Micro-Dosing Psilocybin, Clutter & Coming Home to Yourself with Karen Bush | Heather Aardema

How does your work connect to physical, mental, and emotional clutter?

Well, this is really the reason why I reached out to you, honestly. As you know, in functional medicine, certainly we talk about detoxification, inflammation, things like that within the body, the body holding on to things emotionally, physically. Our minds, and the work that I do in functional medicine certainly addresses those things. The added component that I've brought in over the last 4 to 5 years is the microdosing integration, which allows people to actually access a way of breaking down those barriers and patterns that we've lived with somewhat unconsciously all our lives and allows us also to let go of those things. So from a physical perspective, but an emotional perspective. So that's how I would say it, it kind of connects with decluttering.

So you mentioned microdosing. What, what does that mean?

So microdosing certainly has a lot of different connotations. People microdose lots of different things. They talk about GLP-1s now too. So for me, microdosing is microdosing psychedelics, which is, in particular for my work, is psilocybin. So magic mushrooms, some people know them as that. People can microdose lots of different things. But what microdosing really means is that it is a very, very small dose of psychedelics. So if we're talking about psilocybin, it can be anywhere from 25 milligrams up to about 200, 250 milligrams. And the language around it initially started out as sub-perceptual, but we don't— that really doesn't hit the mark because we are perceiving certain things. It's really sub-threshold. You are not at a place where you're actually experiencing hallucinations or any of the stuff that you would experience with a higher dose, but you're experiencing a gentle opening of patterns and ways of thinking, and the mushrooms kind of go where you need them to go. So microdosing is a gentle sort of path that you can kind of step your toe into the world of psychedelics for healing, for creativity, for many other reasons people go in there. But that's what microdosing really is. It's small amounts.

Okay. And is it, is it a long experience when you're microdosing? Give us a little bit more of the basics, the experience, and then I want to go deeper into what it opens up for us.

Okay, great. Yeah. So the experience really is, the container that I really think is, is effective and helpful for people is about 3 months. And so you're microdosing in small amounts with a schedule throughout those days. Some people do it 5 days on, 2 days off. Some people do it 4 days on, 3 days off. There are a couple of different protocols out there. There is the Fadiman protocol where you're 1 day on, 2 days off. And so the reason that people are off for a few days originally started out because they weren't quite sure what the buildup response would be. So if you know about any medications that if you take them long enough, they can build up in your, your system. Nobody really knew if that would happen. So to be safe, they sort of titrated it out where you're not taking it every single day. But the secondary information that came from that, from listening to how people were experiencing it, one day on and two days off, is that in those days off, more things came up for them. So on the days that you're not actually dosing, you may notice more things. Maybe it's more intuitive thinking, maybe it's more groundedness, maybe it's connection in ways that you don't normally experience.

Okay. I've never done this before, so I'm, I'm really interested in everything that you have to say and the possibilities from it. You are an integration guide. And so what does that mean?

Love that question because I think that the integration is actually the most important part. So oftentimes people have taken psychedelics, they've maybe done bigger doses, they've had this transcendent experience over an evening or a weekend, and then there's nothing. Maybe they experienced some things, they had this amazing mystical experience, but really the important part of it is how do you integrate that into your life? The learning that you've had. And in microdosing, it's a subtle learning and it's sort of opening up certain things for people and helping them see, creating awareness, paying attention to their intuition. So the integration part of it is really sort of teasing that out a little bit. And the way that we do that is through a lot of nervous system regulation kind of practices, somatic breathwork. We do that with, um, journaling, creative work. Sometimes people do art projects. Maybe they get back to something that they enjoyed when they were a kid, coloring, something that just sort of gets you to focus and allows you to slow down the chaos of life and maybe allow what the mushrooms are showing you to come up. And then you pay attention to that and we, we learn to integrate it into our days. How are you going to come to this differently? How will you come to your life in a different way?

I can see the importance of that because if otherwise almost what's the point if you're not going to integrate the experience that you've had into the possibilities. And so I think that's a, it sounds like a really powerful experience to have as a guide and even, and then for the person who's having or doing the microdosing, the 2 days on, 1 day off, or however it looks. For them to have that guide to help them explore in a safe way. You talked about nervous system regulation. What are some of the other things that you do in that integration?

