SSP 058: Mason Taylor - Daily Dose of Herbs and Mushrooms

On today's episode, guys, I get to dive deep with Mason Taylor, who's the founder of Super Feast Mushrooms. And, you know, I must admit, over the last couple of weeks, mushrooms have really, you know, showed themselves to me in a bunch of different ways. And I've just probably over the last six months really delved into the world of using tonic herbalism, meaning using medicinal mushrooms for the range of different benefits, whether it be lion's mane, cordyceps, reishi, ashwagandha. You're about to find out what all those mean and the benefits of using them. But the mushrooms really have a consciousness, and once they start to weave their way into your world, you really get pulled down this rabbit hole. And it's such a fascinating journey when you learn about the power of mushrooms and really the wisdom that is within this plant. If you want to. If you want to learn more about this, I highly suggest checking out the film Fantastic Fungi. And it's really interesting to learn about how mushroom is really have the most advanced wisdom when it comes to life on this planet. And I brought on Mason Taylor today because I wanted to learn more about this stuff myself. And he has one of the best brands going around right now for producing tonic herbalism and medicinal mushrooms. But a little bit about Mason. Mason Taylor is a health educator, speaker, and a podcast host as well, with a special interest in sharing knowledge around how to navigate the evolving world of health and its many paradigms to create a unique, potent health philosophy and personal practice. He has an approach that really helps you to feel safe, balanced, and vital in your body. And he's the founder of Super Feast, purveyors of the world's finest tonic herbs and blends. So this is such a great, insightful interview and I learned a lot from this. And if you're new to tonic herbalism and medicinal mushrooms, then you're about to learn a ton. And I can guarantee you're going to want to go out and get your hands on some of these mushrooms we talk about in today's episode. So enjoy the episode and we'll be in touch. Take care.

Welcome to the State Shifters Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you discover your true potential through connecting the mind, body and soul.

Okay, Mason Taylor, thank you so much for joining me on the State Shifters podcast, mate. It's a. It's an absolute honor to have you on here. How you doing today, man?

Yeah, I'm doing rad. Stoked to be here. Yes. Excited to get into some medicinal, mushy talk and some tonic herbal chat. Likewise Got my tonic Herb superhero dog in the background. Goji. So you might hear Goji having a little bit of a rustle around, a little bark every now and then. She's getting feisty and looking forward to her beach run. So just giving everyone the heads up.

That time of the afternoon, mate, they need their afternoon walk and exercise. The doggos she's good for.

She's good for a kelpie, but she's getting a little edgy, giving the eye.

Yeah, I know, you mean. I've got a Labrador at home as well. He's always eager for his afternoon movement. So all good, mate. I've been really excited to have you on here because I've been using your product for the last few months since returning to Australia. Your brand, Super Feast. You guys produce some of the highest quality medicinal mushrooms going around, and you've got an extremely great reputation out here in Australia. So you're the founder of the company. Before we dive into things, maybe would you want to give the listeners a bit of a background around how this all started for you and really where the inspiration came from to start to produce or to share some of these magical mushrooms to the world? To Australia.

