From Ancient Healing to Microdosing: How Mushrooms Went Mainstream with Alli Schaper

So finish this sentence: most people think of mushrooms as a food, but they're actually nature's greatest teacher in death, spiritual wisdom, and they have so much potential to heal our bodies.

The most criminally underused mushroom in wellness right now is lion's mane. My sweet friend, Allie, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

I'm so happy to be here. It's just an excuse to hang out with you for an hour, which is So exciting to me.

You were literally in my top 5 when I started the podcast, so this is long overdue, but I think it's also in perfect timing, the way that we've rolled out the topics for the episode until now. So, um, I just want to start off by saying how proud I am of you and everything that you've built. Gosh, I've just been your biggest, biggest cheerleader, and we're gonna dive into all of that today. So to kick things off, um, this podcast is really all about becoming more rooted. That's rooted in your health and your happiness and your life and who you are, and what I know is a philosophy you and I both believe is the inner knowing that we all have to heal ourselves. So let's just start off by 2 or 3 things that make you feel more rooted every day.

Well, I'm so happy to be here with you, and thank you for that compliment. And, you know, I guess it evolves over time, but in this current season of my life, I, for the last year, I've been praying to myself out loud. And there's something about the verbal action of talking to, you know, whatever larger than you you know, spirit, God, universe that you believe in, that has kept me really grounded. And I feel like there is a level of honesty that I'm able to have with myself. And so I try to do that every morning. So that's one thing.

Beautiful.

And then I love drinking a warm beverage in the morning. It's very simple, but my life involves a lot of travel and a lot of speaking. Like, you can hear my voice is almost gone right now because I've been speaking so much. And so it's a lot of output. And so I love just having a moment with myself in the morning, whether it's It's matcha or lemon water and just sitting down and setting intention for my day. And I used to have a way more elaborate morning routine, but it is condensed over the years. And so, pretty simple. And I do a meditation that me and my fiancé learned in India when we were over there.

Beautiful.

And it kind of returns me to the energy of being over there. So I've done that, you know, every day for the last few years, and it's been a beautiful part of my So beautiful.

No one's ever said that before, the first practice of speaking out loud. Is this something new for you to dive more into spirituality? Did that happen after India? Did you have that before anchored within you?

Well, so I love journaling, right? So for a long time, I loved journaling in the morning. And, you know, after, you know, any, if you watch any sort of make you a better person podcast, you know, self-help podcast, Journaling your gratitudes in the morning was always the thing that I did. And then I shifted that around like a year ago after I went to a Pachakarma retreat. And something that someone had said to me on that retreat shifted my practice to be speaking out loud to myself. And I found that it just influenced a different level of honesty.

Right.

And, you know, there's also just something— there's something about when you say out loud, these are the challenges that I'm going to anticipate today. These are the things that I'm grateful for. These are the people that I'm praying for, that just set up your psyche, I think, to handle it. And it's different from, you know, when you're, when you're writing something, it kind of feels like this far-off story.

Yeah.

So it's just a little distinction, and it's been, it's been really powerful for me. And now I also, um, am inspired to return to handwriting more because I'm watching all of the ChatGPT videos that are talking about how Uh, or, you know, I guess rather Instagram videos talking about AI, about how our brains are, you know, being decayed by the constant use of AI. And one of the biggest things that you can combat, uh, you know, the brain decay with is writing by hand. So I'm inspired to kind of reintroduce that, but speaking out loud has been a beautiful part of, of my routine.

So good. I'm smiling so much because I'm super inspired as a hardcore introvert. I can hear my voice a lot in my head, but to say things out loud, and I remember meeting, or, um, there's somebody else who came on the podcast to simply asking the question, Spirit or God or consciousness, what would you have me do today? Instead of constantly, you know, hoping for what we think that we want, which most of the time isn't what holds the wisdom or the greatest possibility, right? Because our mind is so finite. So beautiful practice, super inspired by that. On the flip side, we're going to get to your healing story. It's such a powerful one. Do you notice when you become uprooted? You mentioned you travel quite a bit. What are 2 or 3 things that you know now make you feel uprooted?

Moving too fast in the morning is just— I love the idea that you're always a few moments away from a completely better state and mood. But if I move, I move too quickly in the mornings. If I, you know, if I don't meditate, if I do these things, I also don't want to be such a slave to these practices because I think the idea of any of them is that you're able to actually live, live those practices.

Yeah.

But if I skip those intention settings and I kind of just funnel into my day, I find that my phone tells me what to do and the world is kind of telling me what to do and I'm not able to be as in flow with life because it's more reactive. And also just eating any processed food. I know this is like part of your entire world, but my— the way that my gut functions and the way that I work optimally is when I eat real food that is from the earth, as close to the earth as possible. So the quality of the food I eat is so important. And I'm really sensitive to sugar. I'm not—

Yeah.

As rigid as I used to be. And I think that there is a real freedom that's opened up in my life because of that. However, Because I'm, you know, so consistent with the quality of food that I eat and the time that I eat and all these things, right? With traveling as much as I do, if I start to eat more processed food, my gut stops working as well, and then my brain stops working as well. So, it's kind of just this cycle. So, I try to be really specific about that because it just makes me a better human, better friend, better partner, you know, all the things.

Everything, right? How we show up every day. And thank you. Those are beautiful answers. I always ask those 2 questions. One, In a world where we've really overcomplicated health and wellness, every single person, I think, with the exception of Dave Asprey, has mentioned things that are free, right? To feel better in our bodies every single day. And then going back to the importance of just prioritizing our, ourself, how we're fueling every day. So it's quite simple, but we've overcomplicated it. To get the most out of you today, we're going to start with some rapid-fire questions. Okay? Let's do it. Whatever comes to mind. So finish this sentence: Most people think of mushrooms as a food, but they're actually—

Nature's greatest teacher in death, spiritual wisdom, and they have so much potential to heal our bodies.

Goosebumps. The most criminally underused mushroom in wellness right now is—

Lion's Mane.

Mm. I just bought some this morning. Great. What's the fastest way to guarantee functional mushrooms won't work for you? Processed food.

Processed food, eating a ton of stimulants.

Yeah.

I think if you were over— you know, my quick elaboration on this is if you are constantly stimulated, whether it's by pharmaceuticals or cortisol that you create, you know, any— anything that is keeping your body in a fight-or-flight state, you're going to be less sensitive to something like an adaptogen. So when you're drinking 3 cups of coffee a day and you don't feel the reishi or the lion's mane, it's, it's because your body is is on overdrive over here, you're not going to notice this, like, subtle, beautiful tuning fork that is available for your nervous system that mushrooms can offer.

I think a big part of that is people don't notice the addiction to overdrive because it's become them, right? That's a big part of the work that I do with my clients is like, hey, hey, remember the way. Remember what it feels like to be on this side. Next, microdosing in one sentence. What is it actually doing?

Microdosing is giving you the ability to be subtly neuroplastic while you're in your day-to-day life, and it creates live pattern interruption or habits that you might want to change.

What's the one thing about mushrooms that, once you learn it, you can never see the world the same again?

Mushrooms, both functional and psychedelic, I think can give us more access to the heaven that is all around us.

Yeah, you can see it. Hot take: what's the wellness industry getting dangerously wrong about mental health?

I think just in general that we're, you know, that we're, that we're broken. I think that there's, there's just so much beauty in emotions and, and being human, and I think I think we overcorrect a lot, right? You see this in the longevity space where now we're so scared to die. And I think wanting to live more fully is such a beautiful thing, but there's just this, you know, this balance with all of it. And I think that's something that I've been thinking about that a lot as it comes to, you know, the more intense things like looking at death as a failure, looking at where we're at as something, you know, being wronged versus just, you know, full acceptance of the now. So I think that the internal messaging is getting influenced by a lot of the external.

So true. You've mentioned death twice now. Let's start with that. I know the passing of your father had obviously a very profound impact on you. You've shared a lot about it. You wrote a book about it also. Can you share a little bit more about The connection between that and maybe how mushrooms was part of the evolution to processing that?

Yeah. And it was, you know, I would like to write a book about it. It was more like a story. It was like, you know, a story that I wrote about it. Yeah, my dad has been such an important teacher in my life. He passed away a little over 3 years ago. And I would say, you know, the first The first thing that I thought about when I, when I found out my dad passed away was I'm so grateful I was able to give and introduce my parents to mushrooms before he passed. And I think the reason that I thought that is because psychedelic mushrooms, when used intentionally in the right settings, can give just this incredible widening of perspective on, on where we're going and the reason why they're so beautiful and impactful for end-of-life care is because there's this acceptance that sets in. And I've, you know, I've experienced that a lot recently with different friends. But the fear of death is often, you know, kind of killing us quicker.

Mm-hmm.