So, you know, as a coach, right, we meet people where they are and we help them get where they want to go, but it's often driven by what that person is experiencing. So in my sessions with people, you know, we'll start out, if they've got something they need to, they want to bring to the session, and they want to explore, then that's what we explore, right? And so in that exploration, asking the right questions, helping them to kind of put together what they might've experienced. So for example, I had a client, I love this, this lady, she's older. She went back for her MFA at an age that most people are not going back to college, but she also has some challenging relationships and she, in her microdosing, what she realized was that the usual pattern of, you know, I go to my family's house and it's a difficult situation. I gotta watch what I say. I don't stay very long. That all kind of fell away and she felt more open to the people that she was with. She stayed a little bit longer. She was the one that could step back from something that normally triggered her into a response. And look at it objectively and say, you know, I don't need to respond that way. And so the more we talked about it, the more it helped her kind of understand how can I carry this into other experiences in my life and how can I shift the way that I think about this? I'm not always going to be microdosing. People don't do it infinity, you know, you're not going to be doing it every day, the rest of your life. What you really want is to learn like, okay, I responded differently in that situation and it was okay. My nervous system was calm. I didn't need to go where I normally went. And I realize I'm safe and it's okay. So that's really, you know, the integration is really, I have some ideas. I have some questions in my head that sort of spur information for people. I will share that with them and say, you know, Maybe you wanna think about this and journal a little bit around it. If people aren't journalers, I don't expect them to do that because that's not gonna work. Or if they're not meditators, that's not gonna work. But what contemplative practice can you use to just create a little bit of space? And it's really a spiritual practice. That's the other thing that I would share is that even though the dose may come to you in a tablet or a capsule, it's not taking another supplement. It's really, there is a spiritual component to it that you need to make some space for it and create some time for yourself.

Say more about this spiritual aspect to the microdosing.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's really all, that's what the crux of it. And we know that in functional medicine, there is a spiritual component. We can't go there right away. We got to talk about nutrition. We got to talk about exercise. And we can sort of sneak in a little bit of this, you know, what does spirituality mean to you? And often I'll say, you know, that can mean anything from, I feel something greater than me out in the woods, all the way to organized religion, whatever that means to you. But this spiritual thing is really, it's internal. It's how do I get to the core of who I am and how I came to this world? What are my gifts? What might I be ignoring that maybe is something that feeds my soul spiritually. And so oftentimes people will, you know, talking about the decluttering thing again, people maybe let go of a job that really doesn't feel in alignment with them. Maybe they let go of people in their life that aren't in alignment. It's something that they realize after doing this, gosh, that doesn't really speak to the energy that I want in my life. And so from a spiritual perspective, that's what it is. You're going inside, you are looking at things. The mushrooms really open up things that maybe we have to pay attention to that we chose maybe not to. And, you know, I don't define spirituality for anyone. I want them to sort of take that on for themselves. But when I think of it as a spiritual practice, it's really a quieting down of all the distractions in our lives. And going where you need to go from that spiritual perspective.

What a beautiful response. Thank you. What a beautiful response. And I'm just thinking that it also, you know, you talked about alignment and it sounds like it helps to get you to know yourself better and to know that you're worth it and that you're worthy. And and what is it that you would really like to experience in this lifetime?

Yeah, absolutely. I think what's challenging about that and psychedelics have had, they're in a renaissance right now. People are talking about them all over the place. There's lots of information out there. And what I want to help people to understand too is that it isn't all just rainbows and happiness and, you You know, if mushrooms go where you need them, sometimes those are places that are difficult to open up, but they have to be opened up because they actually can be the catalyst that's leading to, you know, inflammation, autoimmune disease, any physical or emotional ailment or dis-ease has some roots in what might not be something that we're paying attention to. So it's not always easy, but in the microdosing way, it's a slow sort of path into that. And so that's where I feel like it's really incredibly helpful for people. You don't have to go off and do a big journey right off the bat. You may do microdosing and then decide to go there, which is kind of what I did. That was my personal experience. I didn't necessarily, as, as we mentioned, this is not something that I did when I was in high school or college. Not that that's a bad thing. I mean, people do it recreationally. And that's fine. That just wasn't my path. And my path has always been as a spiritual seeker. And so in that path, I sort of read Michael Pollan's book and I thought, well, that sounds really interesting. I'd love to do that.