Yeah, I mean, it was all just like. It was never mediated in this. Like, I was traveling a lot in my early 20s, had a couple of, like, things come up in my body that I wasn't too stoked about, like, real tired and a couple of like, immune things going on and. But I also wasn't that excited about getting back and diving into symptomology and. And I think that was a big thing that differentiated me from where majority of herbalists were and where majority of medicine, you know, still is that it's all focused on symptomology. Even like traditional Chinese medicine as it's packaged today. People think I'm into tcm, traditional Chinese medic. I'm not because I'm not really interested in treating symptoms. And I don't really work with people who. I work with people on the sideline who have particular illnesses and diseases. But I'm not interested in that style of medicine that kind of comes down from when I got back from traveling and I was in Australia and I dove. I was in. I was interested in feeling better, but I was really interested in just, you know, that. Just how good I can feel on my body, how to get like a. I really wanted to find. Now that I have a bit more mature languaging around it, I want to find a. A sustainable flow in my lifestyle. I wanted to ensure That I had like real distinction over various habits, that I had things that I saw as like cruxes rather than like shutting things completely out of my life and you know, going into that kind of depravity world. I just wanted to make sure I was using things and eating things and drinking things in a way, you know, and even if it's like something like exercise, you know, I just wanted to make sure, you know, if I'm not doing, how can I get, you know, get a flow where I'm not excessively exercising that's going to be detrimental to my 80 or 90 year old self, Ensure that I've got a sustainable model. Because it's a lot of, think about it, how many exercise sessions or how many meals or how many times you're going to be taking herbs from now until you're say 80. That's a lot. Or how many, you know, you know, it's like it's the same kind of conversation in terms of your relationship around sex and hydration and all these things and sleep, all these things that are really found like food foundational to your health in general. We really need to be focusing on how we can have a really sweet flow with the seasons approach to all these foundations of health that are going to be. And if we can pull that together, you think of how much it's that Taoist and that Buddhist adage of just chop wood and carry water. Chop wood, carry water. You know, if you're living in the, in the shrub, how many times are you chopping wood and going and getting your water? And everyone wants the enlightenment and the peak experience. Everyone wants to be biohacking and potentiate their body and be bursting out of their, you know, bursting with their mental acuity and their wit. And I love those things as well. Everyone wants extreme immunological activation and extreme athletic performance. And I was definitely there as well. But what the undercurrent for me as well was was how do I get to like 80 and 90 and not have to rely externally on medical institution as much as possible? I'm not, I'm definitely not against medical institutions. I think we need that kind of reductionist and organized medicine. I think it could be done a lot better most of the time, but nonetheless still grateful that it's there to an extent. But what I, when I see it becoming parasitic is not, you know, perhaps not because it's parasitic in itself. It's when we open our, ourselves up by not taking our health into our own hands and not being sovereign and not having Taken that chop wood, carry water, sustainable approach to our health all along, which does in fact lead to the peak experiences that I was talking about done in a sustainable way. So now I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent, but this is what got me into tonic herbalism was that approach to my own health. I was getting very interested in that. As you're chopping wood and carrying water and doing the same thing all the time, you know, little bit moments of enlightenment pop up into your mind and then you need to let them go and just keep on moving on. And that really does excite me, that middle path. And so when you're looking for that western herbalism, you know, traditional Chinese medicine and that herbal system, you know, I love them, but it just wasn't that exciting to me because they're always symptomology based. It's like who, where's the herbal element that's going to help me, you know, be that, you know, that chop would carry water. These herbs I'm going to be able to take preemptively in order to maintain harmony and in order to ensure that I have the foundation. So as I'm going on through life, I've got enough energy internally to have these moments of enlightenment where I can gain wisdom about the way I work, to have these little peak experiences. And that relates to having little my genetic expressions, you know, my genes be able to express in positive ways as I get older, especially to get over these big hurdles in these times. We know that 60, 70 year old, that's a big hurdle. You see people quite often not make that hurdle and they remain rigid in their body and rigid in their belief systems and their thoughts. And you know, we get stuck on the AM radio opinion and that's all we have in life because you know, internally what's basically happened is they've become deficient of their foundational essence, which is their jing, which lives in their kidneys, which relates to your sexual energy, sexual potential, your hormonal energy, your skeletal strength, your hips and your knee power and strength. These are, you know, in Daoism, which is what I do, Taoist herbs, the indigenous philosophy of China. That's thousands of thousands of years old. You know, there's three treasures that make up the body and that primary one is jing Jing jing. Body lives in the kidneys. It's related to that water element. And if that's deficient, then you open yourself up for degeneration. Especially when you get to like this, 50, 60, 70. And this is why I got into it because that's what I'm secretly, I'm worried about. I don't want to bloody cross my fingers and hope that I don't get these metabolic diseases. I wanted to take it into my own hands. Not that I think what I have is a silver bullet, but definitely feel like I'm stacking the odds at least in my favor and those and those around me as well. So if you've got that jing energy and that jing capacity, you're physically staying nice and strong. And I kind of going to link it into that. What I was meaning about that, that belief system and that capacity to keep on, you know, not get stuck in that psychological place where you're in, you're meant to be an elder, but you're so rigid and you know, stuck in institutionalized opinions and media based opinions or it might even be conspiratorial opinions. And you become one of those annoying elders to be around that can't actually, you know, hold that stance of wisdom and malleability while knowing who the hell they are. A water element that kidneys the mother of the liver and liver is that wood energy. And so we're going to be feeling this transition soon. We're going from winter kidney water season into spring, that wood season, right? And so if you don't have that jing energy, therefore your kidney essence, your water is deficient or running stagnant, you don't have the capacity to send that water and nourish the child of the wood element of the liver. And so you become brittle and dry. And if that element and that organ deliver is all about your creativity and maintaining your, your vision, right? And that kind of like. And then you envisioning your life and taking stock of what's possible within your life and then creating potential and possibilities and, and changing directions and so on and so forth. Like that's, that's something that, that excites me to maintain that for when I get into my, you know, when I'm back then, when I got into my 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s and 80s and that excited me as a, as a direction to go to. And I could never articulate what I was looking for. But when I started looking at Taoist medicine and Daoist herbalism, that includes the medicinal mushrooms that the Daoist herbs include a lot of the adaptogenic herbs that are very popular these days. Adaptogenic, calling them adaptogens is just a Western classification. Those tonic herbs is more the broader Eastern classification that has a greater philosophy attached to it. Both great and both kind of link hand in hand, we can talk about the difference there. And so that's how I ended up into herbalism myself. Mega dosing, like, you know, chaga mushroom and reishi mushroom and the kidney herbs, hisou and eucomia bark. Restoring my own energy and my own immunity, along with all the other practices that come with ensuring you got foundational health, just, you know, sunbathing sun skin, you know, get that sun on the skin, healing, you know, getting my skin nice and clean, you know, drinking scone, collecting my own spring water and doing all those kinds of cleansing things. Back in my early 20s and then as I moved along, my mum was like, you know, just like I was always talking to her about what I was going to do in life. She was like, should go get these things out into the world. So I did, slowly but surely, despite not really of ever having, you know, worked in a, in a business before, I was like a ski instructor and a bartender and a backpacker, so. So I'd worked a little bit in my mum's clinic one day a week, so I had basic skills, but I just stumbled my way forward. Did markets developed a reputation before mushrooms were trendy, before adaptogens were trendy. And so when the wave of awareness hit on them, which I wasn't really expecting at that point, myself and my now fiance, we were pregnant and we just kind of were like, all right, I'm ready to take the business a bit more serious. And she got in, had her business head screwed on a little bit more and we just kind of took it from there. And so that's how I got into the herbs. And then as you can see, as I'm into the philosophy behind the herbs, which I think is important, an important element rather than just spruiking benefits and adaptogenic benefits, of how much they can help us become more resilient to internal and external stress and how they can help bring our nervous system into a parasympathetic state, how they can help us heal and take down inflammation. Those things are all well and good and I do talk about those, but I like to talk about it within this broader context that allows the herbs to be integrated in the way that they were, like for known 5,000 years, you know, who knows how long before that, which was they were taken in order to generate life in the body of the three treasures that we have in our body. Jing being the primary, right, our foundational essence, sexual potency, bone strength, genetic power, bone marrow, brain power, all those kinds of things that's our jing energy in our kidneys, our chi, which is that. That animates us and gives us vitality and mobility internally. And then our shen, our spirit, our ability to bring wisdom forth through our ability to stay present enough and connected in mind and body enough that we learn lessons from our experiences. And we basically allow that to hercule down into something which would, you know, be. We'd consider wisdom. So that jing chi, shen, that's the whole point of taking these herbs is to build that so we're physically strong, spiritually quite, you know, less of an asshole as we go along and more of an awesome person if we can manage that. And that leads people to the opportunity, hopefully, to start taking these herbs in the way that would sustain that. That outcome. Small amounts taken over very long periods, you know, going through a bit of a process, maybe in the beginning, to build back where you have general deficiencies. Because we're not talking about. We don't use these herbs to heal illness and disease, although they're used in that setting. But we don't, because we can't do pulse diagnosis and tongue diagnosis and all those things. It's just not realistic. You can use these herbs, you can take them to your clinician and use them alongside. And that's how they've been used clinically. That's how a lot of medicinal mushrooms are used in chemotherapy through Russia and China and Japan as an adjunct to ensure that, that your body doesn't wind up emaciated after you've been through treatment. But when you get into some quite hectic, degenerative diseases, you want to make sure that, and especially if you're on meds, that's just not. That's not the realm, as you can hear. That's not the realm I'm working in. But when you have basic intentions of exhaustion, constant colds and immunodeficiencies, like it's something generally an acupuncturist will help you out with, generally. But, you know, most of the time a doctor won't be able to. And so we can use lifestyle and tonic herbs, fit into lifestyle. These medicinal mushrooms, they fit into that lifestyle piece. So if you're at that place where you're like, you know what? I'm going to be able to nail this on the head with good sleep hydration, like clean your diet up. No, like, we don't want to get like an overly inflammatory diet. Get your tonic herbs and medicinal mushrooms in there, get some basic supplements in there. That's where they fit into this. And so we set people up to have a general little flow as they get into it, get some build back and then once you're out of like the complete I've got a problem and I need a solution mentality, you get a little bit into like, well, what's my intention? And it's a hard one for Westerners to get their head around sometimes. Well, what's your intention long term? Because we can use those herbs and string together a few years of using them. Doesn't have to be every day. And then you got to stop and reflect and maybe you would have like nourished that intention and maybe you're well on your road to like, you know, you know, making sure that that flourishes over the next few decades.

