moment for me where I was like wow, at that time I was taking Adderall, lexa Pro, and was just dabbling into making my own tinctures from plants et cetera, and it kind of set me off on this mission to learn more about this. So was that kind of the moment for you where you started to have a shift in your relationship with yeah, with Earth, medicine and with the medicine you were on and the way you were exploring that? Yeah, that was the moment and you know this word vitality. I was like why, like, yeah, you know, I think I had just like been like, oh, we're all just kind of out here living on our baseline, but we're all just out there trying to get by. That's so much about survival in the day to day and especially if there's someone you know dealing with mental health on a wide spectrum, it's often more about survival versus thriving. Yeah, exactly so when he was experiencing adverse side effects to my medicines, I was like wait a minute. I was like you need to tell me that if I can get to the complete natural state of the medicine, like the purity, just straight to the root literal root of medicine, because what our pharmaceuticals are based off of are actual plants and herbs right, if I can get to that, then there and this is like before I this was Liz's first thought that I am able to have an interaction with something, receive something that won't have these adverse side effects and will not only support me but will heal, like, actually heal me. I don't even need the medicine so that I can thrive and and not have to feel like I need this because before it was so, it was such a dependency. It was like I can't be Liz unless I have this like everything is mine as long as I can take rad or all the more day, you know, and I was just like wolf. That's. That's a tough relationship to be in with something Right, and that's even evolved now as I, as I understand like it's all about relationship and that relationship doesn't necessarily need to be like a certain substance, as much as like even just breathing Right, just with myself, right, like am I in my body right now, before I like reach for the substance or anything else. So it's, it's our evolving. Yeah, I think that's such a key component, like how you're starting this conversation today, of having awareness of the stories we're coming into this conversation with, like the lens we were taught and to view the world and see this topic, having awareness of that. And then this awareness applies to everything we do, like anytime you're reaching for something, taking that pause, and what is my intention? What is the relationship I'm having with myself in this moment and this, this other thing before me as well, yeah, that sacred pause, that that observation, before, just, you know, doing the building of the consciousness, before just acting right, which is empowering itself, empowering to be able to pose that space, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I think I'll move into the history and I think it's important that we know about the history for a few reasons, but it just gives a lot of context. So we know that mushrooms have been used for, or have been, I shouldn't say used, right, there's like these words, noticing the English language here yeah right, like a lot of indigenous, like which is? It's a verb, it's not even nouns, like they're not even things to be owned, it's a way of being so interesting that's a page from Robin Wall paper or reading sweet grass. But yeah, so they have. We've had a relationship with mushrooms, and as far back as 5000 ECE, so we're talking 7000 years ago, neolithic times, and we know this because of cave dries. The first recorded use or the first recorded relationship we know up with mushrooms is from an Algerian cave drying, and we also have cave drawings in Spain which I'm really excited about, and so through these cave drawings we know that our ancestors have come into contact with mushrooms, and for a very long time. We know in Guatemala, around like 15, 100 BCE, they had beautiful mushroom ceremonies and mushrooms were known as Teonana Cattle, which is flesh of the gods. We have the Rig Veda, which is an Indian drink, or the Soma, which is the drink, which not necessarily mushrooms, but it was some form of a psychedelic. And we have the Almanita Muscaria from the Shikatha people of Scytheria, which is like the Almanita Muscaria is the emoji that we see on our phones. Oh, the little mushroom emoji, the little mushroom emoji. It just always reminds me of like what's it called? Like Game Boy, mario Kart, exactly, yeah, yeah. And these mushrooms were used in a shamanic way, in a very like ritualistic, ceremonial way. We'll be on. We have the great Slater On in history interacting with mushrooms 2000 BCE, with, and this one was Urga, which is a fungus, and Urga is actually LSD. It's like the thing that activates with LSD does and Urga, but what that actually is is a fungus that grows on wheat. And so we have this. We know about the string called the Kaikyan that was used in these. I've heard these. They're called the Illicinian Mysteries and they're once called the Greeks back then like their birding man. What would be our like present day birding man is when in one time, bernat referred to us and I thought that was hilarious, because these Ellicinian Mysteries during this time was when leaders from all over would come and they would talk about like how they were going to lead for the rest of the year and different things like that would come up around theater and mathematics and science. It was like a solid, you know. But there