And so with my dad, I was so grateful that he was able to have that experience before he passed. And my mother was able to use psychedelic therapy after I passed away for, you know, to help process her grief. And she's done so, and, you know, it's still a journey. It's not linear.

Yeah.

But she's done so in a way that I find to be really healthy when I look around at the other ways we tend to process grief. And this is very, you know, this is very limited to the Western ways, right? Like Eastern cultures have such beautiful death rituals and the ways that they, you know, they take care of the family and really integrate death into life in a beautiful way. But It's very cold and harsh in Western cultures. And I think mushrooms are such an impactful part of helping us remember how to die well. So I guess, you know, to kind of tie that in a bow, my dad is still very present with me so, so much. And it's really deepened my connection to my work and to mushrooms.

Yeah.

Because I was able to see what a profound impact psychedelics had on my family around the experience of him dying.

I'm so excited for my audience to get to know you better, just in the way that you are able to storytell around those types of things. They're really hard conversations to have, even in the world of wellness and the impact that you're making through Into the Multiverse as well. Because I think you said it best, the word that comes to mind for most of the people that I work with in my myself included, is remembering, like, hey, there's an opportunity to remember that there's beauty every day, that we get this one body as a vessel to make the most out of it. And while we're so overconsumed with living to 120 or 130, and the fear that comes with that, and the fear around popping pills, and the fear around peptides, and the fear around everything else, has nothing to do with living and remembering the beauty of every day. And that's where we got to get things right.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's like, I'm 32, so it— when I'm in my 70s, I might be a little more nervous. So I think that, you know, it's— I, I'm, I'm aware of my immaturity in my experience of, you know, I don't— I, I, in theory, if I live a long, healthy life, I think I have 70 years left, right? Or maybe, maybe more than that. But the reality is we don't know.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, I, I, I had, I had this one kind of frame I thought about the other day, 'cause if let's say someone's really rude to you at the grocery store, And they say something like completely just like inappropriate, rude, and you want to snap back at them. And then you find out they have a terminal illness. You just want to go give them a hug, right?

Yeah.

And so the distinction, I guess, is that the compassion that we have around proximity to death is significant, right? If you know someone is on the way out to transition, we have this compassion that opens up in our heart. But the irony is we're all dying. We are all actually sharing this terminal illness. And I just, that's one example of many where if you can keep, you know, death, that's part of what I share with myself and my, or, you know, and with God when I talk to myself in the morning is that this is a very limited, you know, experience of this human incarnation. And the remembrance of that. It opens up so much freedom and so much compassion.

That's so true.

And so the context, I feel like, that we're all missing, you know, because when I go through my day and people piss me off and I get upset and, you know, just go through the cycles of being human, that one grocery store example reminds me that everyone is, you know, everyone's going through something. And if you can open up that compassion, you're actually, you know, talk about joy being the killer of all disease. The resentment we hold on to these things, you know, stories about we have of what people should do in our life. Like, that's a lot of where when I'm suffering, it's because I think that people should be meeting an expectation that I have of them.

Exactly.

Um, and so that's, that's really one of the biggest things where I'm just, I'm like, if I can release those expectations and try to have that level of, of compassion, realizing that we all have this shared, you know, terminal illness, even though it seems far off.

Yeah.

Um, It just brings me so much more peace and joy in my day-to-day life.

It's so true, the impact of going out into the world. If we were to imagine, whether it's the guy at the grocery store, the person in traffic, or even a dear friend, like if we could just hold up a mirror to ourselves, and in those moments when we want to lose it, what is it telling us about who we are, what we haven't processed, why is it triggering to begin with, and how could we act differently? And To your point, this is happening, you know, when we think about death and the fear that comes there. But something else that I've preached for so many years, and I even need the reminder myself, is remembering that nothing matters when you don't have your health, right?

Mm-hmm.

And I pray to God that for everyone listening or watching, you never have to experience that, right? Just your health suffering or being in a situation. But the unfortunate truth is that most of us are touched by somebody who is sick, or a parent, or a sibling, or God forbid, your children. Like, we're now all touched by it, and we're so aware of it. And yet we still get trapped into this loophole of the grind of day-to-day life and the hardship and the stress. And we're not remembering just, you know, how limited and unlimited time actually is and what we can do with it. So your story is a really big part of this. You were prescribed, you know, what was it, between 8 and 10?

Mm-hmm.

prescription medications when you were at your sickest. Did doctors ask you about what was happening in your life? Do you want to go back to that moment and share a little bit more about that?

Yeah, I mean, I, uh, I started out, you know, I guess I'll just kind of like lay, lay the landscape of, of my journey because it really was what led me into mushrooms. All of this is, um, and I'm very grateful for it now because if I wasn't, you know, as sick as I was, or as, you know, I, I, I'm— the, the journey that I've been on would not have been, you know, I don't know if I would've landed here if I wasn't so sucked into, you know, kind of a hole by the swirl I was in with prescription medications. So I have basically been chronically constipated since I was a child at this point. For the first, like, you know, 15, 20 years of my life, I didn't even know how bad my gut was functioning. And so I was in and out of all these doctors just like in pretty consistent pain. And it kind of went in waves, you know, it wasn't super consistent. And that was kind of like the core symptom. But then what ended up happening is, you know, I would go to a doctor and they would prescribe me a medication that ended up creating more symptoms. You know, it was a tale as old as time. And so by the time I was around age 21, I had been prescribed— it was like 8 or 10 different pharmaceutical interventions, and none of them had actually, you know, cured the root of what was going on in my gut function. And I know a lot of women struggle with this. Like, I talk to women all the time, and constipation is obviously like such a, such a stigmatized topic. And, you know, we're very, you know, I guess in the way, especially in like Western world, we're very like ashamed to talk about. I grew up not being comfortable talking about what was going on.

Of course. In my gut.

And that was also probably a part of it, right? Like, I didn't know I wasn't educated about how my body was supposed to work. And so, you know, by the time I was 24, I hadn't gotten a period in like 5 or 6 years. I had also gotten prescribed birth— you know, I was taking birth control. I had taken, you know, different birth controls over the years. And I got to a point where I was so sick of outsourcing my wisdom. I remember, you know, going in and sitting in the doctor's office, like on the plastic chairs, and just having this experience of— sitting there, I'm like feeling this like plastic beneath me and just filled out the clipboards with all the papers and it just like waiting for someone to come in and tell me what was wrong with me and waiting for someone else to come in and cure my problem.

Yeah.

And looking for also the one thing and the psychology around that, I think, is just setting us up for, for failure no matter what. But basically what happened was I decided to become my own citizen doctor and really, you know, start to take control of my health. And so that's when I discovered functional medicine and I discovered functional mushrooms through a part of process. And I was able to get off all of my own, you know, on my own, just through like movement and exercise and all of the basic, you know, things that, you know, you're such a believer in, able to get off of these pills that were really creating so many other symptoms. And I felt amazing, right? Like, I was able to get to a point where my gut was working better and I was still having some issues, but it wasn't as consistent. And So like, the physical changes were working, right?

Yeah.

And then there's like the psychosomatic. And when I entered the world of psychedelics, I realized how much of the mental stories or the holding on too tightly to life was actually creating a lot of my gut dysfunction. And so I think that it was all of these things kind of together that were able to like work in, you know, in synergy to help my body to like function normally. I got my period back. Um, and this was, you know, there's, there's different layers, right? But, uh, you had all the basics like food, movement, like eating things from the earth.

Yeah.

Um, psychedelics were a huge part of my journey just from like the psychosomatic, uh, really looking at my, where my traumas came from and where my, um, you know, where these habits came from. I also, you know, I had an eating disorder in college or sorry, and it was like high school leading into college that was a huge factor, right? And, and there were just so many different things that I was able to like really look at and unpack and figure out where the source of it was coming from. Microdosing was super impactful for me. And so that was kind of like where my, where my journey started. And because mushrooms were so impactful in my, my physical well-being, my spiritual well-being, my mental well-being, I wanted to go all in on, on sharing them. And so all my work, you know, it revolves around mushrooms through our products, through all the work I do in psychedelics. And, you know, the media stuff and the policy stuff. But I just think that mushrooms are amazing, and I'm excited that for more people to be, you know, be able to have access to them.

Oh yeah, it's happening. It's funny, there's something I think that so many people sitting in that chair have shared, that something happened around the age of 24. My last heart surgery was when I was 24, before I decided to have that self-advocacy that you were talking about. And I wonder how many of our listeners too, you know, different story, but how many of us suffered when we were younger, doctors said it was normal, or they gave us a prescription and they said, well, let's see how this goes. I'll see you in 2 or 3 months, right? I'll see how this goes and see you in 2 or 3 months. And like the laundry list of prescriptions that we tried and attempt to try to feel better, right? So here we are, flash forward. When we think about now, there is an epidemic of people suffering With their mental health, not only their physical health, but their mental health. And when we think about everything that people are trying through medication, through sleep, through trying different diets, they're doing all of these things, and yet they still feel like they're running on empty. They're not broken. There's some sort of dysfunction within the body. A lot of doctors at this point, I think because of stress and overwhelm in our modern world, it's hard to get to the root cause because there's so much going on. But when we think about it, where do you think, or from the stories that you hear from people, where is conventional medicine still falling short? And where do you think that mushrooms are really becoming the answer?