Yeah, really fascinating stuff, man. Really, really fascinating. And people listening to this, you know, they're on some somewhat of a personal development, healing, they're somewhat aware. So I get the sense that majority of people have probably heard of medicinal mushrooms, perhaps even tried or experimented with different forms.

But tree mushrooms, by the way, for those of you that haven't, we're not talking about the magic mushrooms, we're not talking about psilocybin mushrooms. Just here just wanted to put that out there just for non, non psychoactive magic in their own way. Tree mushrooms.

Correct, Correct, exactly. And I want to dive into more specifically where someone should start when they're starting to, you know, tweak their routine and add maybe some of these tonic herbs into their, into their routine. But say someone is maybe new to their, you know, experimenting with different types of mushrooms such as lion's mane, cordyceps, ashwagandha. And for me, probably over the last six months I've started to insert some of these tonics into my morning routine and evening routine. But I guess maybe could you give us some insight around what you started to notice when you started to play around with some of these herbs, that you guys now produce a wide range of them. And how should someone start to think about, okay, I'm going to start off with maybe some lion's mane in the morning or understanding their energy at a point where they know what it is that they need and then being able to match up the right herb based on where they're at.

Cool. So for me, I got started on like to kind of kick me off was the medicinal mushrooms. I think it's a wonderful place to start. I started on two individual herbs being chaga and reishi. So chaga, big black sclerotia, crazy adaptogenic, crazy immunomodulating Beautiful skin medicine, really antioxidant, like just really immunologically potentiating. It's just like a big badass. Her big grandfathery kind of energy. It's got a lot of wisdom. I smash a lot of it in winter. It's got a rich feeling to it for me. I have, you know, I have it in my blend, the mason's mushrooms, like year round. But it's, it's in winter is when I want something kind of like quite rich. And the flavor is really beautiful. It's quite like vanilla, you know, Sometimes gets used as a little bit of a coffee replacement. Although it's a bit of a stretch if you really do want your coffee. But you know, I like. It's got that kind of flavor. So that's like, that's one that someone could start off with. And then I was also doing reishi. Reishi, more of a yin, very much driven towards white, you know, the upping of white blood cells. It's a beautiful protective liver tonic, you know, used in a lot of like viral infection instances. All these herbs get used in the instance of viral infection and bacterial infection and fungal infection. Great for allergies. That reishi, beautiful lung tonic just, you know, just ramping up. As I said, white blood cell production out of the bone marrow, really potent and that being used in a lot of hospitals where people's white blood cell transfusions won't actually take. But it's more, it's really like it's a spirit herb, so it's a shen tonic. And so it's about calming the mind, it's calming the nervous system, basically ensuring that, you know, in alignment with your med, that you can just drop really nice and deep into what shen tonics are all about. So I was going hard on those and what I felt, I felt like I had my little things going on in my body, you know, like getting colds regularly and that kind of stuff. And for me, along with all the sun exposure I was getting and the hydration, you know, it's. It's a. It's a similar thing. When you get it, put it in tandem sometimes you don't need to put it in tandem as well. They're strong enough to actually get you seeing what it's like when you're keep on using the word immune system in daoism. We want to, we're just talking about our protective qi. When your protective qi starts circulating once more and you can start cultivating lots of daily energy from your spleen and through your lungs and more of a Western sense, you have less pathogenic load because your body's actually able to deal with it. Right. That's like. It's just a good feeling. You know, there's a little bit of more ease in the way that you work. Medicinal mushrooms are integrating herbs, and so they're integrated with the forest and all the trees. And likewise, they're integrative of all our systems and nervous system to endocrine system to immune system, just to help everything work in a little bit more harmony. You can feel that they're connected with all these things, have realistic expectations. But if you work with them long enough and you get up to high enough doses, and by that I mean you started a quarter teaspoon basic lifestyle dose is going to be like half a teaspoon. This is a. My product anyway, of the extracts, powders. Half a teaspoon to a one good teaspoon is where you'll kind of land on for a good lifestyle dose. But then every now and then you will get the instinct, like, I wouldn't mind going for, you know, a big dose, you know, so you can up.