was also a lot of partying and one of the main drinks was the Kaikyan, and before we just thought that it was alcohol. Right, they're just getting really drunk and having a good time. But now there's this amazing book what is it? The Road to Elysius, and it talks about the connection that we now find in the artifacts. Like we found the old cups with the Kaikyan and we found like proof that it actually had ergot in it. So we find that it wasn't just barley but it was ergot had barley. That was continued with ergot. So they were actually perhaps tripping. I think they're just like having a beer, but they're going on an adventure and I think like there's probably a full ritual around this. There was probably like a ritual to ensure that the ergot was growing, like you know, because I'm sure that this might have stumbled upon it. And then they realized what happened and they were like, oh, wow. So then it was intentional, yes, and it kind of became a part of the creation of the Kaikyan Right, because if you can imagine, like you know, having that experience versus being drunk, you're probably going to be like, wow, this is profound. Anyways, through the Elysianian Mysteries this is all just, again, stories right Through these you know big summits, if you will. They were highly regarded, like these gatherings. The Elysianian Mysteries were one of, if not could be one of, the most important events that happened during the year. And from these you know gatherings we find things like philosophy, flourishing, mathematics, new ways of thinking about science, democracy, like huge foundational pillars to our current culture, and so, again, just noticing, like how some of these earth medicines were used. Back in we go back in history. Do you know if that was like an intention of that ceremony time, if it was like we're gonna do this experience and we have the intention of, like you know, cultivating these other things, or was it something that just unfolded, like they had this ritual ceremony where these things were happening and then after these discoveries were occurring and it wasn't necessarily like we're gonna do X so we get Y I think it was both right. And you know, I will say I am not an expert in the Illiciting Mysteries in particular, and it's so interesting if we can dive into it more, around it and study up on it more. But from what I have read on it and what I do understand of it, I do what we do know is that it was a very, very important gathering. There was a lot of intention, there was a full ritual to it, like there was a beginning, a middle and an end. It had certain rates of passages, even with an end, of fuel could even attend. So I know that there was a lot of intention built around how it was conducted Right. And then from that we saw so much flourish and come from that Got it, yeah, yeah. So I guess I'm sure you're gonna go into this. But just how did we get from that to like the war on drugs knees y'all get to that. Well, I do want to speak first to Maria Sabina. Did we speak on her before? I think you might have mentioned her name and I've looked into her on my own sense. So I would love for you to speak to her and she's a bit confounded to that question as well. So we find out about this beautiful priestess and Gurandera named Maria Sabina. She is a Mazazteca priestess in Gurandera, from Mexico, wadla Oaxaca, mexico to be exact and we know, we find out about her through Gordon Wasson, who is a life magazine journalist, and what people don't normally know or say is it was actually his wife. That's Hanna. Yeah, tends to be that way, doesn't it? I'm not? No, yeah, yeah, you know, and he was, like you know, kind of the story goes, is he, you know, was very much in love with her and followed her wherever she took him, because she was such a brilliant mind, so intelligent, intelligent, intelligent at the botanist, and just knew all so many things about mushrooms and fun Vi and plants and was a huge enthusiast, earth enthusiast. And she found out about this priestess in Mexico conducting Baleras, which means like healing visuals, to union with God and experience enlightenment through the use of psychedelic mushrooms, through the use of psilocybin, and it was very much tied to Christianity, the way that she worked with the mushrooms At this time, like we had already had missionaries come in and, you know, do what they do in cultures, and so there's pictures that there's. You know, there's Jesus and their saints. It's very much like a holy ceremony that she's conducting with the use of the mushrooms and she's healing the sick and she is creating beautiful spiritual experiences for people and supporting her community through the mushrooms. And you remind me what time period this was again, yeah, 1937. Okay, yeah, I think long ago. Yeah, yes, exactly. And also 57 and 60s, during the height of 60s. