What Happens When You Quiet the Noise with Karen Bush

We know that in functional medicine, there is a spiritual component. We can't go there right away, right? We gotta talk about nutrition, we gotta talk about exercise. Then 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, right? What are my gifts? What might I be ignoring that maybe is something that feeds my soul spiritually, right? 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 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.

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 onto things, right? 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 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, right? And people microdose lots of different things. They talk about GLP-1, ones 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 subperceptual, but we don't— that really doesn't hit the mark, right? Because we are perceiving certain things. It's really subthreshold. 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. Um, but that's what microdosing really is. It's small amounts.

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, right? 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 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 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 learn to integrate it into our days, right? How are you gonna come to this differently? How will you come to your life in a different way? Okay.

And you just said they connect you to a place inside and maybe it's a place that you, right, 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 the thing that you need. I've had people tell me, you know, I did a a psilocybin journey and I kind of blew up my life, but in a way that needed to happen, right? If we're in a 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 I don't want to do that. Right? 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. 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 like 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 consistently 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 gonna 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 wanna be outside a little bit more. Lots of people like to get in their garden and do more gardening., but you are, 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 are 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.

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

Well, let's see. I think, uh, you know, I, I, we probably mentioned this a little bit, but I do want to say it's not a shortcut, right? 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 the 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 taking, 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, 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 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. And so you used the term masking a moment ago. So yes, right, the alcohol, we use that to 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 so that you can live 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.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and I think making the choice to do this can be a gentle choice. 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 paid attention to. I think Carl Jung said, 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. But once those things are opened up or 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'll 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.