The dose if you do want to kind of.

Yeah, right, okay, absolutely. And listen to it. If you're going to listen to yourself to up the dose, get ready to. Because they're not. They're not there to form dependence on. So just get ready. Not that anything. They're very gentle herbs. There's a reason why 2000 years ago we have the first materia medica emerge from humanity's mind and heart, Right. And it has in there certain amount of herbs which were the superior herbs. And that's what laid the foundation for what are the tonic herbs now and then, slowly but surely we include several others as they get discovered to have like, no toxicology, have been proven to be safe for consistent usage over time for the intentions of bringing harmony to the body and the organ systems and to build and cultivate life. And cultivate life is cultivating the jing and the qi and the shen. And to put that in the context, that might be what potentially, you know, it's hard to quantify it, but it's potentially maybe buying yourself an extra two years of knee strength and being able to get up and down on your own accord. If you're doing the tonic herbs, the nice gentle, functional movement, that little bit of, you know, staying exposed to the elements, getting into the sun, ensuring your diet's kind of clean enough, you're looking at one kind of like pretty rad longevity strategy there. I just want to make sure. Because the longevity kind of has like a bit of a marketing kind of ploy tone to it these days. And if not that it has an ambiguous tone about it, it's hard to connect to. But guarantee you if you get to 75, you've done some work that's going to give you an extra like five years where you're really, really, really sharp internally and you have, you know, or if you have the capacity to like, still get an erection or still lubricate if you're a woman or if you're a man, like, that's a huge difference. And that's. And those are the little. They're not like. Then it's hard to have like bells and whistles because they're like, you know, you know about those things because they can be somewhat vague or we don't know if that's actually going to happen or not. But when you're in the prevention game, it's hard to promote exactly what's gonna happen. And I like that why people celebrate surgery. Because we were able to like, see something was really. Someone was really sick and we took it out and you know, and we. When it was the last shot and oh, they died. All right, well, that's alright. At least, you know, we gave it our best shot in the next one. Oh, they survived. Yeah. Full celebration. But that's because again, I think, you know, I think our culture's attached to that celebration, that big bells and whistle kind of approach to medicine, obviously. Otherwise during the COVID thing, there'd be mass subsidies of vitamin C, medicinal mushrooms, vitamin D supplementation, testing people's vitamin D levels and then, you know, I don't know, give it to them for free. Like, you know, like it's, you know, that's. Of course, of course we love big brash reductionist medicine. Things which are great to have, but the reason they're seen as pathological by a lot of people in the health community is because those things right now are excessive. They're not being balanced out by, especially from the state, which of course has no interest in providing distinction on sustainable acts of health that we can gently introduce into our lives. So coming back, coming back to the cultivation of jingchi and shen, you know, that happens through the foundations. Consistent practice, consistent in terms of daoists like qigong or, you know, or yin yoga and then consistent stillness practice or walkabout time in nature, whatever. There's no exact formula. It's not a. It's not a religion, Taoism, it's just people Trying to become less of an asshole and more awesome and ensure that the body's quite healthy. It was literally thousands of years ago as people heading into the hills because it's the only place you could find the herbs a lot of the time. All these herbs we have abundant access to right now were, like, reserved only up to a few hundred years ago for the emperors and empresses and their concubines and that higher echelon to society couldn't get them if you were like a pleb like us, you know. And so that is something that's important because, you know, we've got such a hard and fast taking nootropics, you know, getting so, like, I have like a blend that lends itself to being nootropic. It's just like, give me now, now, now. Potentiate, potentiate, potentiate. So it's a nice thing, although I like that energy, it's a nice thing to balance that out with. Like, just stop and appreciate the fact that we have access to these herbs, which have been prized heavily for thousands of years. And a lot of the times, the people who are maintaining this tradition and all this information in this system, which we are now enjoying heavily, right, and will contribute to our longevity, a lot of those people couldn't get access to as many herbs as we could now. And even at the quality now that's on that's honour. They couldn't get it from the region they wanted to get it, which is what we do. We source ddao from a particular region, right? Because that's where the ancient text said, you're going to get the most energetically dense and, you know, and medicinally dense herbs. Right? It's called D dao D I T A o and grown in a particular way in a particular area. And we're able to do that because there's a. We're supporting a resurgence of that traditional farming style. It's extremely rural, you know, like little peaks. Whether it's only spring water. Just think about the fact that we. You've got access to that, we've got access to that. And yet the people that held that alive, like this traditional life, weren't able to actually megadose, unless they were hermits, say, or they were rich. And then you think about how many hundreds of thousands of people have poured their lives and their intentions, you know, their lives, their careers, into. Into quantifying what this herbal practice is and understanding what Schisandra does in the body and why it's potentially one that we're going to keep on taking or lion's mane, as you said, is one that we're going to put, you know, we're going to choose to bring into our lives consistently because we're noticing like, it's like deer antler velvet. Like, there's like this ancient story about how dear antler velvet was first discovered to become a tonic herb. And then that was a little village, you know, one guy that stumbled upon it and that's been grown and shared until now we have access to one of the most prized tonic herbs in the world. And dear antler velvet, for people saying it's, you know, it's for gains and testosterone and, you know, sexual potency and it is. But start with that appreciation for first.

