Every few months, I meet up with an old friend. We don’t text. We don’t do coffee. There’s no small talk, no catching up on the weather. I call this friend Shroom — short for psilocybin mushroom, long for why did no one introduce us sooner?
Our rendezvous feels planned but still informal. I wear a satin eye mask, reclining in front of the fireplace, or if weather permits, on the deck. It always feels slightly mischievous, like slipping out the back door of ordinary reality with a laminated permission slip to visit the cosmos.
Here’s how it goes: I eat a few grams of dried Shroom, dipped in honey. I arrive to meet Shroom with earnest questions I’ve been quietly ruminating on. I ask them politely and intentionally as I drop in. Then, almost immediately, Shroom sweeps me somewhere else entirely, totally ignoring my questions. Instead, I receive answers to questions I never thought to ask.
Shroom is like that friend who doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, but somehow always tells you what you really need to know. So I keep showing up.
On this particular occasion, Shroom doesn’t ease me in. A scene opens, cinematic in design.
I’m standing at the mouth of a long gravel path, lush green foliage lining its edges. Ahead, the path narrows toward a spill of bright sunlight. I feel gently pulled forward when a message arrives. Not spoken exactly — more like placed inside me, fully formed, landing with weight.
Teaching people to breathe is the most divine path.
It sounds obvious, almost understated, as if trying not to announce itself as revolutionary.
Teaching people to breathe? Not to strive. Not to optimize. Not to market, manifest, or monetize. Just… breathe. Had the doorway to the sacred been hiding in plain sight, right beneath our overactive minds?
Shroom offers nothing more and moves on to other visions. That’s the thing about this friend. The revelations are concise. It’s the living with them that takes a lifetime.
At first, I wondered if the message wasn’t meant for me. Perhaps it was a nod toward my son, a meditation teacher whose life quite literally revolves around breath. A cosmic thumbs-up: Yes, yes, he’s on the right path.
But that interpretation felt off. Too easy. Like I was politely stepping aside, redirecting the message onto someone I love rather than letting it land where it clearly intended to land. The message refused to be outsourced.
The message kept turning me back toward myself. Toward the decades I’ve spent as an Executive Coach, sitting across from accomplished humans who know how to think strategically while sometimes forgetting how to breathe through the ups and downs. Toward this moment I now find myself in — less focused on performance, more attuned to presence.
Teaching people to breathe no longer sounded literally like instruction in breath control, something akin to pranayama. It sounded like an invitation: help others expand the space within, long before helping them to redesign their lives and those of others.
Shroom, ever economical, offered no further clarification. But there was a quiet confidence in the message, a sense that I would know what to do with it… eventually.
So here I am, offering my presence for your journey (of any sort!) to help you feel safe enough to inhale deeply and exhale peacefully. And to discover what answers might be waiting for you — answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.