Which book? Which book of his?

How to Change Your Mind about psychedelics.

Yep. Okay.

He's got a Netflix series. He doesn't necess— he goes through a couple of different types of psychedelics, but But that really piqued my interest because meditation was a really important piece of my life. And he said something like, you could get to that, you know, transformative or, you know, that, that experience like that you're seeking in meditation with psychedelics. It's not a shortcut. I will tell you that it's definitely not a shortcut, but that piqued my interest and I filed it away. Then I, you know, it just kept coming to me. Another person who came into my life on my podcast, talked about integration, Casey Garrett. She runs Microdosing for Healing, which I am in a mastermind with a bunch of different guides who are really amazing people. And, you know, I still filed it away and thought, yeah, I'll do that sometime. And then my sister got sick and it really rocked my world. She had triple negative breast cancer and I was her primary person. I essentially moved in with her, my dog, and I left my husband. She, She only lived about 10 minutes away, so it wasn't very far, but it was 5 months of really difficult, challenging time. And she passed away in my arms. And I thought, you know, I've done, I've done therapy. That's been really good for me over my lifetime, but I think I need something different for this. And so I really ended up coming to it in a more formalized way through grief. And I think that's also another thing that can show up as cluttering internally and externally. Our internal clutter can show up as external clutter. We're not getting rid of things. We're keeping things, you know, in our homes because we've got grief or something that we're burying. So that was my introduction to it. And it is, it was incredibly transformative. As you see, I'm tearing up a little bit. You know, it's not gone. It doesn't go away. You still love that person, but you can see it in a different way. And it really opened me up. If it's okay, I'll share another anecdote. You know, I have two sisters, one of them, seven years older than me. The one that passed away was only two years older. And after my— and we were very close. We were just, we were raised together. And after she passed away, I found myself sort of putting up some barriers and walls around my other sister. That didn't feel right. You know? And I realized, like, when I started microdosing, I kind of came out of a shell a little bit. I was a little more talkative. When she would call, I'd pick up the phone. And I just didn't have those walls up. I would talk to her and it felt so much better. I didn't want to be that way, but I couldn't find my way out of it in the sorrow and grief that I had. Yeah. And so that was really, really, again, another transformative thing. And even when I'm not microdosing, I can kind of do a breath practice or come back to that embodied feeling of what that was like. It felt good to talk to her that way. And I need to do that more often. So it's a learning process and you have to reach back to the things and the tools that you use during this time to bring you back into it when you're not actually microdosing. And that's the learning. It creates new neural pathways for us.

What if somebody is worried that, well, what if I try microdosing and then I like it so much and then I'm doing it constantly and then I become addicted to microdosing? What would you say to that person?

First of all, what I would first say is that psilocybin really doesn't have any addictive qualities to it, which is why I think it's one of the better choices. There are other psychoactive, what they would call psychedelics, like ketamine, which can be highly addictive. And what ends up happening, this is, the mushrooms are so intelligent. Oh my gosh. I mean, I think about the mycelium in our bodies when we, we do mushrooms. They stay there, they grow, they kind of inform us. And what ends up happening is when you start healing these things, you actually need less of it. You don't, it's not something, it's not a substance where you go, oh, I need more. I need more. Now I'm not saying that if you have an addictive type personality and you feel like you want to, you need it to get there. Well, it's not physically addictive. Like it can be like if you feel like you emotionally need something, But the mushrooms will also stop working if you're doing them in a way that isn't serving you. So oftentimes I've had people say to me, you know, I'm not noticing anything. And I'll say, maybe it's time to take a break. And so they are so intelligent and so beautiful, and they connect you to a place in yourself that really balances and aligns you. So, and that's what I would say about psilocybin itself.

Okay. Okay. And you just said they connect you to a place inside and maybe it's a place that you, where that connection has been buried or you've been distracted. And so it kind of brings you, sounds like it brings you back home to yourself.