Yeah. And I mean, I guess the caveat to this answer is that, you know, I don't think necessarily everyone should take psychedelic mushrooms. I think functional mushrooms, if you're not, if you don't have an allergy to them or anything, you know, the, the These are ancient wisdom. You know, Chinese medicine has been using functional mushrooms for a very long time. And, you know, the real ancient wisdom of mushrooms is kind of irrefutable from a, you know, a superfood perspective. But I guess, you know, your question is, where is, where is functional, you know, conventional medicine falling short and where can mushrooms be, you know, a different solution? I guess I'll just speak to, you know, my story personally. You know, you talk about this a lot, but the looking at the whole human was never— was never done. And so people know this by now, right? If they're into functional medicine in any way, where if someone's not asking you what you're eating, if where you're, you know, what your movement rituals are, what your relationships are like, like all of that is so important and what it takes to, you know, create a healthy, happy human being. And so what functional mushrooms have the ability to do is rebalance the body because they, you know, they work They're immune modulators. They work to bring the body into homeostasis. And so why they're so magnificent, in my personal opinion, is they work different on every person.

Yeah.

Or if you give someone who has more anxiety reishi mushrooms, which is a non-psychedelic, you know, functional superfood mushroom, that'll calm the system down. If you give someone reishi mushrooms who has a little bit low energy, they'll actually bring you up to homeostasis. So I, you know, I said it earlier, but it's kind of like this, this tuning fork for the whole body. So they're intelligent in the way that they work within it, within our system. Mushrooms have an incredible— fungi, right? Fungi has an incredible intelligence within it that works with our body because we share 50% of our DNA with fungi. So they're so synergistic with our system. And on the psychedelic front, there's like properties within psilocybin, you know, which is one, psilocybin converts to psilocin in the liver and then goes into the, you know, goes into the bloodstream and does its hallucinogenic thing. And there's actual amazing properties of what psilocybin can do for your physical body, but what it illuminates and like creates an opening for people to look at their lives in a different way, where we're often so stuck in these, you know, these habit loops, these patterns, and these limiting beliefs, and often even, you know, a comfortability with being sick. Like, it's uncomfortable. to change in general. But when you look at a lot of symptoms people have, like, they're actually creating this mental story, right? And I was for a very long time, so I know it very well, where it's very comfortable to be, you know, someone with— that subscribes to having these things wrong with you, right? Because the brain is always looking for—

Yeah.

Brain's always looking for problems. So I think that the beautiful part about psychedelics is they open this window for you to look at your life in a different way and you know, revisit those stories, but make a new narrative around what those mean.

The brain's always looking for problems, and it's also looking for identity. And to your point in your story, I know I certainly identified as somebody who was sick, somebody who was on a prescription medication. I thought that that was it, that I identified with being sick for so long until I was able to break free. And I think that what you're alluding to is the beauty of that, kind of like shattering what you think you know and saying, hey, there's actually possibility for so much more. And when no one else around you is likely giving you permission. It's time for you to give yourself that permission. So we live in LA. I know that a lot of what we're speaking about today is just, you know, coffee talk. But for people who aren't listening, who this might be like a completely new spectrum, let's maybe break down. So we've got culinary mushrooms, we've got functional mushrooms, and then we've got psychedelic mushrooms.

Mm-hmm.

And while I think everybody should be working with culinary mushrooms and buying your shiitake and your lion's mane and stuff like that, let's break down the 3.

Okay, so yeah, those are the 3 categories, right, of fungi, which is the organism. And as I said before, we share 50% of our DNA with fungi. And just to kind of pull back for a second, I love people to know the history of mushrooms because they've been around forever. You can find a 5,000-year-old caveman that has been perfectly fossilized in the way that he was preserved. His name's Ötzi the Caveman.

Oh, right.

And on his person, he had a little pouch of functional mushrooms with a little chaga Which is a functional mushroom necklace around his neck. So mushrooms are ancient wisdom. They have been around forever. And in the West, we've really lost track of them in our diet and our supplement routine. So in Eastern cultures, Chinese medicine, I grew up over in Taiwan and mushrooms were everywhere. So this is really Western that we have an aversion to mushroom, but they're kind of making their way back into the mainstream.

Mm-hmm.

So the 3 categories you alluded to, it's culinary mushrooms. Those are what you get at the grocery store. You know, there's a mushroom section, there's oyster mushrooms and shiitake and portobello mushrooms and all of the culinary mushrooms, right? You never want to eat mushrooms raw because the chitin on the cell wall of the mushroom, your body actually can't break down. So if you see a salad bar that has raw mushrooms on it, not good, right? And you'll know this from Ayurveda or anything that you look at where warmed cooked foods, great, but especially with mushrooms, you never want to eat Yeah. So that's culinary mushrooms. Still great for you, like have an amazing nutritional benefit. But the category of functional mushrooms is this like specific category of superfood mushrooms that have a functional benefit beyond just nutrition. And so these are the popular ones you'll hear about: lion's mane, cordyceps, reishi, turkey tail, chaga. You know, there's about like 13 main ones that people Mm-hmm. And these are most commonly consumed in extracts. And so what you want to be looking for is fruiting body extracts. So we're in the fruiting body, and what that means is basically the top of, you know, what you see popping up out of a grassy field, the top of a mushroom that most people would recognize. Um, that's the fruiting body of the fungal organism, and that's where you find most of the polysaccharides, beta-glucans, Et cetera. So most of the good stuff is in, is in that part of, of the mushroom. And those are usually extracted through hot water, alcohol, usually double extracted, and then put into things like we make gummies, capsules, powders, tinctures, et cetera. And those are so great to consume on a supplemental basis. So we can like go into, you know, more of the individual ones. And then there is psychedelic mushrooms, which are, you know, the psychoactive mushroom psilocybin is Psilocybin is the most common one people talk about. There's a lot of different forms and strains of psilocybin mushrooms, and those have a psychoactive effect, which creates a hallucinogenic experience when consumed in high doses, and actually is a psychoactive molecule. So different from functional mushrooms in the sense that, like, lion's mane is not going to get you high. That's still a little bit of a confusion point, but those are kind of the 3 main categories.

Are you seeing the conversation shift at events that you're at when they're talking about psychedelic mushrooms and the availability to masses for healing or with doctors?

So I started a nonprofit a few years ago called Microdosing Collective, and the goal of that nonprofit was to help increase safe access to low-dose psychedelics. And so I've been involved in the policy work over the last, you know, 4 years, and it's been really amazing to see and kind of track where things are going and where it stands. And so high level, right now in the US, there's 3 states that have legal psilocybin therapy: Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico. There's a really exciting bill that's being proposed in New York. So to be decided if New York will have access to psilocybin, you know, in a therapeutic way soon. But that's, you know, therapeutic access at a service center, right? And then there's, you know, a more progressive decriminalization model in Colorado, which allows you to grow, gather, and gift psychedelic mushrooms. So you can grow your own and actually, you know, gift them to a friend legally.

Mm-hmm.

But there's no commercial exchange. So that's kind of like the legal landscape. And there's all these states that are proposing new policies. I think over the next few years, there's going to be even more where people are going to have, you know, even wider access. Right now, psilocybin is still federally, you know, scheduled. It's still illegal, Schedule I, meaning that, you know, the FDA finds it to have no medicinal benefit.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's changing. And obviously, we know that this from the incredible results from all of the clinical trials that are going on around the country using psychedelics. So I'm really excited about where it's going. Obviously, psychedelics have an incredible medicinal benefit when used intentionally, and there's a lot more attention going to policy efforts, which is really exciting because the argument against psilocybin therapy isn't— doesn't, you know, really have a stand anymore because the results are so powerful.

Something that ultimately comes from the earth, right? And I think what you said best, the clinical therapeutic aspect of it, if that's how it rolls out, then incredible, then we're doing it right. I think that what's happening right now, and you and I just saw each other at Expo West, it is the Wild West.

Right.

Like, even the supplement industry in many ways is feeling so much like the pharmaceutical industry and not knowing who to trust. And mushrooms is one of the biggest categories that's popped up. We're seeing mushroom gum, tea, Tea, you know, gummies, foods, cacao, everything. Let's hover for a second on the fruiting body or the mycelium. Is there a distinction that people should look at when they're buying a mushroom-based product?