How many people have like, that was deer antler. I haven't tried that. I haven't tried that one. Deer antler velvet. So that's. That come. You guys stock that as well. It's like, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Part of that. It's best stuff ever. Like, and just like I've got videos of me with the deer, the little deer ranch up in the northeast of China there, just kind of explaining the process and the details that go around deer farming. Because it's something that I'm always concerned about is, you know, ensuring that from the herbs to the animals, which deer is the only animal we work with is treated as well as possible. And so we kind of answer all those questions there for anyone that's just like, think wondering about that. And also our site covers all the things around, like testing for heavy metals and aflatoxins and pesticides. It's like, not a pesticide goes near any of the farms we work with. A lot of people bust through their xenophobia of China by working with us because we don't back away from the fact that we absolutely are like Fannie and come in love with the fact that we source our Chinese tonic herbs from China in these little regions and we get to support these little independent micro farmers that are keeping these traditions alive. So anything anyone's thinking right now, you can shoot it to us. Or there's probably an FAQ or there's probably a video of me in China talking to it. So in terms of coming back to what you originally saying is, how do you know what to bring in when this is a folky herbalism? I know we want a potentiated way of doing things, but there's no rules. And anyone that tells you there's rules, this is not. It's not an institutionalized thing. And so if you follow your interest and so if you've heard about lion's mane and you're getting really excited about the fact that lion's mane, what it's doing for the synapse connection and taking down inflammation in the nervous system, just general nervous system healing or memory and recall, like follow that interest. So that's what you get your foot in the door and then when do you take it? Try a couple of times. You know, most of the time for me it's in the morning and then if I found that there's a couple of herbs for me in the afternoon, just help me if I need a little pick me up of chi, you know, and so I'll, you know, I'll have a little Schisandra berry, which I like how funky the taste is and it's a beautiful sexual tonic. It's a brain sharpening tonic. You got a diamond mind after Schisandra berry. It's like primarily a liver herb. So it's a real ultra protective herb considering of how supportive it is for liver function, keeping the liver chi flowing. It's such a pinpoint of that flow of chi and so therefore supporting the storage of blood and the cleaning of blood. So I find that herb pretty, pretty special. I'll have some chi herbs in the afternoon. So I've got a blend called chi.

And that's got, so that's a blend, right? I've seen the chi one. So what's in that one? Sorry? The chi.

So I've got the blends kind of going after the names of the treasures as I was talking about before, the jing being the foundational one. That's where most people enter into the super feast world, taking jing herbs because they're the foundations, you've been exhausted, you've been burning it at both ends. You build your jing back up. If you're tired, you build your jing back up. And so I definitely recommend that, especially if there's no libido, lower back strength is dwindling, knee strength, that's the jing. And jing herbs are just great to have there in the background and in your life. Whether they're the full focus or they're just, you're having them every now and then. The chi herbs, it's that vitality, it's that, it's that pulsation of life. It's the spark in, you know, the machine, for lack of a better term. And I think the body's a machine, but it's the spark in the machine, it's what animates everything. It what allows everything to move and regulate. So if you're getting fatigued by the end of the day, so your body's not actually exhausted, you're just quite fatigued. Generally. That's a chi, you know, that's a chi thing. That's a Qi deficiency or a Qi stagnation. And so that little bit of better intended exercise, bit of qigong, that kind of energy cultivation, those energy moving practices, and then the chi herbs and the medicinal mushrooms are often chi herbs. So if you have a mason's mushrooms as well, kind of falls into that category. You kind of go into cruise mode at some point. When I'm in cruise mode, I'm taking mason's mushrooms, which is the mushroom blend and chi blend. I just don't have time to think. I'm like, bang bang. Because they just, that helps. The chi herbs, which I love having in the afternoon, is maybe a little bit of schisander and chi called. My afternoon chi is spleen tonic and lung tonic. And their whole function is to take the food and take the air and cultivate the Qi. The energy that you're going to use for your daily, you know, just like kicking around your daily, your daily Qi. And that's also your protective Qi, your ability to ward off pathogens, right? That's these Qi herbs. And so they're kind of the closest thing we have to an energy tonic. You know, like ginseng is not in the blend, but ginseng is that, you know, associated with energizing and it's a Qi tonic. So the herbs in there, like Astragalus, cottonopsis, white attractylodes, poria, turkey tail, gynostemma, they're, you know, they're like energy tonics, you know, in the sense, like it might not work like a coffee, but they're there to help you cultivate more energy. It definitely works that way for me, just to help me like ward off that fatigue. But more so I'm taking them long term so the fatigue never sets in in the first place. Mason's mushrooms and chi combination, you're only going to do one of them. The mason's mushrooms is if you have immune deficiencies and you get in those colds all the time. And I mean, mason's mushrooms are good gut tonic in itself as well. It's got the lion's mane in there, great gut tonic. Chaga is a wonderful gut gut elixir, the prebiotic for our, for our native bacteria. That's a good place to start if you just know you want to Fortify you and your family. I kind of leave it to people whether they feed them to their kids or not, but my kid definitely gets them. Normally the kids will benefit mostly from the medicinal mushrooms or the chi tonics just because they help them with their little spleens and their little immune system. So that's the thing you bring in. You want to support your family and yourself immunologically, especially during like, you know, what people ridiculously called cold and flu season, which a lot of the time, cold and flu season. A lot of the time it's from a Chinese perspective. You'd be amazed if you just ensure that you are not drinking a lot of cold liquids or if you do, you drink a hot tea afterwards and you're putting socks on before you touch any cold surface and you're keeping your feet really warm. You know, if you can just, just try not to let the cold seep into your tissues, you will be amazed at how much less sick you get. It's, it's wild. Especially Australians because we don't prepare for winter. I'm only really like, I really kind of like I've been doing this for a long time and I've been a little bit more brash about it and like whatever, I'm nation, I can do what I want and walk around in shorts and a single door through winter and I kind of, sometimes I still do if I'm really feeling strong, but I'm also realizing there's no point. I'm like, what's the point of doing this? I might as well cultivate that energy and just stay a little bit warm. And I'm still doing ice plunge and something like here and there still. I'm not, not adverse to it but big on that now because you know, I'm thinking a sustainable kind of model. Like sometimes it's doing these like hectic things and you know, cold exposure in the middle of winter. And I was like, it's like, what's the point of this? I was like, how am I really benefiting my 80 year old self by doing this? It was hard for me to get an answer. But then you add in the medicinal mushrooms on top of that and you're looking at one like pretty strongly fortified winter. And so there are a couple of entry points that ultimate immune kind of combo, the chi herbs, the chi blend in, the mason's mushrooms. The most common entry point though is jing and the mason's mushrooms, that's the, that's the easiest place to start building that foundational energy up. Especially if you're exhausted, get on that jing. Jing's just like Jing's a winter herbs as well. They're kidney herbs.

