How Psychedelic Mushrooms Enhance Yin Yoga
In our quest for holistic well-being, we seek out the many practices and tools that can harmonize our minds, bodies, and spirits. A practice that has been offering me enormous benefits is low-dose magic mushrooms combined with a long yin-yoga practice.
While yin and psilocybin each have distinct roots and histories, they can deepen self-awareness, enhance spiritual experience, and promote neuroplasticity and long-term emotional healing. This blog delves into the ways mushrooms can complement yin yoga, which is in many of the same ways that cannabis can compliment hatha yoga, but with even more trippy fun and trauma-recovery.
The Healing Power of Magic Mushrooms
Magic mushrooms containing the psychoactive compound psilocybin have been used for centuries in various cultures for their medicinal and spiritual properties.
Modern research is increasingly validating their benefits in areas like mental health, addiction, and existential distress. You’ve probably heard of the John Hopkins University end-of-life studies, which show terminal cancer patients losing much of their fear of death after imbibing in a safe clinical setting.
Like other psychedelics, psilocybin is known to induce profound changes in perception, cognition, and emotional states, often leading to what users describe as "mystical" or "transcendent" experiences. This is but one of the ancient plant medicine’s many gifts.
Benefits of Magic Mushrooms:
Enhanced Self-Awareness: Psilocybin can help us confront and process deep-seated emotions, traumas, and subconscious egoic patterns in an embodied way. It can sometimes feel like a wise elder is with us as we accept all aspects of ourselves, including our shadows.
Spiritual Insights: Many mushroom users report experiencing a sense of unity, connection with the universe, and profound spiritual insights, while on the medicine and for a period of time after. The famous John Hopkins study indicates that psychedelic journeys are among people’s most-profound spiritual experiences, - ranking as high as experiences such as the birth of their first child!
Mental-Health Benefits: Studies have shown promising results in using psilocybin to treat conditions like depression, anxiety, and hard-to-treat PTSD, as well as the emotions that come with a terminal diagnosis as discussed previously. They also enhance wellbeing for those not struggling with mental health issues, and can bring a sense of trippy play and fun.
The Transformative Practice of Yin Yoga
With its ancient origins in India and Egypt, yoga encompasses a vast range of physical, mental, and spiritual practices to bring harmony and balance. Through postures, breath control, and meditation, yoga practitioners cultivate mindfulness, mental flexibility, inner strength, and mental clarity and peace.Regular practice also improves physical strength, flexibility, balance, and circulation. The practice also encourages a deeper connection to oneself and the universe, fostering spiritual growth, connection to others and nature, and possibly even enlightenment.
Yin Yoga in particular lends itself extraordinarily well to psychedelic journeying. The poses are supported by pillows and folded blankets, and held for much longer than other types of yoga practices to target the fascia and other connective tissues. Connective tissues are the repository for the biochemical secretions that come with unexpressed emotions. Our issues really are in the tissues, as the saying goes. By releasing these tissues with long-held and supported poses, we can directly work with embodied traumas and stored stresses, without needing to go into the memories of the events in drawn-out talk therapy sessions.
The Synergy: Combining Magic Mushrooms and Yin Yoga
When integrated mindfully, the combination of magic mushrooms and yin-yoga can amplify the benefits of both practices. Here’s how they can complement each other for the trippiest, deep-space yoga sesh ever:
Deepened Meditation and Mindfulness
Magic mushrooms can enhance the meditative state achieved through yoga, making it easier to reach deeper levels of consciousness without distraction or ordinary waking consciousness (aka, “the default mode network” getting in the way). Psilocybin's ability to temporarily dissolve the ego can facilitate a more profound sense of mindfulness and curiosity during any yoga practice, especially one that is slow-moving and gives plenty of opportunities to go deeply within, such as Yin.
2. Enhanced Emotional Release and Healing
On its own, yoga can bring buried emotions to the surface, providing a safe space for their expression and release. Under the influence of magic mushrooms, this process can be intensified, allowing for a deeper emotional purging and healing. In a safe and supportive space where one can allow sensations, memories, feelings, and impressions to rise and fall, a yogi can learn to safely ride the waves of her own psychedelic journey
3. Heightened Spiritual Experiences
Both yoga and psilocybin are known for their potential to induce spiritual experiences. When combined, they can create a powerful synergy that heightens the sense of unity, transcendence, and connection to the divine. In my shroomy-yoga journeys, I’ve gone far deeper than most of my Ganja Yoga sessions could take me, even though I kept the mushroom dosing relatively low.
Practical Tips for Combining Magic Mushrooms and Yoga
Set and Setting: You’ve heard it before, you’ll hear it again. The set and setting are both crucial to ensure a safe, comfortable environment where you feel secure. The mindset (set) and physical environment (setting) are both vital for a positive experience. Meaning, if you’re not feeling good in your mind or in your setting, wait until another time to explore shroom-yoga (or shroom-anything).
Start with a Low Dose: Begin with a low dose of magic mushrooms to gauge your sensitivity and response. Aim for somewhere between a micro-dose and a small-dose, depending on your experience level. Those new to the medicine (or to adding it to yoga) might take ⅛ gram (a microdose), or between ¼ of a gram and ½ a gram (a low dose), and perhaps far less than that. Those more comfortable with mushrooms might take between ¼ gram and a gram. Of course, shroom-potency reduces with time, and different strains have different potencies, so this is just a starter-guide.
Guidance: Consider the presence of a trusted psychedelic guide or experienced practitioner to support you through the trippy yin-yoga journey. I happen to be a trained psychedelic guide and yin yoga trainer, and, my, what a coincidence, I’m leading virtual shroom-enhanced yin yoga sessions starting in June! But you could also hire a trained psychedelic guide or therapist (or if you’re comfortable with the medicine, you might practice completely on your own).
Integration: Post-experience, take time to reflect and integrate the insights you gained. After the journey is when the brain is most neuroplastic and open to change, so taking time for journaling, nature, rest, continued yoga practice, and talking with a friend or therapist about your experience can all be beneficial.
