Benefits of Reishi Mushroom with Yarrow Willard

---

---

It was such a pleasure to have Yarrow on the show!  Yarrow is a dynamic speaker who is super passionate about building relationships with herbs and their ecosystems.  As you’ll hear in this conversation, Yarrow sees herbalism as a bridge to help people tune back in to the natural world, and he weaves in nature connection with everything he does.

Yarrow spoke extensively about the benefits of reishi mushroom - not just how they can benefit us physically, but also how they can improve our mental and emotional health, and how they can help us to better understand and learn from the other beings in the forests they are found in.  He also shared many ways reishi can be worked with medicinally, including his incredibly detailed recipe for a Reishi Dual Extraction.  You’ll find a link to a beautifully illustrated recipe card in the section below.

Here are just a few ways reishi can be worked with to benefit your health:

► As a grounding influence, to help you connect with the nature around you

► As a tonic to strengthen your immune system

► To improve insulin sensitivity and support blood sugar regulation

For more, be sure to check out the entire episode!

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► How reishi can help with your brain health and vision

►Tips for finding and harvesting reishi mushrooms 

► Why it’s so important to make connections with the places where you gather plants, even (or especially!) when the plants are out of season

► Six different medicinal preparations for reishi

►Why dual extractions of mushrooms are considered more potent than simple dried mushroom powders

► and so much more…

For those of you who don’t know him, Yarrow Willard is a second-generation Clinical Herbalist, living in the unceded territory of the Comox First Nations on Vancouver Island. 

He is the co-creator of Harmonic Arts, the Wild Rose College of Herbal Medicine and the Canadian Herb Conference. As an online personality and YouTube educator he is known as the Herbal Jedi.  His mission is to help empower the modern age with tools and teachings for reclaiming health through deepened connection to the natural world. 

Yarrow’s approach to plant medicine is one of curiosity, connection, and contemplation. His teachings often are infused with old world energetics, modern measurables, and direct plant communications, in a playful and digestible way.

I am so excited to share our conversation with you today!

-- TIMESTAMPS -- for Benefits of reishi mushroom

• 01:08 - Introduction to Yarrow Willard
• 02:46 - How Yarrow found his plant path
• 14:16 - Ecological and medicinal benefits of reishi
• 20:01 - Why tasting herbs is so important!
• 23:44 - Reishi harvesting tips
• 26:43 - Reishi as a bridge to nature connection
• 33:08 - Ways to work with reishi, and why dual extractions are so helpful with mushroom medicine
• 37:54 - More benefits of reishi
• 41:38 - Dual-extraction tincture of reishi
• 49:45 - The magic of reishi around the world
• 53:42 - Cooking and formulating with reishi
• 55:19 - Yarrow’s current projects
• 57:49 - How herbs give Yarrow hope
• 1:03:26 - Herbal tidbit

Get Your Free Recipe!

Connect with Yarrow

• Website | YarrowWillard.com
• Youtube | HerbalJedi
• Instagram | @herbal_jedi
• Facebook | HerbalJedi
• You can also find Yarrow’s work here, here, and here.

Transcript of the 'Benefits of Reishi Mushroom with Yarrow Willard' Video

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Hello and welcome to the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast, a show exploring how herbs heal as
medicine, as food and through nature connection. I’m your host, Rosalee de la Forêt. I created
this Channel to share trusted herbal wisdom so that you can get the best results when
relying on herbs for your health. I love offering up practical knowledge to help you dive deeper
into the world of medicinal plants and seasonal living.

Each episode of the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast is shared on YouTube, as well as your favorite
podcast app. Also, to get my best herbal tips as well as fun bonuses, be sure to sign up for my weekly herbal newsletter below.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Okay, grab your cup of tea and let’s dive in.

It was such a pleasure to have Yarrow on the show. He’s a dynamic speaker with lots of energy, who is obviously super passionate about plants and the ecosystems that they’re found in. I loved hearing his thoughts on connections and how our bodies are communicating and learning from plants. I have no doubt this is going to be a favorite episode for many of you. 

For those of you who don’t already know him, Yarrow Willard is a second generation clinical herbalist living in the unceded territory of the Comox First Nations on Vancouver Island. He’s the co-creator of Harmonic Arts, the Wild Rose College of Herbal Medicine, and the Canadian Herb Conference. 

As an online personality and YouTube educator, he’s known as the “Herbal Jedi.” His mission is to help empower the modern age with tools and teachings for reclaiming health to deepened connection to the natural world. Yarrow’s approach to plant medicine is one of curiosity, connection and contemplation. His teachings often are infused with old world energetics, modern measurables and direct plant communications in a playful and digestible way. 

Yarrow, I’m so excited to have you on the show. I’ve literally been waiting for this for years. Welcome. So glad that you’re here. I’m excited to dive in. Hi!

Yarrow Willard: 

Hi! Always love connecting with fellow “herb nerds,” as I call us, or just enthusiasts on the plant path. I super appreciate you having me on and just being in your space and connecting with you one-on-one here in a really deeper way. 

