Cultivating Fungi For Emotional Support

With each mushroom that I cultivate, I feel a deeper connection to the world around me, a bond that had been obscured by years of disconnection and trauma. 

I find myself in my living room, adjusting the temperature in a Martha tent, a mini-greenhouse for growing mushrooms, with a humidifier, fan, filter and drip-tray. 

Reishi, turkey tail, and lion’s mane mycelium blocks reside in the tent, which takes up the corner of my living room. The tent is named after a Martha Stewart portable closet product, which underground mycologists have used to construct mushroom fruiting chambers for years. 

The mycelium lives in the corner of the room, and I am surrounded by fruiting bodies of various species that I come to know intimately. Mushrooms are the fruiting body of the mycelial networks.

It is a reunion with nature, a celebration of interconnectedness that spans beyond my four walls, and into the vast web of mycelium. Growing mushrooms has become a mini-obsession for me. 

I’m cultivating fungal medicine to heal myself, give gifts to my neighbors, and cook a healthy family meal. As I sit amongst the mycelium blocks, the atmosphere is filled with the earthy scent of mushrooms, the mist of the humidifier, and the gentle hum of air filters. 

Here I am, nurturing life forms that not only nourish my body but also heal my emotions and spirit. The grow tent is alive with the quiet cultivation of mycelium, a white threadlike structure, colonizing bags of substrates to form intricate networks. 

I sometimes tear up when I realize that these mushrooms are healing me in ways I never expected. They talk to me, helping me through my life’s challenges. 

If I’m worried about money, the mushrooms comfort me, sharing that money isn’t natural to Mother Earth. If I am stressed about finding a doctor, the mushrooms urge me to find someone who I trust and won’t violate my boundaries. 

If I am anxious about my love life, the mushrooms share that I will have a happy ending. In my living room, the mushrooms and I do a dance, where I cultivate them, as much as they cultivate me. 

When I inject a syringe of reishi spores (the mushroom of immortality) into a grain filled mushroom spawn plastic bag, the spores begin to eat the grain to form the initial strands of mycelium, the hyphae. 

The mycelium colonizes the grain as I nurture a healthy environment for them to begin their life anew. The mushrooms teach me to let go, to fill my heart with love, and to feel the deeper connectedness that I have in myself, with other humans, and Mother Earth as a whole. 

With each setting sun, the reishi mycelium grows bigger, digesting the grain, forming a reddish colored block. While the lion’s main begins to fruit, as white shaggy puff balls emerge, and I cut open part of the bag to let it breathe. 

The turkey tail is competing with mold in the spawn bag, as some contaminants get to the grain. I am concerned that I may have to toss the mycelium bag in the compost bin and let it go. 

The mycelial network and I are housemates, sharing physical, spiritual, and emotional space together. I occasionally spray water in the bags to help the atmosphere regain a sense of humidity, just like rain does in nature. 

There is also a small white filter at the top of the bags, for the mycelium to inhale oxygen, as the fungi shares the same air that I breathe into my lungs. 

As the reishi blocks grow bigger, I upgrade the mycelium’s home, moving the mycelium block into a larger bag, adding a soil filled vermiculite substrate to the mix. 

While this all sounds quite technical, it's a simple process, like an opus, it all moves together as a steady orchestral arrangement of classical music. 

The mycelial network and I are harmonizing together, finding balance with each other in an unsettled world.

Each day I continue to spray the bags with mists of water, giving the bag access to indirect sunlight, and let the fruiting tent do its work to replicate nature. 

I'm facilitating the growth of life for the mycelium, while the mycelium is doing the same for me. 

Capitalism doesn't exist in the fruiting tent and the mycelium is my more-than-human friend. There is no exchange of money here.

It's like therapy, as I grow emotional support fungi to help teach me how to nurture my spirit, nourish myself, as I take care of this organism. Growing mushrooms is like creating a support group for the on-going stresses of life.

As this process plays out, I am more connected to the mycelial network. I am growing food as medicine, which directly connects me to my food source, a sharp contrast to my normal routine of buying processed chips, cookies, and granola bars at my local grocery store. 

I don’t anticipate learning that the very act of cultivating them becomes a metaphor for cultivating connections in my own life. We co-exist, the mushrooms and I, in a symbiotic relationship. 

I provide them with the conditions to thrive, and they offer me healing compounds and profound insights.

Brewing chaga tea is what introduced me to the world of working with functional mushrooms, a nod to the practice of using fungi for health and wellness. Chaga is the mushroom queen of the forest, full of nutrients and minerals. 

The simplicity of the brewing process, the genuine connection to fungus, and the sense of making tea with purpose are overwhelming. Fungi led me here. 

I speak to a home grower friend who is a seller at a local farmer’s market. He is also a mycologist, and I ask him about his grow area. He says that mushrooms can become an obsession and it's worth taking a break sometimes.

After much internal debate, I disassembled the tent, deciding to hit the pause button on my aspirations of creating a home grow room. 

Instead I look at real estate, vacant offices, and abandoned pharmacies in my community, inquiring about opening up a shroomery, like a winery or brewery but for mushrooms. 

I write a business plan to open a cooperative shroomery, which takes this idea to an initial action. Placing boundaries on a more than human friend is a first for me, outside of some pet dogs that I've lived with before. 

I spread the spores, giving away a lion's mane bag to a neighbor and move another fruiting lion's mane bag to my garden. After breaking down the tent, fan, humidifier, and shelving, the mycelium needs a new home. 

I move the antler and Oregon reishi bags to my bedroom and closet for safe keeping, continuing to spray them daily with water, giving them indirect sunlight from my bedroom window. 

Sadly the turkey tail bag gets moldy and I move it to the compost bin. The healing is collective, between the mycelial network and myself. I realize that I bring this mushroom insight and care into the world, and into this book. 

The mushrooms are growing me as much as I'm growing them. These ancient organisms, known for their vast mycelial networks, have become a guiding force in my life. 

It isn't just about cultivation; it is a scientifically validated method with numerous benefits for physical and mental health.

Mushrooms help me reconnect with my inner self, providing clarity and purpose. They allow me to break free from past cycles of anxiety and depression that modern life imposes on me. The fungi give me emotional support as I reciprocate with emotional support for them.