I am a listener, spaceholder, and confidante for those who are called to share their stories, struggles, and secrets. For as long as I can remember, people have trusted me with their innermost feelings and thoughts.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve been through my fair share of traumatic experiences.
My parents had a bitter divorce when I was 9. I took mom’s side and cut off contact with dad, “the bad guy,” and didn’t see him for 25 years. Throughout the years, dad tried to connect with me, but I ignored his calls. Fortunately, dad and I now share a beautiful relationship.
When I was 15, my close friend died in an accident. His passing left me with big questions about death, God, and our purpose on earth. I became depressed and pessimistic. I had a nagging fear that I would lose all those I loved.
One day in the final year of high school, I was visiting my math tutor for a mid-afternoon session. As I entered her apartment building, I held the door for a man behind me. Suddenly, he put his hand over my mouth, tackled and repeatedly kicked me. I screamed until he left. This event reinforced a belief that nobody is going to help me when I need it most and that I need to take care of everything myself. For many years, it was difficult for me to express my needs.
In my mid-30s, I went through unsuccessful fertility treatments for more than two years. I was confused; I grew up with the idea that getting pregnant was easy and natural, and that I actually had to put effort into not becoming pregnant. Why could nobody explain why I couldn’t have a child? Didn’t I do all the right things in life? It didn’t feel fair and I was angry, frustrated, and sad. When my partner and I split up shortly afterwards, I was devastated.
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After college, I worked 16 years at a multinational organic cosmetics company. I was a loyal, effective worker and made my bosses and co-workers happy. I was successful and made money, but knew deep down the corporate world would not fulfill me. The end was near when my superiors reprimanded me for not supporting a key decision that would have hurt my team.
By the time I left the company in 2017, I already knew I wanted to dive deeper into meditation and yoga, which I had been practicing for several years now. I traveled to India and Southeast Asia to learn from various teachers.
When I had my first psilocybin mushroom journey in Thailand with Chi in March 2018, I discovered something special. Words can’t describe the awe and wonder of that first journey. A couple months after that, I attended my first 10-day silent Vipassana retreat. These two experiences liberated me from certain perspectives and negative thinking patterns that had plagued me for years.
Since then, I’ve been on countless psychedelic journeys. These medicines have helped me make peace with God and death. They’ve helped me work through deep traumas. I’ve learned to forgive myself and others, to have faith in something bigger than myself. Day by day, I’m more connected with mother earth and the Spirit Realms.
In my mind, sacred mushrooms are the healers and I am their humble servant.
My life is dedicated to creating safe and loving environments where people can experience the healing power of mushrooms.
At every opportunity, I find ways to enrich my ability to serve people. I have studied Trauma-Informed Plant Medicine with Atira Tan and End of Life Doulaing with INELDA. I’m currently undergoing a 3-year Somatic Experiencing Training.
I am grateful to have the opportunity to work with so many journeyers. Thank you for your trust.
I am a facilitator, connector, and mentor for individuals at every stage of the psilocybin journey: from curious seeker to experienced guide and grower.
On this path, I’ve made and continue to make mistakes. My responsibility is to help journeyers avoid some of the common pitfalls, while consciously avoiding them myself. The more I am involved in this work, the more I feel like a complete beginner. Whenever pride swells, the mushrooms give me a friendly smack.
For most of my life, I suffered from addiction, depression, and low self-esteem. The mushrooms have helped me unravel, witness, and heal some of the traumas that cause these issues. The work is infinite -- there’s no end to how much I can open and feel.
In addition to states of love, light, joy, and tranquility, I have witnessed many visions of famine, slavery, war, rape, murder, assasination, crucifixion, floods, fires, etc. During some of my bigger journeys, I still experience periods of overwhelming anxiety, terror, and paranoia. I am grateful to Leti for being here to support me when I am having these challenging journeys.
There’s so much hidden beneath the surface, and I’m happy to introduce others to the process of uncovering, facing and healing buried wounds.
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My mom is Japanese and my dad Chinese. They had an unhappy marriage full of cultural and philosophical conflicts. As the firstborn son, for a long time, I felt responsible and helpless about their relationship. I did everything in my power to compensate for these feelings. But no matter what I did or accomplished, I never felt good enough.
From a young age, I had an extremely addictive personality. Gaming, sex, pornography, food, and poker were just a few things in which I lost myself. I felt the need to constantly suppress or ignore difficult emotions. I lacked healthy coping mechanisms.
In my twenties, I was fortunate enough to study with several compassionate and wise Buddhist teachers. I spent some time in silent retreat, including a couple short periods in darkness. I travelled to Burma twice to take temporary monastic vows and practice with monks. I did everything I could to be a “good” and happy person.
Still, I felt empty and unfulfilled. I was running away from myself, using meditation as an escape from unresolved emotional trauma. I lacked discipline and was unable to keep up a practice on my own. I constantly fell back into patterns of misery.
I was desperate.
In my longing for happiness, I finally took the plunge into my first psychedelic experience with five tabs of LSD (the recommended starting dose is ~1 tab). Wow! What a shock to the psyche. I had no idea what I was signing up for. My whole life, I had been taught psychedelics were “dangerous” and “bad.” I wrote them off as drugs for immature people. Now, I realised I had been wrong.
As Terrence McKenna says: “psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window, psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”
Soon after my LSD journey, I had my first experience with magic mushrooms. It was a gentle low-dose journey with a friend, and I had rarely felt as happy as I did that night.
In the summer of 2018, after having gone through about ten high-dose journeys and witnessing the transformative power of psilocybin in my own life, I organized two sessions for my dad. Watching him go through his first psychedelic experiences opened my heart and mind to another dimension of healing. I felt hours of true compassion for dad for the first time in my life. These experiences gave me more confidence to tripsit for others.
Although Truffles Therapy started out as a passion project, it soon grew beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Having had the privilege to witness and support hundreds of journeyers, I feel grateful for the opportunity to continue sharing the mushroom experience with all those who feel called to experience the magic.
To read a bit more about my journey, please consider reading "Psilocybin Mushrooms as Spiritual Allies."