Yeah, you've given us a lot to chew on there, mate. And I'm excited to try some of these afternoon tease that you mentioned because again, like I'm sure a lot of people experience in the afternoon when you get that kind of fatigue hit around like 2, 3pm you described it beautifully around what's happening there is like that's the stagnation of the Qi energy and that's where the perfect time to introduce some light movement and then support that with it with a tonic feel. Like there's a lot of benefits that can be, you know, infused into your day just through becoming your own little herbalist. Playing around with some of these beautiful mushrooms. Yeah, and the mason was my introduction to your mushrooms that you produce. And I must say, once I tried it, it gave this like balanced energy. I felt like a balanced energy, which was really beautiful. And then I've since obviously brought in some of the cordyceps, the lion's mane. I take my shwar gandhra in the evening and this morning I had cordyceps before a workout. And I'll tell you what, man, I was like with my coffee, it's a, it's a supercharger. Like it'll get you out and about, you know. So, you know, for people who like, this is a long term game. Right. Like you mentioned, there's a lot of benefits of taking these herbs consistently over a period of time. But you know, what can people expect to feel short term? If they want to feel something, they will feel something short term. Right. Because I have experienced that most of the time.

Sometimes people don't. For me, I was taking like tablespoons of the powders, right. Right in the beginning and I didn't.

Feel any heavy dose with some of this stuff.

I mean, you can try it. That's not an official recommendation. That's like something I normally tell people to get up to. Maybe you know, a teaspoon morning and afternoon. Yeah, that's all that's really necessary. I just really wanted to push it and. And I didn't feel anything really that noticeable until like two months later. So it was subtle for me. Right. The jing herbs were different though. When I started taking the jing, like say basically I was creating my own what's now like a jing formula. I can pretty much feel that immediately pouring into my kidney adrenal kind of organism and just settling me, you know, it just Reminded me that I don't just be focused externally all the time. Don't look at getting your energy externally all the time. It's sometimes just come within and just feel what your body needs. And you know, because what you were saying before is like, yeah, you can get to the afternoon you go, right? It's great to be able to reach towards something that's not a stimulant or even if you're putting it in like a matcha tea or something like that, it's all good, you know, and have something to get you through. But also be aware that in the nature of what leads to Jing deficiency, as you grow older and leaking your jing is excess. And so if you are excessively reaching that point of fatigue and you're ignoring the energy of the time of day, the fact that your constitution does not want to work in a particular way, and you know that that's true because you've been the same problem for five years and you can't crack what's going on if you can't spend the next few months or years really listening to it and tweaking it, you know, tweaking the way that you work, you know, you know, and it takes a lot sometimes. That's why I say for years and years, because sometimes it might mean you need to tweak your entire work environment. That's when the herbs won't work long term for you. But if you listen and make those subtle adjustments so you know, you won't have to need them in order to get through something, and then you open up into this whole new realm of cultivation and then, you know, that's where they help you build Jing and then chi. Therefore, you can build your shen, which is your capacity to become a better person and a wiser person. It's like, it's like, it's no joke. It's like, you know, and it's hard to talk about and give context because I'm not going to be like, here, take Jing herbs and take chi herbs. They're going to help you to actually develop your own self and help you make realizations when you're going against the grain of your constitution. So you inflict change upon your entire lifestyle and the entire way that you relate to yourself and your family and your friends around you so that life is smoother and you can hopefully end up in a place where you're satisfied and, and really following what you know. The fourth treasure that comes out of your kidneys, which is your g, your will, which is your purposefulness. And your capacity and your willingness to take on responsibility that leads to a life that is full of satisfaction. I'm not talking about a life that's just all like rainbows and lollipops and all that kind of shit. It's gritty and it's hard, but you're going in that direction. If I lead with that in an advertising campaign, it's completely irresponsible for one, because some people will believe it and look for that in terms of a short term approach. But talking about the herbs is absolute legitimate. When you start getting consistent with them, there's a reason they're then the most revered herbs in a system that has hundreds of thousands within it. And why the Daoists and the sages and then the wise grandmothers, right, that's why they went to them. Because in that pursuit, that graceful pursuit of whatever we're doing here, following our intentions towards health and being really, you know, whatever, just being ourselves. I don't know what everyone else intention is, but the herbs support it. The herbs are there to support you find harmony. So you physically, energetically and spiritually have just maybe an extra few percent of capacity so that you can go that little bit further without having to use your own energy where you are right now. Herbs can give you a little bit more energy. And that's the exact same way that like developing relationships with the sun and the water and you know, in the food that you're eating. It's the exact same way it works. Same with your energetic practices and your qigong and your meditative practices. Nonetheless, the tonic herbs, as far as I'm concerned, what I've seen are a huge piece. Not one to be abused, you know, at all. They have their place, they have their glass ceiling to an extent. But their glass ceiling only relies on how much you're actually intently working to move yourself forward as far as you can go. Tonic curves will keep like bolstering you.