Wow. Absolutely beautifully said, Heather. It does. It brings us back. And sometimes, as we said, you know, I mentioned people sometimes let go of relationships. They let go of certain things in their life. You know, it can change your entire life in a way that maybe could be difficult in the beginning, but ultimately probably a good thing that you do. I've had people tell me, you know, I did a psilocybin journey and I kind of blew up my life, but in a way that needed to happen. If we're in a relationship, relationship that isn't serving us. And I think sometimes people are afraid to do that. I did have somebody that I was talking to about it that said, you know, I'm really nervous to do that because I feel like it's going to show me that I should probably leave my husband and, and I don't want to do that. But that was a person being honest, but that may not have been what happened. Maybe what it showed her was that she needed to open up to certain things. And shift her perspective about something. And maybe it isn't that that person is the wrong person for you, but your relationship grows in a different way. And then you have to just expand yourself. Yes.

I love that reframe. That's such a powerful reframe. So I want to go back just to the kind of the logistics of it again, to make sure I understand. So it's something that you can do on one day, off two days, or on two days, off one day. It sounds like it's a little pill. Um, do you feel, how do you feel when you are taking it and how long does that last? And can you still go to work that day? Can you still, you know, go to the grocery store or when do you come out of it? If that's even the right way to talk about it.

No, Heather, those are perfect questions because again, you know, people hear psychedelics and they think I'm going to hallucinate and I'm going to be, you know, incapacitated and I should be just going inside and staying in the house. When you're microdosing, those things are not what you're feeling. So you would take it first thing in the morning often. And, you know, when I work with people, we talk about what might be a good dose for them, how they might want to take it. Initially, you take it pretty consistent with that dosing schedule, whatever you decide, but first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. And it takes somewhere about a half an hour to an hour for you to start to notice certain things. And those things are going to be super subtle. They're again, subtle things. Like, I feel a little more talkative. I feel a little more connected to nature. Maybe I want to be outside a little bit more. Lots of people like to get in their garden and do more gardening, but you're, you're able to go through your everyday life. You're able to go to work. You can drive a car, you can go to the grocery store. You're not incapacitated in a way that is dangerous at all. It is just this subtle, beautiful, and most times beautiful. Sometimes people feel more fatigued, but that's the mushrooms telling you maybe you need to rest a little bit more. You know, people have said to me, I just feel like I need a nap. And I say, well, maybe you do. Are you getting enough rest? Is your rest restorative? Are you going, going, going too much? So you can do everything you would do in your normal day. Which is really beautiful. So the life of it in a day is about 3 to 5 hours, depending on who you are. Now, the reason I love the connection between functional medicine is that the gut microbiome is really a key to how well you absorb what you're taking. So if you have a healthy microbiome and you're, you know, eating good probiotic and prebiotic foods, and you've got a good diversity of bacteria, and in fact, there is new research coming out about how it shifts the microbiome in a really positive way. Diversity in the microbiome. I know it's phenomenal. I have a Google alert set for psilocybin and gut microbiome. So I get all the information about it when it comes out hot off the press, but it's also anti-inflammatory. So in traditional practices with psychedelics, they often do things called dietas, which is a way to prepare yourself to do one of the ceremonies. And that's usually, you know, eating very lightly, not many fats, letting go of meat products that might be a little too heavy. It's really a very light way of eating. But, you know, in functional medicine, often we'll talk about getting rid of gluten, dairy, sugar, doing sort of an elimination diet. So I pair those things if people want that. I'll do the microdosing integration on its own if they feel like they've, you know, hit those pieces of lifestyle and health. It's always weaved in there. I can't not talk about it. So So that's kind of how it rolls out on a daily basis. You're going to eat, like if, if the dose is a little too high, depending on what you're feeling, sometimes you can feel unfocused. There could be a little nausea. It's so rare that I have people that feel that way because we start low and then we kind of work our way up so that people start to notice how they feel.

How do you even start with this? Is it a doctor that prescribes? The, you don't go to a store, do you? And just say, hi, I'd like to buy a, how do you do it?

Oh, no, no, no. So in the United States, it's, you know, you're in Colorado, it's legal in Colorado. You can gift and grow it. So in Colorado, there are places that you can go and get psilocybin. In Oregon, it's legal as well. In lots of other places, it's decriminalized, which sort of means it's not the highest priority, especially if it's a small personal amount. So there are ways that people can go and get it from a really safe place. I don't have, I am not the person that gives it to them. I keep that very separate. I do the integration, but there are, there are, you know, really safe places that you can go and get psilocybin. So it's usually in a capsule form. Some people do it in a tablet. And so that's how people usually get it. It's not legal in most places except for You know, as I said, Colorado and Oregon.