Yes. I mean, this is, this is like a hot debate in the, in the mycologist community. So it's, it's, you know, it's important for people to do their research. The, the, the group of mycologists that we, you know, kind of study under and, and, and follow and take wisdom and advice from believe that the fruiting body is superior for nutritional benefits. There's also amazing companies that are using, you know, using mycelium and extracting it, extracting the mycelium from the grain on which it's grown in the proper way, which there's more studies looking at mycelium and the benefits that you can find in mycelium. So there's a lot more research that needs to be done. If the company is extracting mycelium or fruiting body in the correct, in the correct way, that's like thing number one to look at. What you'll see if you look on, you know, the back of packaging, so always look at the back of your packaging. It should say whether it's, you know, mycelium, full spectrum, fruiting body. If it doesn't say any of that, that's, that's kind of a red flag. And then there should also be an extract ratio. So, you know, on the back of ours, we use different extract ratios. So you'll get either like a 20 to 1 extract, which is more powerful, right, than a 4 to 1 or a 2 to 1. So the more powerful the extract ratio, the more powerful the, you know, the nutrient density.

Mm-hmm.

That you're getting within that extract. And so we take the liquefied extracts and turn them into gummies. So, you know, fruiting body extract, you want to see an extract ratio. And then you also, it really matters what, what milligrams, right, are in the, are in the blend. And so, you know, we'll have our blend and we'll have, you know, how many milligrams are our total in the functional mushroom blend. If you see something that has 5 milligrams of, of mycelium in there, It's like putting a grain of salt on something and calling it salted. So you really wanna look for, you know, minimum 100 milligrams for individual functional mushroom blends, like lion's mane, 100 milligrams. And it also depends, like, if you have an 8:1 extract, that's more powerful than having, you know, 200 milligrams of a, of a 2:1 extract. So those are like kind of the factors. It's a little bit confusing, but the main takeaways are Look for fruiting bodies. That's our perspective. There's other perspectives out there, so do your research. You know, look for extracts, extract ratios on there. So you want to see an extract ratio. And also just look at the company's website and do a little bit of common sense digging is like, who's behind this? Do they seem like they're in integrity? Are they sharing where they're sourcing the mushrooms from? All those things.

Such good education. I can think of like supplement brands that are throwing mushrooms into, and I know that that distinction is not being made. So I just learned something new as well. And when we think about dosing, something I've never looked at. So these are the Daily Energy Gummies. They taste amazing.

They're really good.

They're like a staple in our house. Yeah. Um, when is too much? I know that you, you know, kind of advocate for a dose back here, but is— will someone have a symptom if they take too many? Do you recommend cutting yourself off?

So not from the mushroom itself. Like, you can take, you know, these are relatively like moderate, like daily dose, right? So the more thing that you want to be concerned about is like, you shouldn't be eating more than 5 or 6 gummies a day. I'm super sensitive to sugar alcohol. So we have— these are sugar-free, but they have a little bit of maltitol and monk fruit, very low amount. But for us, it was more important to make them sugar-free than to have 6 grams of cane sugar per gummy.

Yeah.

Because most Americans don't need more sugar in their diet. So we wanted to, you know, make something that was sugar-free and more accessible to people in that sense. So that being said, I'm very sensitive to not— like, if I eat a few sticks of, you know, if I'm chewing a few sticks of gum, like my stomach will get upset. So that is something that you really want to note. Like my kind of threshold is like, I don't want to eat more than like 5 or 6 gummies a day, which sometimes I do because I love them and I have them around all the time. Um, but that's, that's the major thing on the functional mushroom part. You could take a lot more, you know, with, with lion's mane in a powder and be completely fine.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah. I wanted you to hover on that. The serving sizes too. I'm the same with sugar alcohols. Notice how you feel. And often, like, we've got to remember, I know a lot of people who, oh, I heard this was good for me, so I decided to, like, eat half the bag.

Use as much as I could, yeah.

Doesn't always work that way.

Yep.

So what was the documentary about mushrooms that was so big?

Fantastic Fungi.

Fantastic Fungi.

It's incredible. It's so good.

Yeah. So whenever— we'll talk a little bit more about journeys and stuff like that— whenever I, even at the ashram, whenever I go back to the ashram, let's put it that way, I'm always I was just so impressed by the power of nature to heal, whether it's the soil, the sun, how our food is grown, the ocean, the water, everything, how connected we are and how much better we feel in those scenarios. When I watched Fantastic Fungi, watching how mycelium grow and kind of the network beneath the soil and communication that happens, I think about that within the body.

Hmm.

Often we take supplements and we think that, oh, I'm going to take this heart supplement and it'll just go to the heart, or this for my eyes or for my brain. It's like, no, the body is connected. How do you see mushrooms connecting throughout the body? Is it possible for mushrooms to work systemically?

Yeah, I love that analogy. So mycelium, for people that don't know what mycelium is, it's worth looking up these visuals because it's just extraordinary. I never grew up having any idea that under every single step that you take across planet Earth, there is a vast connected web Of mycelium network that connects all living things. And that was just left out of my education system.

Same.

And what is so miraculous is that mycelium network functions very similar to, you know, it's like the Earth's internet. And every single tree, every single plant, anything that grows out of the Earth is underground connected by this mycelium network that transmits nutrients in the most optimal way to everything. Right? So if a tree is suffering, you know, and struggling to grow, mycelium will transmit new, you know, new nutrients over to that tree through little hyphae, which is part of the mycelium network. And that's pretty extraordinary, right? And so every— everything in the human body is so mirrored to nature. And so I love that example because if you look at veins, they look very similar to mycelium, right?

Yeah, true.

Like, it's a similar way where if you look at our our thumbprint to, you know, to a tree, or the way that, you know, the amount of water that's distributed through the human body is the perfect ratio of the amount of water that's on the Earth, which I also didn't find out until like very recent years. So everything in nature is perfectly mapped to the human body. We're often out of balance within our human body, so it's not as in balance perhaps as the nature around us, which is why I think being in nature can kind of osmosis us back into— being in balance with our circadian rhythm, et cetera. My experience taking functional mushrooms for the first time when I was going through my healing journey was exactly that. I felt like my health was at like an 8, and I felt good, and I was off my pharmaceuticals, and I felt good. And then I started consuming high doses of functional mushrooms every single day for months, and I felt my brain come online in a different way. So I felt this systemic whole-body waking up experience. And it was through lion's mane and reishi and cordyceps. No psychedelic mushrooms at that point, right?

Yeah.

And I was just like, wow, how cool is it to wake up in your life? So there's no way that it wasn't working on a whole system level for me because my inflammation went down, my brain felt like it was more connected, my gut function was working better, my skin looked better, my hair looked better, like all of these things, right? And I was also doing all of the other things as well. I was eating well, I was moving. And so when you introduce functional mushrooms to a system that is already operating well, I think it's so much more obvious, right? If you are super sick and you're only taking functional mushrooms and not doing something else, you might be less sensitive to that example we talked about at the beginning of the show.

Yeah.

So yes, I think mushrooms have the ability to heal whole bodies. And there's something else, I shared a video about this recently, but The beta-glucan found in mushrooms— I don't know if you saw this, but the beta-glucan has actually been shown to basically, on a cellular level, prevent our, you know, lung cells from getting sick. So it's like this preventative coat that I'm picturing. And we know that's like the environment you're introducing any sort of pathogen to is what creates the reaction.

Right.

So, you know, the last thing I'll say about this is, you know, I used to be allergic to eggs. I'm not allergic to eggs anymore. It's because I fixed my gut microbiome so much that when I introduced the egg to the system, that I'm totally fine now, right? And so mushrooms feel, and they're being increasingly proven, to create this, you know, protective layer on our whole system that when something outside, virus, pathogen, is introduced, that it protects us against illness.

This is my most favorite thing to talk about. So yeah, I love that analogy. And, you know, when you look at your blood vessels, even when you look at bok choy, right? Like, you just see the resemblance of the fact that we come from nature and we're made from nature. And even everything that's coming out around our lymphatic system as well, and how that mimics the quality of nature and a communication system, right? How on— it's just mind-boggling. Like, when you think about walking on the soil, I love that story that you told. You would never know that you were walking across an entire network of mycelium, right? And—

No idea what's under there.

You have no clue what the earth is made out of. And this disconnection that we have and And when I think about building resilience back into the body, even beta-glucans and the studies that they're finding now have to do with oxidative stress, and a lot of the things that kind of, you know, make the stress happen faster within the body is the result of living in our modern-day world.

Mm-hmm.

So here I am thinking that if you need the reminder, you are not only your greatest healer, I think that our bodies are probably the most intelligent things on the planet. And they function better when we're connected to nature. I really hope that that's going to come online. And I think that mushrooms also, and maybe this is part of the next question, if ancient wisdom has known about mushrooms forever, when we look at pharmaceuticals, they're already getting most of our pharmaceuticals from nature through extracts and stuff like that. Why do you think we're being forced to take that world seriously now? You know, I say on the show all the time, we've talked about integrative healthcare for so long, but no one's actually practicing it.