Mm, 100%, man. Like you nailed on something around working with these herbs in terms of understanding your own energy system and you've got your, you know, your practices, movement based practices such as yoga, qigong, moving the energy more in a more conscious way. When we take like plants from what I, what I've observed, like these plants have a frequency, right? They have a consciousness. And mushrooms in particular, I feel there's something really special about mushrooms. And you know, I've played around with psilocybin mushrooms for a while for like microdosing and using them in a spiritual practice to let go of emotions and stuck energy. And I've noticed that through taking some of these mushrooms as well, more of the tonic mushrooms. It's a similar sort of awareness that comes in. You start to become more aware of this subtle energy flow that's going on inside of you. Like you said so beautifully when you took your jing herb in the afternoon, you could feel the, you could feel the mushroom doing it, working its magic in there. And it's that consciousness within these mushrooms that when we work with them, man, I like, it's in terms of like understanding because energy is just moving through us all the time, right? Our motions are these different waveforms of frequency of energy. And as we start to surrender and work with this flow of energy, we sort of are able to allow our body to, to kind of do its own thing and allow this natural flow of energy. I think that's kind of, kind of the purpose and goal behind all of this is to allow bodies to function.

That's it. As you said, understanding the way your body functions, that's the, that's the most beautiful thing that the herbs can do. And someone gets on jing and they're like, oh my gosh, I've got so much energy and I can feel it rushing through my body. You know, you go, cool, like, that's a great result. But that's something you'd expect when there's a deficiency now be present over the next month or two or three months as you take, you know, you might be drawn, as I was saying before, to take higher doses as you go through that rebuild, but be aware of that process and feel that energy building back. Perhaps less exhaustion, maybe less propensity to tiredness, maybe more sexual vigor coming back or, you know, who knows what happens. Jing is the source of immunity. Jing is the source of power within the kidneys for all the other major organs. And so if it's offline, shit's going down, you know, and that's what happens. Like people start getting unhealthy in their 20s and by the time they're in their 50s, they're well on their way of working on eggshells, health wise. And then as you, and you go over that two or month, three, two or three month period of rebuilding, then you get to that point where you go, wow, I've built back this energy. And you instinctively will go, it's time to drop back on the jing, maybe have a break or just take it back to like a half a teaspoon dose. At that point, you've felt your gene come back Online, the herbs didn't give you that. You can probably take the herbs out for a while and still feel yourself function in a place that doesn't lead you back towards that place where you're, you know, you're exhausted again. As long as you don't go back to the same habitual stuff that you were doing. And that's a gift, you know, that's more sovereignty. You felt, you know, what your body is possible, what it's possible for your body, you might do it. And then you forget you've run out of your jing and you never buy it again, and you go back to all your shit that you were doing. And then 10 years later, you might go, you know what? No, I'm not going down like this. And you remember that you did it once, and I'll do it again, right? You get the jing herbs, and this time, 10 years later, and the people have come to. I'm getting to the point where people have come to me now going, I tried it like eight years ago, and now I'm back to give it, like, a good whack, you know, because they remembered that it made them feel something, and they were maybe just too distracted in the beginning at that point. It just wasn't that, you know, who cares? We can't all be on to it at the same time. Things I'm definitely not on to now that I'm sure 10 years down the track, I'm going to be like, all right, time to actually look at that thing, because it was too big and scary in my mid-30s. And so that is what the whole nature of the herbs about is developing sovereignty and understanding of oneself without judgment or excessive expectation. That is coming from an egoic place of having an objective, just letting it, letting it. Having small objectives compared to the exploration of your innate intentions.

100%. And given the fact that, you know, we're in a time now in history where people are starting to, you know, realize the potential that's held in some of these natural alternative sources of treating these imbalances within our body. I get the sense that mushrooms are really, you know, I can imagine you guys have probably noticed a big uptick in, you know, the awareness of people just finding out about this stuff. But where do you see this kind of progressing and evolving into. Given the fact that over the last year, things have probably blown up for you, I would assume.

