Befriend Your Mind Body Community

24/06/2025

13/07/2024

In order to even raise people’s interest, we have to position magic mushrooms as being able to help their symptoms, because we are all conditioned into a model to ‘get rid of’ symptoms.

But what they are really doing is healing the root of these symptoms; our disconnection from ourselves, our body and from nature

When these roots are addressed, we heal

And yes this is expressed physiologically and psychologically with more connectivity in the brain, reduced stress, reduction in pain, anxiety and other mood symptoms, more focus, feeling more connected to others

The scientific evidence we give you in the masterclass is important to validate these results, as science is the accepted language of our times.

Part of me appreciates this. I have two science degrees so the geek in me enjoys it a lot. Another part of me rolls her eyes that we need millions of dollars in studies to tell us that nature heals us, as we do not trust our direct experience

This is a real indication of having lost the wisdom of our elders transmitting wisdom down to us, and allowing us to experience it for ourselves as part of nature. Instead we have criminalised nature and most people are waiting for daddy government/FDA to tell them it is ‘safe’ in expensive clinical settings to have ‘psilocybin treatment’. Le sigh.

Or………you can learn from our masterclass (link in bio), join our supportive self-empowered community, and build your own relationship with this plant teacher and be your own medicine.

21/06/2024

Dogs are little buddhas covered in fur

They teach you presence, how to embody compassionate embodied leadership for them (and therefore yourself), how to be present and enjoy what is, how to begin again every day, and how immeasurably powerful love is to feel so we can heal

For those of us that did not have secure attachment as kids, dogs allow us to grow that now in the mirror of our relationship with them.

They show us the power of response-ability, the ability to respond in new ways in the moment so we can learn with and from them to better live.

If we pay attention to these compassionate lessons, they will help heal us

I am forever grateful to my once in a lifetime dog Maverick who taught me the depth of both love and grief that it is possible to hold together and keep my heart open. Deep gratitude too for my dog after maverick Alfie who was traumatised and who I helped heal and in return helped me heal. Every day is such a gift and they keep me aware of this daily.

20/06/2024

Healing burnout is a good teacher that your focus and intention are likely fixing, forcing, fighting, fear based and frustration

In Befriend we change this focus immediately towards what helps you feel better, more ease, less fear and suffering. We cannot heal by fixing ourselves from fear and lack (but makes you a great consumer!)

We have no destination or achievement focus because that is dehumanising and exhausting (but makes you a great consumer!)

You are whole already, just having difficulty in mind or body that needs kind intention and attention to understand what is needed to better flourish.

Of course we can support symptoms along the way in unique ways, but you cannot expect to feel anything other than s**t on toast if you are constantly focused on what you do not want or what you want to get rid of.

It is not rocket science either, which is why no one should be over charging for this. It’s education, knowing how to care for our unique season we are in, and mind body skills practiced in daily life with embodied/somatic mindfulness that help us start to feel better.

We help people live whilst they heal. Not avoid life, obsess, and call it healing.

Healing full time is avoiding life, which is where both your triggers and your healing live. Do not make your life about recovery and healing. Make it about growing wellbeing, learning to live in ways that bring you more ease and that meet your unique physical and emotional needs, has more rhythm in accordance with nature, and more authenticity and play.

19/06/2024

There are plenty of of social media and online s**tweasels to separate you from both your money, and your innate ability to heal and grow.

I first saw this in the spiritual world, and now in Big Wellness it is rife too, including nervous system regulation and trauma packaged in many ways like the wheel has just been invented

All healing rests on nature and on indigenous and spiritual philosophy that belongs to no one and everyone.

Simple practices done with commitment, passion and play in daily life, over time, will show you that you do not need to obsess about health, diet, your nervous system, or hold any guru, dr, leader, authority figure as holding any key to your health.

17/06/2024

This is a common pattern I have seen in my practice over many years, and in support groups I am part of. It is the path I walked too

We want relief, and this is human, especially when we are in panic and fear.

It will take as long as it takes for each person to scrabble around and try all the things outside of them to ‘fix’ themselves

There is no shortage of functional medicine doctors and now lots of nervous system programs, ready to sell us solutions packaged to capitalise on our disconnection from ourselves, our body, and our innate wholeness

When this gets us more burnt out, or exhausted, or disconnected from our belief in ourselves, this is often when we finally slow down and engage in recovery in a way that allows us to feel safer, more influential in our process, less overwhelm

And build understanding about what we need (physically and emotionally) for our unique mind and body and heart to build health (not fix sickness)

15/06/2024

When you are:

- In a chronic stress response, especially fight, flight or freeze
- Are disconnected from your body
- Been taught to defer to authority outside of you
- Been taught to ‘fix’ yourself and your body because you think it has gone ‘wrong’

It is very easy to google and trawl through forums full of aggressive affiliate marketing, and be marketed to for THE best program, THE answer, the one endorsed by some hot shot Dr in environmental illness as they get kickbacks for that. Chronic illness is such big business these days.

We want relief, this is human. We flit from thing to thing, wanting the answer, the holy grail to fix what ails us

Most people I work with (and me!) did this, and it generally leads to dead ends or more difficulty and more fight, flight, freeze, because we are not listening IN to ourselves as the primary source of wisdom. We are bracing against instead of listening to our life.