No.

Right? It's through our own healing journey that we uncover, okay, the sleep pillar, the meditation pillar, the movement pillar. We have to make it all work together, but we're doing that on our own effort, as opposed to going to the doctor where we move into the meditation studio afterwards, followed by the traditional Chinese medicine doctor, and then the Ayurvedic specialist. It's just, it's not set up that way. Right.

Yeah, it's exciting, right? Because it's, I think it's a triaging of a lot of different things. It's social media, it's access to information. You know, when I was going through my healing journey, a video, you know, that really— that changed my perspective was watching a video of Mark Hyman talk about the impact of acid blockers on our health.

Right.

And I was like, no one ever told me this, that it had X, Y, and Z side effects. And I called my doctor, you know, 10 years after I was taking that pill, and I was like, hey, like, I just learned that there might be some ex— you know, this— these side effects to this drug, and it actually could lead to cancer and things later in life. And I was like, is this true? And he's like, oh yeah, you don't actually need to be taking that. It was more of a preventative thing. You can stop. And I'm like, oh my God, how much have I been blindly outsourcing? Yeah, it's crazy. You know, and I was— I actually, I went really deep into the process where I looked up the cost and the, you know, the profit margin of each of my pills. And I was like, oh my God, this is, you know, I went very deep into understanding that a lot of the things that are prescribed Whether it's knee surgery or individual pharmaceuticals, you know, the profit margins are very correlated with the rate of prescriptions, right? The most profitable ones, not always, but often, are prescribed. Like, I was told I needed emergency knee surgery and then I didn't, or I would never be able to fully, you know, walk around again. And then I end up getting stem cells. I was blessed to be able to do that, but I didn't need to get the knee surgery, you know, upon reflection. So, yeah, remind me your original question because I went on a whole tangent.

No, I think you kind of answered perfectly. specifically, the fact that we're at a point in time where we must go back to ancient wisdom.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, so I think it's exciting because I think more and more, because we're the sickest we've ever been, and you see this a lot with what's happening with everything RFK is pushing forward, people are responding and paying attention to the fact that we need to change our food system because we're the sickest We've ever been. And the solutions that are available are failing us. Even with mental health, when we talk about the world of psychedelics, the way that if you're advocating for policy around psychedelics, the way that you would onboard someone who might be more resistant to that understanding is to get them to understand what you can already agree with, right? What we have available isn't working. We're in the worst mental health crisis we've ever been in.

Yeah.

And there might be some promise in these, at least they can admit there might be some promise in these other molecules that have had these extraordinary results. So I think access to information, I think as more scandals come out where you realise the profit incentive behind a lot of these systems is more and more obvious now because you have all these exposing documentaries, you have all of this information that people are aware of, and we feel it more than we've ever felt it. So I would say people are paying attention now more than ever because we're waking up more than ever. You know, if you have, just statistically, there's 11 million people in the United States that are using microdosing psilocybin.

Yeah.

They did a RAND report, and that is how many people are using low-dose psychedelics. That's 69% of the total percentage of people that are using psychedelics. A few years ago, 2 years ago, it was 4 million people. So it's growing like crazy.

Yeah.

And if you have that many people that are, at minimum, what you can derive from that data, interested in changing their consciousness to become a happier, healthier human, which is most of the reason why people are engaging in these practices, especially microdosing, you know, you microdose with the intention to microdose, not because you want to take 5 grams of mushrooms. You're really looking at the impact of those, you know, those smaller doses. So I just think more and more people are waking up, and I'm really excited to see how that unfolds over the next few years.

I think so too. Honestly, even since starting this podcast, the amount of messaging that I'm seeing around ancient wisdom rise is because people are starting to see through, or they've gone through a journey like you and I where they're like, okay, you know, I don't feel a whole lot better, and I'm continuing to get sick. This isn't working. It might be a Band-Aid, but it certainly is not working. And Let's just call it, like, there is a time and a place for pharmaceuticals. They can be life-saving, life-changing. However, if you have a parent who's alive, who's in, you know, their 70s, 80s, and 90s, just imagine a lifetime of being given prescription meds, followed by an additional prescription, followed by an additional— like, my mom right now is just on so many, and doctors can't even think about how to reverse the impact.

Hmm.

She's got an entire history of autoimmune disease, but I'd wonder going back if there was more focus on the resiliency of things or more focus on, well, how do I bring my body back online, how she could have healed like so many others.

Well, I think just an interesting kind of question that I pose, I like to pose to myself when I can remember to do so as often as I can, is with everything you consume, whether it's, you know, you have like your chlorophyll water here, we have SuperMush, and we have You know, tea here, pharmaceuticals, substances, anything. It's like, what direction is it taking you? Is it taking you into your head or your heart?

Yeah.

And a lot of pharmaceutical medications, not all, right? Like, if you were to look at MDMA, it's an amphetamine, right? It's in the psychedelic family, but it's a heart medicine. So there's, like, nuance to this statement. But in general, like, high amounts of caffeine takes you straight into your head, right? Or Adderall, you know, which is a super commonly prescribed ADHD medication, it takes you into your head because it's performance. And so we're constantly being pitched performance over, you know, over heart-centered action. And I think with everything we consume, food, sugar, you know, to ask yourself that question, like, is this taking me into my heart or is it taking me into my head, is a simple way to I think you just nailed the foundation of how I work with my clients.

How can we shut down all the noise in the mind and put the wisdom back into the body, which I think is always guiding us, but we've become experts. We've mastered ignoring symptoms, and we're so addicted to feeling great. Like you and I, we probably said yes to the prescription right away, because whatever it takes to feel better, I'll take it, right? Because sometimes it feels like a lot of work.

Yeah.

And let's piggyback on that with the fact that you and I work in an industry where we're so interested in what the next best thing is, the red pill, the next trend, whatever it is, mushrooms is a category that, you know, for lack of a better word, has in some ways been bulletproof.

Mm-hmm.

When I think about, you know, the CBD phase that happened, right? Or the hemp-infused everything that happened. Why do you think that mushrooms are different?

I think it goes back to the ancient wisdom, like to go back to Ötzi the caveman. We have been working with mushrooms in psychedelic forms and in functional forms as humans for thousands of years. And so in a lot of ways, they're the only medicine that has stood the test of time. And that's significant. And so when solutions are failing us, we look to, we look to our elders, we look to ancient wisdom, not as often as we should in in the Western world, right? And I keep referencing that because there is a distinction. Like, if you look at Eastern cultures, Chinese medicine, where I grew up over in Taiwan, I was there for the first 8 years of my life. They think it's kind of funny that the West is having this massive moment with mushrooms. They're like, we have been in this game for a very long time, both with functional specifically, right? And again, indigenous tribes using psilocybin mushrooms for ceremonies. ceremonial purposes for thousands of years as well. So I think the ancient wisdom is really the flag here. And what's happening is we have now all this modern science that's catching up and being able to pinpoint what is actually happening in the body. Because, you know, if you think about, you know, a shaman who's serving you a psilocybin mushroom in ancient times, they probably don't know the mechanism of action of how it's working in the liver and then going into the bloodstream and all of these different things. Right. Modern science is catching up and being able to explain to a, you know, conservative and maybe more discerning adult in the modern world of what's actually happening in our system. So these 2 worlds are merging together, which I think is really important because we know now more about these molecules, functional mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms, other psychedelics than we ever have. But the legitimacy behind them is really the marriage of the, you know, the modern science and the ancient wisdom.

Beautifully said. Yeah, you and I are both a big fan of studies and data and stuff like that, but I think there's also an inner knowing of when something feels good. And a lot of people are popping pills without feeling any different.

Right.

I think it's important to mention, so, you know, who knows, people are going to be inspired after this and not really know where to start their mushroom journey. There was a study in 2022, 30% of mushroom supplements reviewed didn't meet their label claims for active compounds. So, if this is going to be— if this is going to continue to be a trend that's rising, as it should, you mentioned how to look for things on a label. Do you know around, um, are there going to be, you know, any specifics with labeling that people should look out for? Um, you know, we don't want people going into CVS and buying something off the shelf thinking that it's going to support them necessarily, because it could just be fairy dust mushrooms that are sprinkled into it, combined with filler and stuff like that. Yeah.

Yeah. So for functional mushrooms, it's really those main things, fruiting body mushrooms, looking for the extract ratio. There's a lot of innovation that's happening with functional mushrooms as well. People are extracting them, you know, making more potent extracts. Like, all of that's fantastic. I'm really excited about that. So I know the industry will evolve. That statistic, I mean, I'm even sure that it's much more than that that don't meet their, their claims. It might be on the low end, but it's a $40 billion industry, the functional mushroom industry. So this is massive.