Why trust people? Why, why did this become illegal in the first place? Because at a certain point it wasn't. All of these things were— plant medicine has been used for years and decades and centuries. And so why, why did it become deemed that it was bad for us?

Well, you know, there's a lot of different theories out there. I think, you know, initially what we can say for sure is that it was, you know, a government sort of ban on drugs, thinking that it was dangerous. I mean, the research way back when in the '90s was really around addiction, the same thing that we're talking about now. Like, it is incredibly powerful to help people get off of alcohol or drugs. It is also incredibly helpful for PTSD or depression or anxiety. So all of these things, and in fact, AA, which you know as Alcoholics Anonymous, the person, Bill, who started AA, it started with a psychedelic experience for him. And that, that is not very well known, but it did actually. And you can find research to support that. But I think it, it sort of got to a place where I think the government thought it was going to get out of control and we shouldn't allow people to have this. And so they shut the whole thing down and it was still underground, even when it wasn't legal. There are Indigenous cultures that have religious dispensation to use these in ceremonies. So there's a lot of, there's that going around. There's also some people using the religious piece for their own ability to share it, but it's opening up now, Heather, which is really beautiful. Like we see that with people who understand it and know how to use it and do the integration piece of it, that it's an incredibly powerful tool.

It sounds like such a gift, such a gift. And I'm so glad that it's opening up and hopefully soon it'll be legalized everywhere. Probably something that never should have been deemed, deemed, um, illegal. That, that, so I'm sad for all the people that missed out on that cuz it could have helped them with their own lives, their journeys, their awareness of things, their health, their wellbeing.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's really a lot of information out there and I think, you know, my purpose is really to share information from a harm reduction perspective too, so that people are safe with it so that they can, you know, do it in a way that's really positive and supportive and really reducing the harm. And that's, that's why I'm part of this, I would call it a mastermind, this guideship group that I'm part of every, every other week. We get together, we share information, and a lot of the people in that group are like psychologists, psychotherapists, RNs, you know, there's, there's people in really well-respected places doing this. There's also the indigenous underground group of people who know this inside and out from years of living with it, who are also a population of people who should be paid attention to, not just you know, the clinics and the medical doctors.

Say more about that.

Well, I think, you know, right now with everything that's sort of shifting, I think it's really important to have the research and the evidence around it. And I love that Johns Hopkins and, you know, Mayo Clinic and even Cleveland Clinic are doing trials on some of this. It's really important to have that. But I also think we cannot, we cannot forget about the people who have been holding this medicine and in ceremony and using it for healing purposes for thousands and thousands of years. So tribes in Mexico using peyote, or, you know, people in Brazil and other countries and even the American Indians. So I think that there are many, many cultures that support the use of psychedelics in a way that is healing and spiritual, and they understand and know it. The things that are coming out now in research are the things that those people have known for thousands of years. Collaboration between those two things, I think is really, really important and not just leaving out people because they don't have training or a degree or a PhD or an MD or that behind their name. They, they have the indigenous, like, felt and experienced knowledge. Yeah.

That we all should honor for sure. So it's psilocybin. How do you say it again?

Psilocybin.

Psilocybin. Psilocybin. So I've never tried psilocybin or microdosed in that way. I have had though, a beautiful experience. My husband and I did this a few months ago where we got together with a very small group. There were 6 of us total in a beautiful location, and we sipped on something called sassafras root tea. Now, I love the way sassafras root smells. My mom, prior to being a criminal defense lawyer, she was a naturalist and she would, she just knew every single plant by name, by smell. I could never remember, but she would say, this is sassafras root. And I would smell it and it smelled so good. And, and I know they make the connection with root beer. And I, that was the one thing we were allowed to drink growing up is if we were having a special drink, we could have some root beer, no caffeine. So that my mom already, already thought that we were hyped up enough that we didn't need the caffeine. Anyway, my husband and I had this really special experience and It was 3 days. Came back. We came back with loving kindness as our true north. We wanted to be better human beings. That was our takeaway with it. What a powerful experience. And so I had that. And then I hear about the microdosing. And I'm curious, so I'm so glad that you are willing to talk to me about this because sometimes, you know, a 3-day experience far away does not really line up with other goals or priorities. And so this is a way that you could bring it into your everyday life for a container of time to go even deeper, it sounds like.