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so so she's healing people. Yeah, so actually a quote and this is not a direct quote, this is a translation but she says the ninos Santos means little saints, which is how she endearingly called the mushrooms. So if you hear people call mushrooms the Sanos, that's an it's in reference to how Marie Sabina would name them. So she says the ninos Santos heal. They lower fevers, cure colds and give freedom from toothaches. They pull the evil spirits out of the body or free the spirit from the sick. Hmm, so Gordon Watson, being the journalist that he is, decides to go down and meet Maria Sabina, and Maria Sabina, being the beautiful priestess that she is, lovingly welcomes him in, as she does anyone who shows up at her door and they, she does a whole story on her and her visuals and just like whole documentation on it, and he publishes this article in lifetime magazine and the thing about that is I don't know if there was permission right, and I don't even know if she would even know how to get permission to this right. So this is published out during the sixties and next thing, you know, we see weights of people from the states coming to experience Maria Sabina and we're talking a small little village with little to no infrastructure that has, you know, just enough to support their community, all of a sudden receiving all of these foreigners. So Westerners are completely overwhelming. Yes, this little village, yes, yes, and it's, it's a lot. At one point the authorities are like, why are you serving these Westerners drugs, you know? And she is, of course, like accepting everyone and she is saying like I can't deny anyone if they would like, and I'm going to get like she's just doing what she in, what she feels is her duty. And there's just like all these people coming in and even like big names, like I think, like Led Zeppelin, even that he talked about it and it just kind of became a popular thing. And here we are again, like if we can kind of just zoom out and look at what can happen and you know, I don't want to demonize anyone here or I don't, I don't even feel I think like casting blame even on Gordon Watson is a part of the problem. I think it's more of understanding what happens when you have really hungry, like culturally hungry people, right, I think it goes back to kind of how you started this conversation too and we looked at the word use, like again, we're seeing we're using this thing versus seeing that there's a relationship with it, and we use things and approach it from this Western approach of take versus having. That lies relationship with people, with the earth, with everything. Yeah, and so you know, maria Sabina eventually gets outcasted from her community at one point, right, all skits burned down Like it's a whole. It's a tragedy, it's a full-on tragedy. What happens to her A quote again translated is I realized the young people with long hair didn't need me to eat the little things. Kids eat them anywhere, at any time, and they did it with respect to their customs. And this just kind of shows again what happens when we are a part of a transactional society, a transactionally based culture. Right, it's like a tragedy happens, right, we lose respect, we don't know how to be in relationship with things, ellen. And so, yeah, I just like to speak to Maria Sabina because, first off, we wouldn't even know about mushroom ceremonies or this custom and all of that word for that article being published and also just like a wording of like this is what can happen when we fun to the table starting. I was listening to this podcast with my teacher and sweet sister, mara Dawn. She leads the psychedelic leadership podcast and they were talking about rituals and flaking on his name right now we can maybe put the show notes, but she was talking about how, cultural appropriation, and this is what happens when, like, you come to the table starting and you're just like eating and eating, you're just taking and taking and like how can we come to the table with an offering, even you know, oh, that's a great reframe, yeah, and I think that's so important that we name that context today because, especially in the West, as psilocybin is becoming more, I guess, like accepted and like in the therapy space and whatnot really being intentional, but how can we not appropriate, which I mean we are, but how can we do it? I guess in more of a relational way. What offering can we bring? How can we do less harm in this? Yes, exactly Because we all need, I mean. We mean that we have a desire. It proves that we have a desire to have customs and a culture that we love and rituals and meeting making like we all need, meeting making like we don't need to be depressed, right, we'll have weaning making involved. We all have this like desire and it's a necessity, right Of being human to have these customs. It's just how do we do that again in a way where it's regenerative right and it's it's an IIT right, it's in a beautiful reciprocal relationship with things, and that's just going to take time and restoration, mm-hmm. And so the the main takeaway that I have from the cave drawings and learning about Riyasovina and learning about other ancestors. I also just want to say that mushrooms can be found, for psychedelic mushrooms can be found all over the world, all over the world, which means that all of our ancestors came into contact with that Right. So, like, unlike you know, things like ayahuasca and other psychedelic earth medicines, it's safe to say that all of our ancestors, at one point at a time, came into contact with mushrooms, which is so beautiful and amazing, right, and like I always think about the mycelial network and how you know, it's the worldwide web, it's the big connector of everything, and like I see that within all of our ancestors, like all of our ancestors, intelligence and minds were at some point connected through this one thing, which is mushrooms, fungus, and so like, yes, this is something that you can begin to tap into, like maybe your ancestry and your lineage, and yeah, I just think that's so cool to think about. And one of the main takeaways is our ancestors interacted with these in ceremony and in these ceremonies. It wasn't just like, oh, I'm going to take this and maybe something