THE PAUL STAMETS MICRODOSING STACKING PROTOCOL/QI GONG COMBINED PRACTISE EXPERIMENT.
The Paul Stamets Microdosing Stack.
I had read about Paul Stamets Microdosing Stack and wanted to investigate it myself, as I’d read one article by a wrestler who had experimented with it and claimed that not only did it increase his body memory, but it also helped him execute moves that were beyond his natural ability, moves that he could continue to pull off even after he’d stopped microdosing.
A very simplified breakdown of the hypothetical mode of action of the stack is this: psilocybin mushrooms promotes neuroplasticity and new neural connections, lion’s mane promotes the creation of new nerve and brain cells and niacin drives these two medicines to the furthest reaches of the nervous system. Together they work synergestically to create a compound effect that enhances learning, cognition, neuroregeneration and many other things.
Research has also found that disabling the Default Mode Network seems to increase the speed and capacity of one’s learning abilities. Microdosing has been found to temporarily disable the DMN, so I believe that through this mechanism we are able to learn quicker. The lion’s mane, by creating new nerve growth then concretises these new connections in a more permanent way.
Qi Gong.
Qi Gong as I understand it, is a mind/body/breath/internal/external/physical/emotional/energetic moving meditation practise that is over 5000 yrs old from China. I’d tried Yoga and pilates but they never stuck. When I started practising Qi gong however, something clicked in me.
My theory why there are increasing rates of depression and anxiety here in the West, is partly due to multiple levels of disconnection going on. A lot of people these days are experiencing disconnection from their bodies, their emotions, themselves, from nature, from spirit, from community etc…
I feel Qi gong recconnects you back to your physical, energetic and emotional body as well as to the present moment, as accessed through the body. I would say a high proportion of people these days on the West are stuck in their minds, operating through the world from this place. One thing Qi gong does, is it moves the centre of your movement away from your mind and down to your Dan Tien, which is your power center, an area of your body located 3 cm below the navel. While it is not exactly the solar plexus or sacral chakra, it seems to share parallels with these two chakras but also has qualities that are completely seperate from the chakra system.
There are said to be over 5000 schools of Qi Gong so I can only really speak of the school that I am learning, but I would say one of the important aspects of it is to try and move as slowly as possible. My teacher says the slower you can move, the more connections you can build and the more detail in your movements. I theorise that the more detail in your movements that you have, the more connected to your body you are and the more closely synchronised your mind/body systems are, and when you are truly in your body, then you are more closely aligned with the present moment. Being in the present is the only place to be.
Motives for trying this combination.
I wanted to investigate the neuroregenerative potential of Stamets stacking protocol because I have always been stuck inside my head my whole life due to a variety of lifestyle factors, natural inclination, and also I believe from doing too much LSD when I was a young man who didn’t know any better. I wanted to see if I could accelerate a reconnection to my body and an anchoring into my physical form through this combined practise.
At the time of experimenting with this combination, I’d been practising Qi gong for maybe 1–2 hours a day, most days for about a year. I had also done 2 intensives with my teacher at this point, so I want to make clear that I was not starting from scratch, I had done some degree of legwork in preparation.
The experiment.
I decided to personally trial the stacking protocol while at an 19 day Qi gong intensive which entailed around 7 hours of Qi gong a day, every day except for a one day break in the middle. I dosed most days, deciding that during this period, I wished to make as much headway as possible so disregarded taking the recommended third or fourth day off in between. What I found though is that I reached some kind of saturation point 9 days in, where the stack no longer seemed to be affecting me much anymore, and if anything began to affect me negatively, as I started to experience being lost in my mind too much during practise and an inability to control a kind of hyper-ideational state that began to intefere with my practise. It was almost as if microdosing too much accentuated my Default Mode Network instead of disabling it.
When I began to take breaks from the stack at this point, I often found that my practise improved markedly, and then if I took it again too soon, my practise would be of less quality. Overall I would say I took it for about 10 days straight, and then every 2nd or 3rd day or so after this for the next 9 days.
While I was microdosing, I felt like I could go much, much deeper than usual into each movement. I was able to reach flow state more easily and effortlessly. I could also feel the subtle energetic pathways of my body more clearly than when not dosing, which I found interesting, as a lot of these energetic pathways were ones described by Traditional Chinese Medicine. I could literally feel my chi as if it was solid. The level of detail for each movement I could reach seemed highly magnified. I could go slower than before, literally feeling each minor muscle needed to perform each movement, work individually, and I felt like I gained new knowledge and awareness in greater detail of my physical muscle and nervous system structure. I also found I could focus for longer stretches of time without getting distracted.
While I’d already done the course once before, I had missed out on many details in the practise and found that I could remember the great number of minor details easily and effortlessly.
Overall, one month after completely an 18 day intensive and continuing to practise most days since, my findings are that it seems to have worked, in that I feel overall a deeper connection to my body than before and the quality of my Qi Gong practise seems to have gone up a level and stayed there.
Since stopping the protocol and continuing to practise most days for over a month without microdosing, I have found that while I am not able to fully recapture the depth of the practise that I could attain through the combined practise, I am still able to go much deeper than before. I guess the most useful metaphor would be like pulling a piece of loose elastic wide, and then allowing it to return to it’s shape, which seems to be now stretched half way between it’s original shape and when it was being manually stretched.
