What Mushrooms Know About Healing
This story may sound a bit odd, but after a paragraph or so you’ll see the cosmic magician at the helm.
Mushrooms are a mystery, and they have minds of their own for sure! I once had an encounter with mushroom spores that penetrated my essence and completely shattered my limited assumptions and ideas. My love for the mushroom kingdom blossomed exponentially in one single breath on that particular day. I intimately understood the ancient wisdom embodied by these beings, and the superpowers of regeneration concealed in their simple puffs of dust.
Nature wastes no time. According to science, the resonant frequency of Nature is .1 Hz, which is also coincidentally the wavelength of heart-brain coherence. When we enter the sanctuary of .1 Hz, our pressures dissolve and our physiology resets. We cannot help but surrender as these coherent waves transport us instantly into full presence, here and now. In these moments, where the greater reality pulls us into its serene embrace, we are swept back into our bodies, our senses, and our hearts, and once again captivated by original innocence and unbridled delight.
We are all chronically dysregulated by manmade technologies and modern life. I pay deep attention to this now. “Dysregulation” means our natural body rhythms have all been interrupted, which affects our metabolic health, mental function, and emotional state. Our brain and body cells are poisoned by environmental toxicity, and our bodies can no longer self-regulate and self-heal.
Environmental pollution and high stress have cumulative negative effects on our physiology. Leslie Korn calls this “allostatic load” - the price the body pays for being forced to adapt to chronic toxic exposures over time. Yet in the field of .1 Hz, our bodies find healing through coherence again. One step onto the trail and into the trees, one family of tiny songbirds, one floating seed pod, one butterfly rising from the fallen brush - smothers me in the bliss of a timelessness where that is all there is. Joy bubbles up within. At these moments i am sideswiped by laughter and brushed by angelic fairy energy sweeping by. Nature’s allies and intermediaries recalibrate the ecosystem with their antics and intent; Nature’s angels shower mountains, oceans, gardens, farms, and forests with sparkling light. Fairies and angels may well be the Goddess’s numberless hands and eyes, spinning the world to being with frivolity, song, and play. It could actually be their little fingers that weave earth’s understory together in an unending expanse of mineral-rich roots, rocks, and pools, upon whose foundations creation stands - sits - and sleeps. But as you see, the fairies have already stolen the story i have to tell about their little flower people in the mushroom world. If i don’t stop them right now, they may charm you away. Wait! Let me catch my own thought stream again…
It was a Sunday evening in September of 2012, the sun still hot and high in the sky. Darkness felt hours away. I had spent the weekend receiving plant medicine initiation in the Sierra foothills with Redwood Tree, and was a humble guest in a medicine woman’s home. As we pulled into her driveway, she diverted my attention to a clod of reddish brown dirt sitting alone on the dry beige sand edging the lawn. She beckoned me over and introduced us - Pisolithus Tinctorius is its name, she said - and to my amazement, no mere mud ball was this! I was hit by a blast of light and sucked right in. Pisolithus has other more descriptive nicknames too: Dead Man’s Foot; Dog’s Turd Fungus; Dead Man’s Fist; and Dyemaker’s Puffball are just a few. My hostess informed me that these spores possess the power to reseed and regenerate forests devastated by traumas like clearcutting and wildfires - perhaps even chemical siege. She welcomed me to take home some of the dust. This introduction alone would have been enough! But my real adventure with Pisolithus happened the next day. Let me recount.
After an icy cold night and morning frost, the sun rose quickly to about 70 degrees, promising a perfect day. I took my yoga mat outside and spent some time. Though i had to leave before the afternoon, a walk to the river was absolutely in order. It was just up the road. But first, i had to go see that amazing mushroom ball again. A mushroom’s head is its sacred flower; crowning from mycelial galaxies that line the undersurface of the earth. Mycelium is the deep earth’s nervous system, extending silently and infinitely below the dirt.
i approached tenderly and knelt down a slight distance from this dusty mound, but close enough to reach out. When i did, i was suctioned into a fluid universe deep below the earth’s crust, into a pulsing brown realm of liquid light that sparkled, danced, and oozed, serving up a wisdom from long ago. Downloads raced through me, and i was filled with wordless, living sensations of the undefeatable power of regeneration in all life. Layers of interconnected mycelial tapestries blanket the underworld, keeping alive Gaia’s structure, nervous system, and cycles that compost and restore all life. Mycelium is generous with its knowledge and power, knowing itself and all life to be intertwined generative substance, in both soul and seed. Then Pisolithus spoke to me, and here is what i received from this magical mound of earth.
“We understand the infrastructure of the cosmos. Our brush strokes ride the wind and form the fabric of every living thing. We have scattered throughout all time and space to heal the injury of human abuse and manmade geopathic stress; we built and rebuilt the planet, and know fascia as the human experience of above and below. Human sits center among the three worlds.” Then something squeezed and vibrated my right hand - the hand that was shattered and sprained two years ago. A sensation of subtle jolts sparked just below my skin, then a rapid wave of zipping and stitching brought to life every layer of my hand. Suddenly my both hands were buzzing, and a deep unspeakable pleasure flooded my brain, leaving me awash in tears of joy. They swallowed me whole and i wanted to stay in their loving cave.
Where mushroom spores gather, fairies thrive, and we can finally feel free of time and space. There, life stays forever flourishing and buoyantly alive.
Bowing reverently, i returned from that deep dark hidden place in the earth, with a promise to guard these spores for the perfect soil. Then i scooped the dusty red clay into a bag, and rubbed the remaining red into my hands and across my heart, metabolizing its primal sap. Pisolithus Tinctorius imprinted me. i’m proudly marked.
Earth is us, and we are Earth, and this is the greatest healing secret in life. Nature is a living breathing being. Every grain, every speck, every molecule, every wish, every hope, and every dream contributes life force to our being, leaving its divine mark within us in an eternal interactive dance.
It is said that we are genetically more like a mushroom than a monkey, and esteemed mycologist Paul Stamets absolutely agrees.
His life belongs to the regenerative medicine in the mushrooms of old growth forests, from which his research and patented environmental solutions spring. In humble mycelium rests the power of immunity, detoxification, and regeneration. Deep Earth bubbles up her truths in tiny squirts of wisdom and puffs of dust.
Fun and inspiring resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY
Paul Stamets How Mushrooms Can Save the World
(https://healing-mushrooms.net/archives/pisolithus-tinctorius.html
Medicinal properties Of Pisolithus Tinctorius
Antitumor effects
The triterpene pisosterol (chemical structure shown above) has been shown to have antitumor activity against seven tumor cell lines, especially leukemia and melanoma cells (IC50 of 1.55, 1.84 and 1.65 µg/ml for CEM, HL-60 and B16, respectively) (Montenegro et al., 2004). The compound has also been shown to induce a monocytic cell-like differentiation of the leukemia cell line HL-60 (Montenegro et al., 2007)
https://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/jun2003.html
Tom Volk on Pisolithus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAw_Zzge49c
Paul Stamets at Bioneers