will happen. It was very intentional and they went into ceremony to receive the wisdom from the earth. They went into ceremony to become better ancestors, right. They went into ceremony to become better community members, to heal, to learn, to expand and also to learn how to play and be a human, right, how beautiful is that. And then we get mixed and then we get the more hand drugs and so as okay. So if we go back to our speed, we have this big influx of people. Everyone's like, oh, my gosh, the mushrooms we've got like the grapefruit diet going. We've got just everything. That is the first wave of psychedelics in American history and it is so not rooted. Like there are no, like integration wasn't even a thing. Right, it's all over the place. Can you briefly speak to integration for that? Yes, I don't know what that is. Yes, so integration is the is a framework or a concept around after you interact with psychedelics. How do you weave that into your Monday, like, how do you begin to embody the wisdom that you received, rather than just taking it and then, oh, that was a cool experience I had and nothing changes after that. Right, like, so how do you begin to embody in your presence, show, like, show up differently in your life based off of this, like really beautiful, most of the time intense experience that you might have. So that's the end of. We can go more into integration, more, because that's a big thing that I'm in right now, yeah, yeah, and I think, like that's everything Right, it's that right, yeah, yeah. So the back to yeah and knowing was integrating them. We didn't know, like it was just getting everything I mean we had. This is when we have Richard Alpert, who was actually Bob Aramdas, that he, at the time, was a Harvard's professor and he gets fired because of, you know, his love for and advocation about LSD and all of the research that he was doing on it and, mind you, okay, so before we even had Nixon. So actually let me backtrack because this is before Nixon, before that even happens. From 1947 to 1970, we have over 40,000 patients in over 1000 studies using psychedelics, in particular psilocybin and LSD, and we're finding in amazing results like the medical field is just like whoa, like amazing, by these medicines. And then in the middle of that, in the 60s is when we had the hippies, counterculture etc. Happen. So in the 1970s, when we have Nixon and the war on drugs, so like this is all kind of leading to this, and then we have this is when Richard Alpert it's round us comes in and Timothy Leary and they're doing like all these amazing studies and research on them. There's some really cool studies that came out, a lot of them revolving around like how you have like really beautiful mystical experiences, but on these substances and but because it was unbridled, because it was all about place, I mean, if we just look back at some of the pictures of like you know, all tomorrow in that free concert and like just some of the other things, like the Jimi Hendrix era, like it was, it was a shit show. And all of a sudden, the government there was a lot, and because there was a lot of psychedelic use psychedelics would be geo is they had the question, everything. So a lot of the youth were questioning the government, they were questioning the systems, they began to take agency and a power back and question everything, but it came at a rate that caused so much chaos that Richard Nixon and the government were like we have got to do something. So then we see the world, the controlled substance act making the psychedelic drugs illegal. But this they also deemed them with no medical value After years and years of research that were maybe just starting to tap into again Exactly, exactly, and you know there were some like heroes were risking their lives and still, you know, underground continuing research. But yeah, it was yeah, and we also have been had everything that needed to shift our to control, take back the control right to bring everyone back under control and press, respect the government again, and all these things again. This is Liz's how she is looking at this. This is when we then see narrative painting. This is when we then see this is your brain on drugs. And all of a sudden mushrooms are now trucks, lsd is now a drug, right? And if we look back, like Urgot was used by the Greeks, so there's all of a sudden they're bumped into these controlled substances and you know, we see the egg cracking in the skillet. Like this is your brain on drugs and all of the like. Your child's going to jump out of the window if they take these and just all of the propaganda that came out of that. And it wasn't just like a little bit, it was, it took over the culture, right, it was effective. Like that is still common in many people's minds when they think about mushrooms, when they think about, you know, psychedelics. It's like so ingrained to the point where we don't even realize it until we question it. I did, I literally thought when I heard people talk about LSD and like when I'm code of fish shows always things I remember, like if I were to interact with them I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna take this, but I know like I can't take a lot because it's taking a scoop out of my brain. That's literally what the very tip was in my head. Like I found like, oh, if I take these mushrooms, like I gotta be careful because it's going to actually harm my brain, right? Wow, how powerful is that? It was definitely how I even thought about them, and I'm talking like even just five years ago, you know, and it