Anchoring the microdosing states of consciousness through this combined practise.
Most curiously, when I practise these moves after stopping microdosing, after a certain length of time of practise (about 1–2 hours depending on quality of practise), I’ve been able to retrigger a cognitive space very similar to taking a microdose of mushrooms, and this seems to remain with me for the rest of the day. The longer my practise is, the deeper this state is and the longer it stays with me. This has been going on now for the better part of 4 weeks. I believe there has been a slight decline of this state the further away from the microdosing course that I did, but it’s still quite marked.
I wonder if there is some kind of NLP anchoring going on, that I was able to anchor this state of consciousness to the incredibly detailed and multidimensional qi gong patterns, that when practised, then brings these consciousness states back. Perhaps it retriggers residual amounts of the medicine in my system to activate, who knows? Either way, I suspect it will fade with time, but still is an interesting bodyhack to take advantage of for at least extending the duration of the effects of the microdosing stack. I know however that even when done alone, Qi gong will bring on a heightened state of consciousness naturally, but it definitely seems to have a different, deeper quality about it post stacking protocol.
Drawbacks.
Some drawbacks I found was that there was sometimes an attachment or grasping after the flow state that so easily comes with the combined practise. Practise is also occasionally hard work now that I’m not microdosing, so while I believe it is some kind of shortcut to increased mind/body connection, it does not mean you can completely skip the hard work.
I also found that there was some subtle level of ego-inflation going on after a week or so of microdosing straight during the intensive, even sneakier because the doses were so subtle it was easy to notice it happening.
Your energy fields also seem to open up a bit more, so one must be wary of energetic contamination at least if you are a super sensitive type.
People may also become dependent on these formulas to reach these states of wellbeing. This is all well and good, but supposing you run out of a supply, then this can cause a problem. My thoughts are to just use the stack during intensive periods of self-work/ learning or training, or during periods of your life where you are needed to perform at a high level and then backing off back to a zero-substance ground state to see where you stand again without the medicine. It is also important to not get stuck into the mindset that you need to take something in order to be good at something or to feel good.
Conclusions.
All in all, I found this combination extremely beneficial and I believe it has a lot of therapeutic potential, especially in regards to healing illnesses and imbalances caused by a mind/body disconnection. The mere act of moving as slow as possible in time to one’s breath and music alone is something that seems to yolk people’s minds with their bodies. It is my postulation that a lot of the anxiety and depression going on at the moment could be theoretically traced back to people’s energy being too focused inside one’s head or mind, and this practise seems to ground it back into their body, spreading it all over one’s system evenly. I wonder if due to our increasingly sedentary, passive consumer lifestyle, perhaps we never even had much of a chance to even foster a healthy mind/body connection in the first place, so wonder if the sustained practise of Qi gong or perhaps any other kind of mindbody practise, combined with Paul Stametes Neuroregenerative stack might help one develop the necessary neural and muscle memory connections to anchor the mind with the body in a more balanced fashion.
On another note, I accidentally discovered while doing this stacking formula that I was able to play musical instruments in a more dexterous fashion, so the idea of using this formula in relation to learning to play musical instruments could be another useful application.
A few things to remember if you wish to try this:
Obviously I am just one person reporting this and there is no scientific backing for my speculations, but perhaps you may feel inclined to experiment and share your findings with the community.
Here are a few things to consider if you wish to do this:
— Intersperse periods of your combined microdosing and physical practise with periods of straight physical practise without microdosing and compare.
— See if you can retrigger the microdosing flow state afterwards without dosing and see how long it lasts. This might however be only possible after doing a sustained, intensive period of combined microdosing/practise over several weeks as I did.
Additional herbs to use:
In addition to Paul Stametes formula, I also decided to experiment with adding additional herbs to see how they would tweak the formula.
Here are four additional herbs I found that helped the mix greatly:
Ashwahganda — 1 gram per dose for adaptogenic nervous system support.
Shankhpushpi — 1 gram per dose for nootropic cognitive enhancement and calmative effects.
Brahmi — 0.5–1gram per dose for memory enhancement (although I found this sometimes made me feel ‘stuck in my head’ too much, so I wouldn’t do it that much).
Cordyceps extract– Half a teaspoon per dose helped my energy levels stay high over sustained long-form practise. I just didn’t seem to get tired and there was no afternoon slump.
Notes from the small group of other people who have tried this combination:
— The reports were that everyone were able to reach flow states easier.
— Most people found it grounded them into their bodies and left them in a very calm state of mind, post practise.
— Everyone reported that they could also focus on the moves much longer, their concentration spans seemed to increase.
— It was observed that in newcomers, they were able to learn and retain more patterns in a shorter amount of time. Many were surprised how much they could remember the next day when they practised the moves, several reporting that their conscious minds had believed they’d forgotten the moves and then realising once they began to move, that their bodies had retained muscle memory of it.
— One person reported that one long form practise (about 4–5 hours) helped her integrate a very difficult psychedelic healing session she had done the previous week.
— One person found that one long form practise (about 4–5 hours) helped her release a lot of blocked energy and emotions being held in her body.
— One person found doing the movements days afterward helped reduce her anxiety (although straight Qi gong would probably achieve this same effect I believe).
If you try this combo let me know how you go!
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