All this makes sense, is not bad or wrong. I am however glad to provide a much kinder way of being and healing in the community that is based on helping connect each unique individual to their own resources, strengths, and find their own yes’s in what helps them feel better. There is no right way, and when we understand this, it helps us take kinder baby steps, which is how we find our own way

12/06/2024

One of the biggest gifts of my illness was learning for the first time, to get to know my female body, accept it and nourish it in all ways

Rather than seeing it from the outside in with how it should look and perform and keep up as part of a capitalist machine, or be like other bodies shown to me in media and culture

Embodiment as the road to a good life is not easily packaged like nervous system regulation, or diets or lifestyle selling

It is over time, a growing home to an innate sense of wholeness (that is always there) belonging to ourselves and in the world, just how we are, connected to our feelings, needs, community, nature and the ebbs and flows of a beautiful and often very challenging life

On the way home to that, we will meet many layers of defences:

- In our mind - stories, parts of us that took on roles for safety or connection, defences to emotions like denial, projection, analysing instead of feeling in our body
- And in our body; our stress responses, bracing, defending against feelings and unmet needs

These came from adversity, gender norms, societal norms, marketing, and being taught to outsource our knowing to others, which makes us great consumers as we do not trust our body or know our wholeness. I love plant medicine and meditation for this as they show us we lack for nothing

This for some is just labelled trauma and trauma responses. For me what I always see in my clients is evolution and emergence, an invitation to come back to rhythm and community and safe embodiment that begins as symptoms to get our kind attention.

11/06/2024

The way you eat should not be your identity

Your lifestyle should not be the focus of your life

Does your lifestyle help you take yourself less seriously or does your lifestyle lead to headuprectumitis?

What are you learning that is in service to your evolution as a human being and as part of our community we are all here to serve?

Orthorexia is not wellbeing. Biohacking is not necessary. There are no shortcuts to physical, psychological, social and spiritual health, despite social media selling you hacks for everything.

Biohacking people who want to live until 150 and spend a fortune on this, have not accepted the cycle of life and their own mortality so try and control it to assuage their anxiety. This is not health. Detox as a lifestyle is not health.

By all means optimise your lifestyle to respect modern stressors. This is mindful and allows you to nourish yourself from respect for your body and the gift of life.

But we are here to live, love and grow, not get self-obsessed and call it healing

10/06/2024

Gurus, social media wellness influencers, people selling you ‘the’ answer and the ‘best’ way can only do this when we are disconnected from our body and our sense of self

When we aren’t safely embodied we are often disconnected from our physical and emotional needs, our boundaries, our intuition, and we do not trust our innate self-healing capabilities

Red flags to look out for in chronic illness and trauma recovery:

- Claims to have all the answers
- Claims to have perfect health information for your situation
- Gives you levels to work through as healing must be done in x or y way otherwise it won’t work
- Has little or no training and clinical practice but makes big claims that can’t be backed up (has helped hundreds/thousands even though they may have been a coach for a year or so)
- Do not cite their teachers or lineage
- Sells lifestyle as a way to hook vulnerable people
- Packages healing like they have reinvented the wheel
- Uses terms like quantum nervous system healing
- Names themselves an expert with no basis for this
- Knows how to work the algorithm rather than how to work with unique humans
- Makes you fear you won’t get well if you don’t do x, y, z
- Offers simple packaged solutions for situations that need nuance and often time and support to work through

09/06/2024

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore ran a study with 36 volunteers who had not experienced magic mushrooms before.

More than one-third of the volunteers said that their encounter with psilocybin was the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes

NYU Grossman School of Medicine found that a one-time, single-dose treatment of psilocybin, a compound found in psychedelic mushrooms, combined with psychotherapy, appears to be associated with significant improvements in emotional and existential distress in people with cancer. These effects persisted nearly five years after the experience.

Adding to evidence dating back as early as the 1950s, findings strongly suggest that psilocybin therapy is a promising means of improving the emotional, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing of patients with life-threatening illness.

It has so further traumatised our society that we’ve demonised this beautiful medicine.

We need access to our spiritual support more than ever these days in an age of consumerism and materialism.

Mushrooms take this access away from established systems of religion and dominance, and show us we can all have access to support, purpose, meaning, and knowing we are loved by something greater than ourselves, through nature.

09/06/2024

Mushroom root networks, called mycelium, are the world wood web of the forest, connecting individual plants and trees together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals.

In reciprocity for their services, the mycorrhizal network retains about 30% of the sugar that the connected trees generate through photosynthesis (creating energy from light). The sugar fuels the fungi, which in turn collects phosphorus and other mineral nutrients into the mycelium, which are then transferred to and used by the trees.

It is a woodwide web, as it is through the mycelium that trees communicate. This is happening under our feet in the forest every moment. Communication, cooperation, and reciprocity.

So isn’t it wonderful that microdosing improves our ability to socially connect?!

In an age where we are so digitally connected and often so socially isolated, this is truly crucial. We, like forests and mycelium, thrive best when in community. Let these teacher plants help you do this. Masterclass information is in our bio.