wasn't until I did this dive where I was like I hate, like you were completely like, I felt lied to, I was like what is going on? I also want to note this. So in 1982, this is later down the line we also have Terrence McKenna's stolen to eight pipes hypothesis, which I find so interesting, and it's about how psilocybin and mushrooms led to human evolution and rapidly advanced cognition, especially within language and spirituality, and this hypothesis was formed to explain because we had this unknown explanation and event. That's happening. If you study evolution, you learn about how the human brain somehow we don't know how tripled in size in just two billion years. That is a drastic jump, when you like look at the trajectory of everything. And so there's been many hypotheses as to why this happened, why this crazy drop tripled in size in just two million years. And Terrence McKenna then comes up with this Because this also happens to coincide with the time when hunters and gatherers are interacting with mushrooms. So that's super interesting and I loved learning about this because then, when I read the Brotilisius and learned about the Greeks and how you know we have philosophy and education, all these things, and how they may have been interacting with Urgot, which is what we know as LSD, I find that super interesting, right, like this brain enhancing and expanding substances used for human evolution, like, wow, wow, how powerful is that? Yeah, and we can even like go into how LSD is actually the foundation of SSRIs. It was actually what are SSRIs? Ssris are what a lot of people are prescribed for things such as anxiety and depression. Yeah, it's like the first line of action gone in for for those doctors and in the medical field as of right now in the Western society. I'm hoping that story changes, but that's the go-to, yeah, and that's something, like you know, you could feel into. But again, there's a lot of repercussions when we all of a sudden deemed something that was once so sacred now like a problem. There is a lot of fear still around these medicines and I mean, I've sat with these medicines in ceremony and outside of ceremony and there is still an amount of anxiety and fear before going in, right, because and that's a healthy part of our respects that it has through these substances. And yet, like I really hope we can all start to begin to dismantle some of the fear that was built around fake science and just like, not you know, yeah, I think that's really important to name is that, like, as we're debunking things that we were taught and understanding what isn't isn't true. It doesn't mean that, like, everyone should just take psychedelics all the time and be totally nonchalant about it. Like you do need to have respect for it and they are powerful. So, being really, really intentional about the use, in the way in which it's used, and not just like nonchalantly and recklessly, yeah, and harmfully using substances yeah, great. And again, like, how can we come back to the ancestral way of working with this medicine in a spiritual, sacred, intentional way? Right, because we all saw what happened with the first wave of psychedelics. Right, it was, it was, it was insane. You know we had a lot of harm actually done because there was no free works, there was no like this is there was no talk about. Like set and setting. Right, it was just like whoa shit, I just took 10 grams and now I like cause more trauma. Right, because you were not ready for that experience and you were not properly held and you were not in a safe place to go there, right? So we, as this you know, this time period has kind of been labeled this second wave, or like the psychedelic renaissance, if you will, of these medicines, and how can we ensure that that doesn't happen again? Like, there's so many different things that we're learning as humans as we come back into interaction with these medicines. But I just like to remember, like you know, this is this is deep. For me, it's deeply spiritual and also like spirituality can be fine and silly, like I don't. I also don't want to be that person. That's like you need to have a, like a thwam, like shaman, and you know like, and that doesn't speak to you, that doesn't speak to you. You know Like there's, there's something to be said about, like getting a bunch of your friends together and having like an amazing interacting with these as well too, right, right, if that's expanding your capacity to feel like pleasure and joy, like that's a part of medicine, and especially as you can bring that into your everyday life, right, because we know that, like love and compassion actually activates much more of our brain than anger and fear, right and like leads to health, right, leads to mentality, leads to thriving as a human. So, yeah, that's and I think that's also why we now see microdosing being such a popular thing is because, like, it's incremental, it's such a small amount. So when you talk about microdosing, we're talking about a sub-persexual amount, so you're not even taking enough to really be aware that you even took it. It's like you take it and then you look back on your day and you're like, wow, I was really present. And so it's almost like, thank you described it to me as fairy dust, yeah. And then you're like you're like fairy dust, yeah. And then again, going back to Maria Sabina and our culture, we're in a culture right now that just wants the one and done Like, just give me the medicine and cure me. Now, just, let me not feel this way anymore, just let me be healed, right in this instant