Yeah.

And the amount of products that are coming out are, are remarkable. So it's exciting because the whole market is growing. But as you see with any industry, we saw this with CBD, right? Um, I think there's, you know, a difference here because CBD is not— doesn't have the ancient wisdom flag in the same way that, you know, that fungi does.

Exactly.

But, uh, the most important thing is to really look at the company that's making your products. Look at their transparency. Look where they're sourcing the mushrooms from. Look if they have a founder that's forward-facing and talking about, you know, we're, we're trying to be even more public and, you know, more involved in education around where we make our products, all of those things. So, those are really important flags. And I would say, you know, start, start very simple. You know, look at, you know, where our product line is going. This little sneak preview is like, we're going to make, you know, either single or double ingredient blends.

Great.

Very simple. You know, the world in which we need to fit 100 ingredients into a very small product is giving people like a small amount of each, of each ingredient. So what we want to do is, um, you know, higher doses, fewer ingredients, like just very simple. If you can't read the label and you don't understand what's on it, you probably shouldn't consume it. Like basic, basic knowledge there.

Yeah.

Um, and I would say, you know, for, for people that are looking to start with functional mushrooms, pick a powder, pick a gummy, pick a capsule, And stick with it consistently. These are not, you know, you'll get a boost if you take a high dose of lion's mane. Like, I love, you know, I love drinking it with matcha in the morning. I feel this cognitive boost. It's a combination of a little bit of caffeine, right, and the lion's mane. But they work best when they build in your system over time. Any work that I've done on myself that's actually healed me has been not an overnight success. It's been work.

Definitely.

These work to get into your system. It's not like drinking a cup of coffee, that, you know, that feeling, but it's a more subtle attunement to the, you know, to nature, to the rest of your life. And so it's really worth it because your calm and your peace of mind over, you know, the course of a few months of taking these will really be rewarded. People that take functional mushrooms consistently are usually with them for life. They're not like a thing that people rotate in and off of very often. And people that really notice that, they're like, wow, this is such a supportive thing for me to have in my routine.

That's super powerful. I love the word attunement. In many ways, you know, if you're going through a really stressful season in your life, obviously these can be therapeutic, but if you are experiencing consistent stress and you feel like you've been that way for a long time, to your point, you've gotta look at all of the pillars, right? We can't expect mushrooms to come in and be the superhero of everything. They can be highly supportive. And do the work to look at where the biggest kind of inflammation is coming at so that you really reap the rewards and understand how they can attune your body to feeling better every day. You've mentioned brain fog a few times. You mentioned lion's mane just now. What's one of your favorite go-tos in the morning for all the people experiencing brain fog right now?

I mean, lion's mane, you know, is— it's nature's Adderall, is, you know, my unofficial terminology for it because— and most people will know that reference, but if you don't, Adderall is So Ritalin is a stimulant, and it, you know, it's an ADHD medication drug that will make people feel super productive. Unfortunately, it has like some side effects that are not preferable if you're taking it over, you know, a long period of time. Yeah, big time. Lion's mane is this beautiful neuroplasticity-inducing supplement mushroom that doesn't have those side effects, and it creates more neuroplasticity in the brain. So if you've actually looked at, you know, a really great study on lion's mane that I love, is consistent use of lion's mane in adults shows neuroprotective benefits against diseases like Alzheimer's or any sort of degenerative disease, brain disease. And so when you think about, you know, Alzheimer's runs in my family, so I'm constantly thinking about, not in a fearful way, but in a preventative way, like, what am I more likely to get because of my family history and my DNA? And Alzheimer's is something that runs in my family, but it's completely preventable if you take care of your brain chemistry. And so lion's mane is a really incredible way that we can take care of our brain chemistry. And these studies show pretty remarkable results. And if you look at someone's brain on lion's mane, it actually has this level of neuroplasticity.

Wow.

So, you know, psilocybin mushrooms kind of get all the sexy airtime around regrowing your brain pathways and neuroplasticity and connecting connecting, you know, and connecting new dots. Lion's Mane is also really, really powerful for doing that.

So cool.

Yeah.

I remember when I first started using mushrooms, whether it was a powder or a tincture, I thought it would just kill the flavor of everything. And yeah, it's not the case.

Some of them do. Okay, so like reishi mushrooms, super bitter.

Reishi mushrooms, yeah. If I mix that into like a cacao or something at night, it would just kind of kill the flavor.

Yeah, yeah. No, it kind of— it's— so reishi can be super intense. There's companies now that are working on creating flavorless extracts, which would be a really cool kind of innovative step in functional mushrooms. Lion's mane doesn't really have a flavor. Adding it to coffee, completely fine. Like, we're going to make a lion's mane matcha coming up soon. So I'm really excited about that. Super high dose lion's mane.

That's strange for you.

No, because I'm obsessed with matcha. I love it. Um, so the flavor of them can be really intense, but if you, you know, we, we mask them in gummies. The reason why we made a gummy is because we wanted mushrooms to taste Because on their own, these extracts can be bitter, especially if you're taking the right product. If you take a powder that doesn't have any bitterness to it, it might not actually be the dosing and the extract ratio and all of that that we just talked about with mushroom.

Yeah. So cool. I can't wait for that. A lot of people this year, this is the first year in many years where I refuse to do any type of like a new year protocol to step into something hardcore. Or doing a cleanse, because I find after— I found after last year, so many people were just trying to make it to the end of the year. Like, it wasn't even about burnout anymore. People were just like numb to the world and life and expectations. And, you know, even through the wins, it was just like a disconnection.

Hmm.

A lot of people are experiencing that this year. Can you talk to us a little bit about the intelligence of mushrooms to support somebody in feeling again and maybe breaking out of what we talked about earlier is just this cycle of kind of identifying with this is it right now and remembering?

Yeah, it's such a beautiful question because, I mean, how— I know so many people, right, including myself at times, that are like doing all the things.

Yeah.

Um, and there's still not this cultivation and this consistency of peace of mind, which I think is the ultimate success that we can achieve. Do I good and happy in my body? And do I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be? And often that shift can be subtle, right? The low-level anxiety that just like slowly pulsates through our system. It can be frog in a boiling pot where you don't know that you're living with a low-level anxiety or even like low, very low-grade depression where you're just like, I feel, I don't feel this sense of joy. And one of my teachers always says to me, mushrooms are instruments of joy. And so I have this analogy where I like to, you know, I like to picture everything that we're consuming as, you know, like, well, I guess start with the body. Like, for the body, picturing it as this empty opera house, like this vacant vessel, that everything that we feed ourselves, whether it's thoughts or social media or food or supplements or psychedelics, whatever it is, everything that we feed ourselves has a different note and a different tone. And then over time, these notes become melodies and harmonies, and they form together, and it becomes the symphony of your life and the song that you play out to the world. And we can feel when someone in our presence is playing a really sad song.

Yeah.

Or a really joyous song, or, you know, a melancholy tune, whatever it might be. But I like to think about it in audio, right? Like, what is that frequency that we're playing out? And someone who's in burnout is playing a burnout song. And the beautiful thing about whether it's functional mushrooms or, you know, I love microdosing for exactly this, so I'll comment on it in a second, but they can be this tuning fork to the nervous system to put you back in a state state of balance and calm and centeredness and are just really great tools to be able to access, along with a lot of other things. Microdosing is the practice of taking a small amount of a psychedelic mushroom. You can microdose other things as well, but psilocybin specifically, a small amount that's below the hallucinogenic threshold. So it's subhallucinogenic, meaning you're not having any visual effects.

Yeah.

It's usually between 0.1 and 0.2 grams Of psilocybin mushrooms. And the ability to move through life and let things pass through you is really profound with microdosing. So with all of the people that I've worked with to help bring them kind of through that process, the number one thing I would say that people benefit from is being able to interact with your life in a way that something will occur, but instead of like a sticky note that's sticking to your body that's covered in molasses, it'll just slide off of you. And I think the accumulation of all of these moments and, you know, expectations for people and stories, like, creates this weighing down of the system.

Mm-hmm.

And so I love, you know, I love that you're not doing some radical kind of new year, new new you thing because this is your life. You know, this is the moment that we're in now. And I'm trying to remind myself that my actual measure of success is, you know, how joyous am I in my day? And I love having these tools when I feel like I'm out of balance.

Imagine moving through life and when the stuff happens, not having it Hold you, right? I don't think a lot of us were really taught how to ever process properly, not to mention grief, because we don't even talk about that in our society. And yet most of us grew up with, like, this blueprint of hypervigilance or, you know, addiction to stress, living in burnout, but not even recognizing that we're there because it's just, it's so common. It's such a common place to live. How does one figure out a microdosing Protocol then?