Yeah. I mean, the last three years have been quite crazy compared to when I started at the markets. It was. I mean, it's interesting for me because I never expected them to get big. I thought the market was already saturated when I started because I had a couple of mentors over in the States where I'm like, well, no one's ever going to be able to match what they're doing. And then I started because I had a few people at the markets and I'd tell them to go in these places, and they were like, dude, can't you just get it for me? I can't, you know, I don't want to ship from America and I don't want to. And I was like, okay. And so that's when I started. And then, yeah, it was a, you know, labor of love, but it was a slog talking to people about putting mushrooms in coffee. You know, like six years ago, people would look like at you really strange. And it was all, you know, all the early adopters, all the trippers and the fellow trippers, and people who actually, you know, were getting to the point where they'd been very failed by everything else and they were willing to try anything. The book I learned from and got inspired by was written the year I was born, you know, and like, these fungal medicines have been referenced like before in art, before the Materia Medica, the first materia medica, 2,000 years ago, the Shennong Bin Sao Jong. And so it's like they're old and I just kind of like plopped on along for the ride for a little bit. And then like, you know. But three or four years ago, I guess, really three years ago, yeah, global consciousness started to kind of like click on, you know, people started getting into lion's mane, I think, because neurological 1 biohackers want to hack and at themselves and potentiate their brain function. And lion's mane does it really well. Same with Ashwin Gunda, of course. And also people became aware and quite fearful of neurological degeneration, like Alzheimer's and dementia. I feel like it's really come into the fold in the last few years in terms of people's awareness and fear of it, you know, I think due to increased various types of viruses and heavy metals and pesticides and all kinds of things contributing to that and dietarily as well. And so that, like, lion's mane just went huge. I feel like people were just kind of in the same, nostalgically coming back to remembering that the fungal kingdom, or queendom, whatever we want to call it, is a primary species and an intelligent species on the planet. And it's fundamental to life itself. And so it's People getting nostalgic about returning to including fungus in their diet as well as remembering that things like our immune system developed in the way it developed because of fungus. And so we have a symbiotic relationship with the tree mushrooms and the medicinal mushrooms. Like they're literally, you know, you take it in. It's like our immune systems designed for some of the compounds and energies that are in mushrooms. And it's somewhat of the only up there. Like one of the only things, definitely the most powerful things of activating certain receptors in particular ways. So people are coming back and realizing that I think people are coming back to folk medicine as well. Folk medicine that isn't based on a reductionist and super scientific, you know, reductionist and not able to maintain all awareness of all variables kind of approach to herbal medicine and definitely drug medicine. I think people are coming back to folky. The good thing is, is we've got so much cross referencing of information at the moment that we can weed out where we got shit folk medicine and good folk medicine, you know, stuff that's just like there for people to earn a quick buck and that stuff that's just been there for a long time and stuck time tested. These herbs are so time tested, you know, you just can't say that for any drug ever, ever. And so I think people are just like interested in doing those little things. Well, preventatively these things work because I haven't really gone out aggressively or anything. I've just been consistent. So when it did blow up, everyone was like, oh, you know, like I had enough people on the east coast here. I've been doing events and workshops in the markets for long enough and everyone just kind of like a lot of people were like, oh, okay, cool. That's what Mason's, that's, oh, that's Mason's brand and not Mason's sources in a particular way. You know, everyone knew that I sourced in a particular way. You know, I had trust already and yeah, and then it just kind of like, yeah, just went from there and just been trying to keep up with that wave. But it's been good to see that I haven't had to do too much. And it's just because they work and people will just go, oh, holy shit, these things aren't mucking around and I'm going to keep them in my diet, you know.

Yeah, that's the beauty of it, man. When you come at this stuff from a place of purity and love and authenticity and just wanting to really just bring these, these magical herbs that have been around for so long that don't require a sales pitch. It's like once you experience them, it's like, okay, cool. They sell themselves. And this is, this is the future of medicine, right? It's like we don't need to sell people on using specific drugs or specific forms of treatment. It's like, it's finding that balance of what works for you. And with what we're starting to realize. It's been on the planet, it's been on the earth for so long, like even Aboriginal, you know, the aboriginal founders in Australia have been working with the herbs and plants on this, on this land for centuries, well before we got here. And I'm just fascinated by how we're now slowly starting to realize that we're onto something.

I mean, yeah, here it's a slow process. We're hoping not all the encyclopedias of that botanical encyclopedia have been lost. But it also, it's part of the reason I haven't gone into Australia yet is because one China was documented better than any other herbal system in the world. And I don't feel like we've quite earned it here in Australia to be, you know, you know, like, you know, there's a particular. There's a few operations really opening up and it's good to see the mob really like taking that by the horns and getting it out there. So it's their time to start really reseeding it out. And we'll see down the road if there's anything from, from our point of view that's really in alignment from their perspective for everyone, you know, as we slowly earn the respect and that, that right to work with those medicines, see if something kind of opens up in that area.

Yeah, mate. Well, I'm mindful of time here and I do want to just acknowledge you for all the work you're doing and all the amazing stuff you've been putting out there. I highly invite people who are listening to this podcast to check out the Instagram page. It's Superfeast mushrooms. Is that right?

Just that. Super Feast.

That's Super Feast. The content. You guys are putting out a phenomenon, man, in terms of educational awareness piece around how to use these mushrooms. I highly invite people to check out the Instagram page because the content's bang on. And if people want to check out more of what you're up to, where, where can they find you online?

Me personally on Instagram. Not super active over there, but I'll, you know, I'll. I'll put up a meme every now and then it's Mason J. Taylor. And yeah, we've got, we got the Super Feast podcast as well. Myself and my fiance Tani put like quite a lot of info out on there and, and then just superfeast.com has got. Yeah, I think it's got like a lot of information on that website. And then just if there's anything that's, you know, any questions or, you know, whatever, anything comes up, just email the team or call the crew, both on the website there.

Amazing. Epic. And we're going to set up a little discount code for listeners as well. We'll keep you posted on what that sounds like. It'll be around. State shifters use the code. State shifters and people can get a little discount on your order. That's just for people based in Australia. Watch this. Space International coming.

Yeah, for now. For now. Until all the borders open up again and we will be launching in the US in the coming months. It's just that US insurance sucks. So just we're, we're an independent, you know, we're an independent company. You know, we're, we're still a family. I still, you know, I'm still 100% owner. So we kind of take things in our own time as we move along, just in case anyone's wondering on that level. But yes, yes, State shifters that, that code will get that set up straight away.

Amazing, man. Hey, thanks for being on the podcast, Mason.

Pleasure.

Hey, there we have it, guys. Thanks so much for listening to this episode and yeah, look, if you made it this far, cool. Here's my voice again in your ear and I'm going to make one more request for you is go ahead and subscribe and leave a comment on the podcast page because really putting a lot of focus and attention on getting this podcast out to more people because I know what I'm putting in here can serve and bring value to people and it would mean a lot if you got value from this to, to leave some feedback and subscribe so you stay up to date with what's coming up and as always, follow me on Instagram and love hearing from you. It's eight Shifters until the next episode. Guys, thank you so much and I appreciate you.