gratification. Let me just get on the Instagram and get that instant like. Once I post Like, let me get that validation, this like form of starvation, right, that's going on. And if we can start to look at the healing journey, look at the medical system or the way that we treat medicines and our bodies and the healing process in a way that is more relational, incremental, slow, right. I, you know, I hear a lot about like quantum leaping and things like huge shifts, and I'm like, yes, I believe in miracles. Hell to the guess, like miracles happened to me in each and every day, especially today, is a mantra that I have every morning and I so profoundly know this to be true. And yet how do we still? How do we stay like, how do we tie, treat this? How do we stay embodied through the process of healing so that we don't have a freezing withdrawal? We don't have this. You know what is the word. We don't, you know, spiral back into our old ways. How do we make it so that's sustainable and regerative and it makes lasting transformation in our life? Right and just like when you plan to see, and it takes watering, it and attention and sunlight and community and time. That's what our healing requires, right? So it's not like you're going to go take five grams of mushrooms and be completely healed. You know, like, we signed up to be humans and a human timeline, right, and we signed them to be on the earth, but on the earth's timeline and in a timeline that is, you know, in time is construct, but on a, there is a natural order to things, right, and we have us be respected. And not only must it be respected, but it's where the magic really is. You know, yeah, like miracles, like you were saying before, don't have to be big, grand gestures. They're the small little things every day, they're breathing when you wake up in the morning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's like I forget who. It's an indigenous saying of like you're not actually growing up until you're in your fifties. I don't like yes, yeah, yes, right, right, right, like, can we just? And I feel like you start getting young again. I feel like the older you get, the more playful you should get, exactly, exactly, and so that's what I really love. Working with micro dosing is because it kind of requires us to like. So how was to slow this down? You know, like the nervous system. We have a nervous system. We are, our human bodies are built with minerals and cells and atoms and it has like a divine structure to it and again, it follows a divide order. And for things to actually land, for integration to actually happen, for change to actually become a part of our DNA, it requires like a certain process, right, and it takes a certain, it takes a pace that we can really embody, right. Just this word embody is really big for me because, you know, one of my dear friends has a lyric in its song and it's like fully risen or fully rooted, fully risen, and there might be fully anchored, fully risen, but I say deeply rooted, fully risen, and it's just this idea of like. How can we remember so deeply that we are humans on this earth and we have chosen to be human and there's so much mud and bickiness and angst and anger and tears and frustration and all of its here and like pleasure and all the things that come with being human. That's amazing. And we have the fricking cosmos and we have this spiritual connection to source and there's angels always around us, whether we can see them or not, and we have like this, like spiritual realm and this like divinity to us. And how do we stay anchored while experiencing that and weaving that into everything and finding that like middle ground and like that to me, is integration right? Yes, and how can we hold the opposites right? That's wholeness, and I think we are often taught either or, but like wholeness, our existence. To me, yoga, union, is that embodiment of both, of the juxtaposition of everything and every moment, exactly, yeah. Yeah, there's so much we can say about that. You know I'm a part of many beautiful groups in the psychedelic arena and you know I do see how there's just ceremony after ceremony happening and all of these outlets going on and it's there's like just this big wave and I think what I mainly like and I said this on someone else's podcast it's like it's I don't even think that I would have expected to be taking these right now. Yeah, no, yeah. And I think that just speaks to the fact that, again, something that I truly believe, like when I'm interacting with mushrooms and eating the earth, and I am the earth, right, like human humus, like the Latin root, as humus, which is soil, is human, which is huma symbol, right, it's like all the same thing. I come from the ground, I am the ground and therefore, when I'm interacting with something that is out the earth, I'm interacting with myself to some extent, and so it's just highlighting it, activating wisdom, no cysts, just wise and are knowing that. I already know it's already in here. It's just shining a big old flashlight on it and sometimes it's such a great light, it can be so extremely, overwhelmingly beautiful that it brings me to my knees and all and I'm like, wow, how can I have forgotten my hearing? And wow, and a lot of it doesn't like, can't be said in words, english just doesn't do it. And I think this is so going back to this question of you know, what does the world mean right now? What is our Madison? A lot of it for me is a resurgence and a reharmonization of the feminine, of weaving back in the feminine into our lives. Right, I affiliate the