Yeah, can we go there? Yeah, of course. No, so, um, our nonprofit Microdosing Collective has a lot of good information about this. We have a microdosing guide, and, um, I'm very passionate about people sharing their experiences with psychedelics because I think that the destigmatization of them will help inform culture, and culture helps inform policy. So that's kind of the way that I actually think will increase access, is more people sharing their stories. Microdosing protocols are usually having it in your system 4 to 5 days a There's several different kind of main protocols that people follow. One is, you know, 2 days on, 1 day off, 3 weeks of that protocol, and then 1 week break. That's like a common protocol that people will follow. And there's a few others that, that are popular and created by, you know, a few different, you know, psychedelic educators that are awesome. So our guide, which you can find at microdosincollective.org, has like a great overview of education. You know, what microdosing does to your system, what protocols to follow, etc. The biggest thing is it's currently illegal to access these substances. That being said, there's policies that are coming to allow people to access them in, you know, in safer, legal ways. So I'm excited about where we're going with it. And there's a lot of really good resources that you can find online. The biggest thing is don't Don't take sketchy substances from someone that you do not know. Uh, the unfortunate reality is if, you know, if you live in New York State, for example, you can walk into any streetcore, you know, street corner store, deli, and find someone that's selling psilocybin mushrooms on, in the, you know, underground market and just kind of going for it. So as this movement is growing, there's more and more unsafe substances. So don't buy any of those.

Yeah.

Um, would be my flag. And make sure you have like a safe, you know, vetted, trusted That is insane.

Yeah, I'll share. So after I miscarried, I miscarried twins, um, Craig had a friend who experienced loss who talked about the benefits of microdosing, and Craig brought them for me to try, and it was a game changer. I kind of felt really stuck in this sadness for a long time and self-blame, and even after my healing journey, I kind of just forgot, like, oh, you know, trusting that my body had to do what it had to do in order to move forward. It was a game changer.

Wow, that's— it's so beautiful, and I think specifically for grief in whatever form that might, that might be.

Yeah.

This subtle adjustment while you're in your day-to-day life is so important. And you can access that through other ways, right? Microdosing is one, is one way to look at your life differently. But what I've seen even with my, with my mother and her experience of, you know, she got on a microdosing protocol after, after my dad passed away. And it was like a year and a half or so after. It wasn't, it wasn't immediate.

Yeah.

Um, and she's done kind of one-off days here and there before. But I mean, she, she wrote a whole, I'll share it with you. She wrote a whole kind of essay to me about how this has changed her perspective and relationship with grief. And she described it so beautifully because she's like, the tethers that I have to him, you know, in heaven, and she has very specific belief on that in a beautiful way. She's like, I feel like I'm able to cut some of those cords and allow him to move on. And I still feel connected, but I don't feel like I'm holding on so tightly. And to this beautiful way she described it, and to witness her be able to use what is most commonly in culture a tool for creativity and optimization because of the popularization of Silicon Valley founders using microdosing. But what I've seen for women, for mothers, for people that feel stuck in their lives, to be able to gift people the opportunity to be 1% more neuroplastic while they're in their day-to-day life is such a blessing. And, you know, the movie scene example I like to think about is The Matrix, where all the bullets are flying at Neo.

Yeah.

And so I like to describe microdosing with this visual because it's like, if you think about your life, there's all this stuff that's coming at you, messages, emails, you know, conflicts with your partner, kids, family, all the things, right? Work. And when something is coming at you that might be intrusive to the system, Neo in The Matrix, he stops the bullets, he picks one up, he looks at it, and he moves it to the side, and he's able to make a completely different decision.

Yeah.

And so microdosing while you're in your life is able to slow down the thought patterns enough where instead of just automatically reacting, Like returning to your 16-year-old self when your mother says something to you that triggers you, to slow down and be a little bit more conscious as that thought is, you know, in the mind and coming out of the mouth, is the way I like to think about it.

So powerful. And I think something else that we need to move past is the stigma behind it, right? I remember when I tried it, I was like, you know, what am I doing? You know, what are people gonna think? And yet now, kind of in the practitioner space, the science that's coming out behind it, that stigma needs to go away. I was so excited to have this conversation with you, thinking last night that there's so many of us. I think a lot of people too in my community were in this sandwich generation of caring for our children, but also caring for our parents.

Hmm.

And with our parents getting to the near end of their life, the benefit of microdosing maybe with your mother or your father, and what that impact would be like together, to have that as a shared experience, to process and maybe pre-grieve so that the final moment wasn't so intense.

Yeah. I mean, mushrooms for end-of-life care and for post, you know, post-grief, I think are so remarkable. And, you know, I was so— I was working in this space. This is my full, you know, my full-time mission before my dad passed away. But afterwards, it gave me, like I said, such a deepening of seeing how valuable that this tool can be for families because the solution with how we process grief or trauma, especially with the process of death. We don't do that well over in America specifically. But my dad, before he passed away, he was microdosing.

Wow.

And the significance of that is really special because he was finding this relaxation in his life. And he ended up passing away 5 days before he retired.

Wow.

And so much of my experience of his life was about talking to him about him getting to retirement and getting to this date in the future. And it wasn't all the way. Like, he wasn't fully relaxed into not subscribing to that he needed to get somewhere, but it was softening. And that was a factor in that was him using microdosing. My mom called them his happy pills, and it was like this kind of funny joke in our family, and it was like this subtle softening of not needing to get anywhere. And so to see him taste that was super impactful. And I think so much of, you know, especially when we get down to, you know, close to retirement, which is still a thing that we— I think retirement's kind of a funny concept.

Yeah.

But there's a lot of anxiety of releasing your purpose. And if you can be in your day-to-day experience and be more joyful and feel more relaxed and feel more peace of mind, like what a gift that is to your family, what a gift that is to those around you. And I'm excited to see what comes with end-of-life care and psilocybin with studies and things that are coming out, because my personal experience has been that it is incredibly profound.

Yeah.

And I don't know what my family's grieving journey would've looked like if there was other tools that we had to turn to. My mom didn't get on an SSRI. She didn't— she said no to all of that. Um, and she was able to use these other tools that are non-addictive.

Yeah.

And bring you into your heart, enable you, enable you to process grief in a way where you're actually looking at it and she's feeling her emotions. So I'm just, I'm so impressed with her. And I know that's not everyone's journey is to be open to that. at 65 years old. Um, but it's been really special to witness.

It's kind of frightening right now. My mom's older, she's 81. And, um, the forecast right now for old age is frightening, like the amount of falls that are happening. And there's multiple doctors who said to me, I said, uh, you know, how is every room on this hospital floor full? And 3 specific doctors looked at me and they said, we never expected people to live this long.

Wow.

And so a lot of these people are suffering. They don't necessarily have the care that they need. We already know, like, for our generation, we're living at this generational mismatch for the stressors on the human body, and we're just trying to cope, which is why I think microdosing could be so powerful. So yeah, I love you. Thank you for hovering on that for a second, because I just think it could paint a completely different picture for this last phase of our life, which could be such a decline, is now something where there is a bit of a lessened grip or enjoyment or peace or happiness that can come with it, especially if you're given a diagnosis or, like my mom, on different prescription medications, or if the body actually is shutting down, but you're just not ready to go.

Yeah, and there's an acceptance. Mushrooms, at the end of the day, it's the first question you asked, one of them, is they're teachers in death. You know, they, I wrote this story after my dad died is the one you're referencing, and it was called Mushrooms Eat Death for Breakfast. And the analogy there is that mushrooms, you know, fungi literally through enzymes that they produce, when something dies on the forest floor, they will come out and the fungi will come out, eat the decaying body or whatever it is and decompose it and return its nutrients to the soil. Yeah, decompose it. So mushrooms just integrate, you know, fungi just integrates death into the process of, you know, of life. And we don't do that. We literally put bodies in coffins and freeze them and interrupt the natural cycle so that fungi can't eat them. And there's something really fascinating about that.

Absolutely.

And so from a spiritual perspective, I think that, you know, there's so much— like, we've talked about so many beautiful things that Lion's Mane can do for the brain. And, you know, there's There's this just incredible category of functional mushrooms for healing the body, but the spiritual wisdom of mushrooms, it gets deeper for me because I look at how the mycelium operates, and I'm like, well, we should be more like that. Humans should be more like mushrooms. They distribute nutrients to the tree when it's suffering. They're not worried about protecting their own little clan. You know, they are plant agnostic with how they share resources. And specifically when it comes to death, I think mushrooms are incredible teachers of helping us die well.

Yeah.

If we can open ourselves to listen to what that wisdom is. You know, most people that experience a psilocybin journey in a therapeutic setting will come out of that experience and share that they're not afraid to die because they've experienced a flavor of what that looks like. That's why they're so impactful.