Yeah, absolutely. And Heather, I love that you had this connection with your childhood and your mother in this experience where you came back feeling like this loving kindness and universal love for everyone. That is very much the experience that often people have with psychedelics. That there's a great study that was done out of Johns Hopkins where they took leaders from different religious backgrounds and they did a larger journey of psilocybin with them. And, you know, so it was somebody from the Jewish faith and someone from a Christian faith and you know, probably about 8 or 10 religious leaders. And they all, most of them came out of it feeling like this sense of we're all connected and that my religion isn't the only one. Like it didn't, the experience didn't tell them, yes, Christianity is the one or Judaism is the one. It was like, we're all in this together, looking for the same thing, loving kindness, compassion, letting go of our ego a little bit, letting go of the barriers to being with people and connected. And that's—

I'm reading a book right now that's talking about various religions and learning that really, truly at their core, there are these common desires. And maybe they're expressed differently or in different languages or different regions around the world,. But yes, yes, these, these core desires seem the same. So, uh, love the possibilities that we can experience through nature, because this is what we're talking about at the end of the day is nature. This is a gift from nature that's available to us if we want. If we don't, that's okay. No problem. But if we are curious about it and if we want to go deeper into our own potential in terms of creating a lighter life, lighter home, a lighter life. This is a tool that is becoming more and more available.

Yeah. And, and, you know, when I did my bigger experience, which I ultimately wanted to do, that was, um, an incredible, incredible experience. But the one message I came back with among many other messages from the mushrooms was that this is available to us inside all the time. We just get bogged down and cluttered, to use some of your language, with the material things of the world. And if we can let those things go, we can find and access this information within us all the time. Being connected to people, being kind and loving, you know, that is available to us. We just have to like put ourselves in the right position and environment and put our mind in the right place.

So what we did to, to positively impact our environment after that experience is we have this little board and it's a little brown wood board and you can take little, there's these little white letters and you can write messages on it, maybe a happy birthday message, something like that. And I don't remember what was there before, but I took it out and I said, okay, I want to have this visual reminder of loving kindness. And so I wrote with those little white letters. I put them into the, popped them in loving kindness. And then underneath it, I have Team Aardema, our last name, and it's our team. And it's something that the 4 of us can see every single day. It's out in an open area that we are, you know, it's It's close to where we eat every day. There's that loving kindness. There's that loving kindness. And that was a way for us to extend, extend, extend the message that this is one of our values that, that we have. We want to treat people with loving kindness regardless of who they are, where they're from, what their background is, that every human being deserves, deserves loving kindness. Is worthy, worthy, inherently worthy of love and kindness. And so that's what we did for our environment. Yeah. Yeah.

And you know, there probably was some sort of embodied feeling that you had when you were doing the sassafras tea and the ceremony. And that's the other thing to connect to. Like when you see that message, then you sort of go into your body and you go, okay, where is that? Like, is it Am I holding tension somewhere that I need to let go so that I can feel that loving kindness in my own body? And then I can transmit that to somebody else.

Beautiful. Yes, you can reflect it inward, reflect it outward. It's going to make this planet a kinder, lighter place. Yeah. What does— finish the sentence for me. So, hold on one second. I just want to say it's a very simple sentence. So it's funny that I wanted to double-check that I had it right. And I like to ask everybody I interview this question. The lighter path is—

path is connecting with who you truly are. I think we get cluttered up when we don't really allow ourselves to be who we really are.

There's a lot of societal messaging, societal clutter. That tells us you should be embarrassed about this. You should feel ashamed. You should, should, should. That is such a distractor.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think for women, particularly, not that I don't work with men, 'cause somehow I actually do have probably like 30% of my caseload is men, but women really are the catalyst for a lot of this. I think women tend to, you know, pay attention to their health a little bit more and we've all been sort of subjected to this idea that, you know, you should be this way. You should do this. You have to do this. Or I just think that sometimes the messaging for women is really challenging and the expectations. And so we want to kind of follow our own path, but it's not always easy to do that. And if we get quiet and we pay attention to what our bodies and our intuition are telling us, then we do follow that path. And we are in alignment with what is best for us.