earth. I mean the earth has both elements, masculine and feminine, but I see the earth in general, the land at least, as the body, as the feminine, and then the head more of like a masculine. And how can we make this, like you know, long journey back another made of American problem how do we make the longest journey from our head to our heart? How do we take that journey back down to the heart, back down into the body? We have become so head mind based, so controlling. It's like everything. We have to have a plan, we have to know everything and we have slowly lost the knowing of our body in that process, or we have deemed it not important, or like that's like animalistic and primal and that on the hierarchy. That's not as moral even as what you can do with educational things through the mind. Does that make sense? That was the first time I've ever been to something like that. Wow, I've been to something like that, wow, yeah, I think, like when you first held space for that question, like I think a lot of it for me is what I've been exploring through this podcast is like how we can reconnect, like to ourselves, to one another and to the natural world, and I think that's so much of what is capable when we live with awareness and intention. And I think mushrooms are a part of ourselves, that, like you were saying, like there, that it mimics the serotonin. It's not changing anything, it's not adding anything new, but it's just saying like, remember, remember this, like, and I think what we are in deep deprivation of and need in the world today is that reconnection of our relationship with the earth and then that repulsing to everyone and everything as well. But I think, similar to what you said, is like that's where the divine feminine can come in. It's not about control and dominance, it's about care and relationship and maybe that's what is possible in this, you know, second wave, this renaissance of mushrooms can be like, with more emphasis on microdosing. There can be more emphasis on that embodiment and intention and integration to help us remember and to help us reconnect. Yeah, yeah, this, this deep remembering of how to be human through. You know what that means for us. You know, like, how, how do we reconnect to the land? How do you know? There's even a a part of me that believes like, even if we could heal our relationship to food, so much can be done, because healing our relationship to food is healing our relationships in the hand, which is healing our relationship to our bodies. I mean, there is no coincidence when we look at how we treat our bodies and like the food system and the devastation that is our food system real, and then the links in the correlation to the ecological crisis going on right now. You know, a microcosm to a microcosm, it's it's all related. If we can start to heal that relationship that we have with the food and how we grow it and what we put into our bodies, knowing that that's everything and so important, and if that's the fuel and the energy that we give out as humans, only then will we start to see a shift in the climate and in everything that's going on with the earth, right, and the devastating, you know. And again, there's that transactional relationship of like, let me take, take, take these resources without having a self, the generation mindset, right, this, this Native American mindset of like. Well, what about the future? What about, like grandkids, you know, like, how can we incorporate that into our decisions? Point. You know where can someone start as they want to rewrite their story, with their relationship with psychedelics and or the earth, like, how can we start to begin again here? Follow the threads. I think something that's so beautiful about being a human and living on earth is how we each are so highly unique, right, we each have such a beautiful like, I'm imagining, like all of these different rundallas, we each have such a beautiful, unique cone and blueprints and frequency as a human that was weaved by many, many ancestors, hands, like in many different experiences you had had as a human. And so, whatever there, maybe there was something that I said that triggered you, or maybe there was something that I said that just had a profound pause within you. Follow that like. Whatever that is, you know, like, listen to those, those little tugs, that kind of like stop you in your tracks and your tracks and then just take that one step at a time and see where it leads you. All threads. Thank you so much for that. Yeah, thank you so much for all of your time and wisdom that you shared with us today. For those who sound a thread, then maybe they want to continue to connect with you. Do you mind sharing about? I'll have all your stuff in the show notes to just ways people can support you and your work. Yeah, yeah. So my website is rewildspiritcom. On the int, on the Instagram world, I'm a Liz the letter B Wildin and I also have a rewildspirit as an account. I have a microdiscinquish that will be coming out. It'll be self paced, and then I'm also also be holding a group and then I do a lot of one on one programs with people to kind of just build resiliency with nervous system and get to know each individual personally. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to how the wise one grows today. If this podcast has been meaningful to you in some way, you can support it by joining the dream team for as little as $3 a month. There's a link to join in the show notes, and you can also support this podcast by sharing an episode you love with a friend and leaving a review.