Yeah.

Because people are able to experience what that other side, whatever that is for you, will look like, and it makes it less scary. And that's often the first time that a lot of people have opened their consciousness in that way.

So true.

So I think specifically for end-of-life care, which there's more and more policies that are allowing people to have access to that, but what a gift it is to be able to give someone, you know, this beautiful experience. before they transition. And for their family to witness that, I think there's just so much medicine in that.

Thank you. I think I needed to hear that from my mom. All right. You mentioned that 5G dose. Let's just give a picture of this. Working with a lot of people who've gone through psychedelic journeys, which have been really, really powerful, I think that mushrooms holds a unique space because people aren't constantly diving back in for answers. There's no addiction for— to go back in to to see the way or to do the work or to have an ego death experience or anything like that. It actually, from my own experience, and obviously with working with people who've gone through their own, it's much more profound, and there's much more ease that comes with it after. Like you mentioned, the deeper connection that comes, the connection with consciousness, the ability to remember and see life in a little bit more of a less gripful way.

Mm-hmm.

How does someone kind of enter this world? We talked about doing your research and your education, Maybe after doing that, when you truly feel ready seeking a practitioner who can support you, what would be the first steps for someone to kind of lean in that direction?

I think education always is the first thing.

Yeah.

Um, people love to hear about my parents and how I introduced them to psychedelics because it's kind of a stigmatized thing, right? And it was multiple years of education before they were— they're not hippies. They're not, you know, neither of them had ever tried a psychedelic before their 60s. And that's important because education was the thing that pulled them in to want to have that experience. And really more so my mom. My dad was kind of like, whatever she does, I'm good with. But I'm, you know, I'm using them as a case study here because education is super important, whether it's, you know, watching Fantastic Fungi, amazing documentary. Michael Pollan wrote an incredible book that really changed the That's an amazing kind of starter kit book to read. I have other, like, starter kit resources that I have on my Instagram with just, like, great knowledge that people should look at. I think everyone should see the brain scans of what happens to your brain under the influence of psilocybin before you ever consume it, because it's incredible. And then when this, you know, this molecule and this compound is pulsing through your system, you're actually able to, like, piece together what's happening and have a visual reference.

Yeah.

And so, like, friends, that your brain is connecting new neural pathways that it hasn't used before, which is pretty incredible. So education first, always. The legality of—

Of course.

Is, you know, is the major key here. Um, there's other places out of the country where you can fully legally do, you know, psilocybin retreats.

Yeah.

Um, Beckley is a great place to look. Uh, I haven't gone there personally, but I know people that have and love it. So there's a lot of great legal psilocybin retreats. If you are in Oregon and Colorado, you can legally— and New Mexico now— you can legally do psilocybin therapy, which is—

So big.

Amazing. It's expensive, but there's really good models there. So those are like 3 states that you can look into, and other states that are coming. So education first. Check the legality of where you're going. And people are also, you know, they're going— we can't recommend that, but like people are going to the underground to the underground. And there's a lot of incredible facilitators that are facilitating underground and have been for, you know, a very long time. With anyone, I would just say really have your references and trust where you're getting your information from, people that have sat with them. But my preference and excitement is that there's more legal access to, you know, to these incredible experiences that can be so life-changing for people. So that's coming over, you know, over the coming years for Incredible.

It was really important to me that we took the conversation from functional to psychedelic for that reason. You and I have been on many retreats, and we've traveled to beautiful places where psychedelics aren't necessary. Like, we've put ourselves into environments and ceremonies and stuff like that, where it's almost like the same wisdom that comes. And something that I've noticed in the past decade, 15 years of doing this work, is the people who make the longest, most tangible shifts, where wellness doesn't have this intense grip anymore, but it actually becomes them, are the ones who've taken wellness from something that they had to do into more of a spiritual journey.

Mm-hmm.

So wellness becomes this spiritual approach to their body, and mushrooms are such a complementary way to kind of get in touch with that in a world that is fast-paced, overcomplicated, very busy, stressful. At the tips of our fingers, we're experiencing more stress than ever before in history. So yeah, I really do hope that— I'm such a big fan of your mission for the future. Um, and it was so important for me to have you on to share that. So thank you. Tell us about your nonprofit, what you could use, what you're looking for right now.

Yeah, no, I mean, I, I adore you. And so this is such a fun, a fun opportunity to get to, to get to hang out with you and, and to see you. And, um, what you're doing is so important, and I'm excited for more people to hear your message. You know, you've obviously been shouting it from the rooftops for a very long time, but like you alluded to, the world is waking up and catching up in a way that's really exciting. So things that were stigmatized are now being more accepted. And I'm excited about that. And you're really a pioneer of that world.

Thank you.

Yeah. So thank you. And yeah, I mean, like a few things that are kind of exciting. Microdosing Collective, you mentioned, that's our nonprofit. We're doing really great work there, educating people about low-dose psychedelics, and we're working on some really cool policy stuff. So there's, you know, a lot of it's like still kind of under wraps, but coming, kind of coming soon. So hopefully there'll be some good headlines that we're involved in with moving some policy stuff forward in the near future. But there's really great educational guides on, on microdosingcollective.org or our Instagram that you can find, you know, and just follow along. We're always like posting latest news and things like that. And then SuperMush is like a whole amazing adventure, and you can find our products in Target and Um, our website and Amazon and all the things.

They're the best. We love them in our house. My kids love them too.

They're great for kids.

Yeah, right?

They're great for kids.

Exactly. Lower sugar too. And just get them in touch with, with mushrooms. They will be fascinated by the fact that they taste good.

And we want to make— we wanted to make them a middle ground and meet people where they're at. We didn't start with gummies, but then, you know, if you look at the number 1, number 2 nutraceutical products in our space, it's gummies and powders. Then we're like, let's go to where people are. And you don't have to remind people to take a gummy every day. You look forward to it, you know.

I think I'm on my 3rd bag of the creatine gummies.

I love the creatine. Those are my fave.

So yeah, those are great. All right, we're gonna link out everything below for people to follow you. Uh, I also want to point out, Ali, you're such an incredible educator. You've been really upping your educational content, I've noticed. And I thought you had a book. That just needs to be turned into books. Seriously.

I really would love to write a book. That's— I'm— maybe that's a— um, I, I'm in— I'm inspired by— I want to write more. I think would help unlock more, more creativity in me. So hopefully, um, that will be a part of the future. And I think it will be something about death because it's such a topic I'm so passionate about.

We need to hear it. Grief happens in so many stages throughout our life before we even get to death, and we're dying every day, right? Um, tell us something that you're most excited about for the future outside of your wedding.

Yeah, I'm in love. I guess that's the highlight. I mean, that's kind of the highlight of my life. I have been so in love with my partner and he's amazing.

Yes.

And for me, it's been such a, you know, the journey of falling in love and being with your, you know, your human is just the foundation of everything else. And the perspective that love gives us on the rest of our lives is, you know, is everything. Like, at the end of the day, we talked about death, right? It's like, we're all going there. And at the end of your life, when you're on your deathbed, people just want to be, you know, surrounded with their most favorite, cherished relationships. And so I think when I look at the wisdom that I hopefully will have when I'm, you know, at that stage in life, I think what I would tell myself is just to be so grateful for the love that I have in my life, both with my partner and my friends. But yeah, I'm really excited about the people that I'm around because I have so much psychological safety with my partner and my community. And I mean, that's, that feels like the core foundation, which with everything else can thrive. When that is not solidified, I find that life can get a little leaky. Um, but that, that feels like the thing I'm the most grateful for.

Marriage is the greatest ride, honestly. Like just even just get ready for the greatest adventure. Yeah. All right. Last question. If you were to paint a picture of functional mushrooms and psilocybin in 10 years from now, what do you Oh man, I think that you are going to see functional mushrooms at every major retailer in the world.

I mean, there's already brands that are going into the big retail stores like Costco and kind of where mainstream, you know, mainstream culture is. So I think that functional mushroom supplements will be a, you know, zero-stigmatized everyday staple in people's diets. I think there's going to be really incredible new form factors and innovation in that space. So I think they're going to be mainstream. I think functional mushrooms will be mainstream. And on the psilocybin side, I just hope that anyone that wishes to have an experience with psilocybin mushrooms, whether it's in a microdose way or in a larger dose journey way, will have legal, safe access to do so.

With no stigma.

With no stigma. Yeah.

You got it. All right. I love you. I adore you. Thank you for coming. Love you too. I hope today's episode inspired you. Um, this is a really big topic. It is a pillar that I address with a lot of my clients, and the intention is from all of these episodes is that you might hear something that inspires you to break free of what you think you should be doing into remembering that you are your greatest healer and your protocol should be different than everyone else. And there's so many modalities that come from nature out there that are designed to help you remember. Love you.