What, what did I not ask you today that you think would be worthy of a response?

Well, let's see. Um, you know, I, I, we probably mentioned this a little bit, but I do wanna say it's not a shortcut. Um, I think there was an article in the New York Times quite a few years ago that talked about mother's little helper back in the '50s. It was Valium. And they were sort of equating microdosing and psilocybin and psychedelics with that. And I would say that's absolutely the wrong way to think about it. It isn't something that is— you're not going to take psilocybin and take a microdose and all of a sudden, you know, feel better. It can help you access those things, but the work is still what you need to do. And if any message is most important, it's the work, it's the integration. But the work becomes so much easier when you have this support and when you have someone that's working with you through it. So it's not a way of covering up or, you know, it's different than drinking wine at night. It's different than taking a Valium or whatever people might be taking to like, you know, mask what they're feeling. It lets you go inside And the only way to get through that is, is through it, right? Feel the feelings, bring them out and work through it.

So what an important nuance. I'm so glad you just brought this up because I am not a fan of the advertising around alcohol. It's Wine Wednesday, or you need this, you know, so that you can face your family. Just all of the marketing that is actually done towards women. And I know they, they took a play off the cigarette industry and then replicated that again for alcohol. I'm not anti-alcohol. I don't drink it because it's clutter in my own body. I think it's clutter in so many people's bodies personally. And so you used the term masking a moment ago. So yes, the alcohol, we use that to mask, mask, mask life. And so this is the opposite. Instead of masking things, it actually, it's something that guides you to go in in a safe way.

Yeah.

So that you can live in, in a less distracted way. Frankly, Karen, I think that these are tools that help you when, when embraced and integrated, help you live a life with fewer regrets.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I would agree. I would agree. And I think, you know, making the choice to do this can be a gentle choice. Like that's how I think of it with the people that I work with. Like I tend to attract the people that are similar to me, that, that want to do this in a way that, that really is a gentle path toward kind of exposing some things that maybe I haven't been paying attention to.

Right.

I think Carl Jung said, when we make the con— when we make the unconscious conscious, unless we make the unconscious conscious, we will continue to think that it is our fate and that We don't have direction over it, right? But once those things are opened up or, you know, exposed, and we know that these are the things that are like leading our life, we can go, well, maybe I don't really want my life to be led that way. I think we go this direction instead. And it becomes clear that you can. And so yes, living a life without regrets because you're actually living in alignment with who you are.

This is a tool that I think there, there can definitely be a before and an after. Yeah. Before I did it, life was like this. After I did it, life was so much more meaningful. I leaned in and leaned in in ways that I never knew I could prior.

Yeah. And some of those ways are, can be challenging. Maybe there's relationships that you've been kind of hanging on with that maybe you shouldn't be hanging on with and But on the other side of that is only freedom for you.

Exactly. And maybe in that relationship, that person is willing to lean in and do the work as well. And then you come to an even stronger, stronger place with them. All of those things are possible.

Yeah. All, all things are possible.

Yep. Kiran, how do we find you?

Okay. So I have, I think you have a link to Where people can go to learn more about the microdosing, it is part of my website, karenbush.com. I'm also on Instagram, @coachkbush. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm also on Facebook. I don't post prolifically, but I try to at least once a week. I have a newsletter that comes out weekly on Tuesdays at 11:30. I like that little time. Maybe I think people are going to read it at lunch.

I love it.

So those are all the ways that people can get ahold of me. And yeah, I mean, that's You know, I'd be happy to talk with people. I usually do a 30-minute complimentary call for people who are interested in this so that people can understand a little bit more about it.

Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing your experience, your wisdom, your real life, your why with us today.

Yeah. Thank you, Heather, for having me. I really appreciate you being willing to have this conversation.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There are so many things out there that don't help our health that are just available for any time, any place. And these, so 100%, I am all in on, on these types of tools. I think they're so meaningful and there's so much potential with them.

Great. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thanks for watching. If this resonated with you, give us a like and share with friends who could use some lightness. Don't forget to follow our page for daily doses of living lighter. And remember, if it feels light, it's right.