Rosalee de la Forêt: 

Thanks, Yarrow. I don’t really know a lot about your plant path. I know in your bio, you say you’re second generation herbalist. It sounds like you might have had some guidance along the way from a very young age. I would love to hear all the ways in which the plants have brought you along on this path to bring you here to us today. 

Yarrow Willard: 

My father is Dr. Terry Willard. He’s a clinical herbalist who was all one of the old ‘70s herbalists out of that hippie generation that really got into plant medicine before it was a big Renaissance that it is now. There wasn’t really a lot around that. He started a herbal college in 1975, so we’re actually having our 50th anniversary now. I’m the director of the college now called, “Wild Rose College of Herbal Medicine.”

As a young kid, I spent some time living in the tipi, spent some time on land that did one of these—tried to do the communal thing at one point, which was a bust because a lot of people—it’s just all experimental. I think I did my first herb walk where I actually spoke about herbs when I was five years old. Really, my name is Yarrow. My dad was like, “Alright, Yarrow. It’s time for you to tell us about yarrow here.” I was like, “I like to play and I enjoy being in the—“No, the plants.” I just really looked at the plant and I’m like, “It’s very protective. It has this shield on it.” Little did I know what I was doing was just reading the energy of the plant, tuning in, learning later that this is what the flower essence does. It helps us from psychic debris and other people’s influence that may be negative on us.

Since then, I spent a lot of time working in health food stores and tuning in to plants. My mom was a manager of a health food store too. My parents put me through Waldorf School. I went through this artistic way of exploring the world. Why I got into herbalism, honestly, was because I loved all the diagnostics systems, energetic patterns, and almost the architecture of the metaphysical background. It was like wow! Chinese medicine had all this cool language around how to explain phenomenon and energetics, the Ayurvedic, and so did all these different—the First Nation Four Directions, I was able to map out a lot of intentionality and ways in which there was meaning behind things in life. That was my jam. When I was younger, I really loved that stuff.

Since then, I graduated my clinical herbalist’s about 20 years ago now, so quite a while. I wasn’t doing anything with it. I had done all my clinical hours, spent $300 in clinic doing Vega testing, doing every kind of weird therapy there was – pulseton, iridology. I really loved the diagnostic tools, but I found that I wasn’t sure I was going to be a clinician. Maybe I had it in my mind that I needed to look like Merlin and have the big gray beard, the forest gnome ethos to me before I could really show up in this wisdom of the plants. I had a lot of respect and awe for the plants, but really, I just loved crafting. I loved crafting medicine. I loved wild foraging. I love tuning in and nibbling on plants, so I spent a lot of time exploring that.

I moved to the West Coast, really got into the mushrooms and tuning in. My wife was really clear, “I’m not eating anything you pick out of the forest until you know.” I was quite inquisitive. Partly, I think in energetic of a forest elf spirit is something that I embody at times. My guidance has been many different teachers along the way. I studied a little bit with 7 Song, David Winston and a few of these great, great elders. I did herb walks with Michael Moore and spent some time with Ryan Drum, lots of great American herbalists, but my influence is in Canada. I’m in the unceded territory of the Comox First Nations here on Vancouver Island. It’s the most abundant, beautiful ecosystem.

A lot of it has just been tuning in with the plants directly and learning from them. That’s what I like to share. I love to share about people plants, plants that tune in to us and how we can build reciprocity and relationship with. I feel as though the biggest disease of our time is nature deficit disorders, so how can we bridge this gap? That where I’m just so enthralled with the herbal path because we get to be some of the medicine bridge for people and their tuning back into the natural world, which has so many ways to heal us beyond just the therapeutic chemical constituents that a plant might have. That’s really what I love to share about.

Since then, I guess my herbal path is I started a company 15 years ago, Harmonic Arts. We’re now across the country. We make tinctures teas, syrups, elixirs or herbal latte drinks. We do a lot with medicinal mushrooms. It got way bigger than me, and it’s now this really big influence in Canada in the herbal world. I’m good friends with a couple of other herbalists. We just were really like, “How do we get people together?” I guess it would be like 10 years ago, we started the Vancouver Island Herb Gathering. We’ve been doing that now for about 10 years. The Kootenay Herb Gathering, we partnered with them and we do an online Canadian Herb Conference. It just keeps building and building this momentum around plants. Partly, everything that I do or have done in the work around plant medicine is from a basic mission statement of deepening connection to the natural world. They keep finding me, these plants.

I started a YouTube Channel in 2012 and that got really popular too. The college now, the Wild Rose College, has almost 3,000 students. There’s a huge impact. These plants keep saying, “We want you to keep bringing more of this.” That’s where I’m at. That’s my path so far. The intentionality is to grow old and become a wizard.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

What did you say? Elf spirit in the meantime?

Yarrow Willard:

Yeah. One of my favorite plants is—I call it elfwort or elecampane. There’s a little bit of a forest, elven diety, ethos to the way I like to show up in the world. [crosstalk]

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I can see that. I can see that.

Yarrow Willard:

Hence, email miscommunication sometimes happen. [crosstalk]

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’m just going to say it: I did not make the connection with Terry Willard. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe that’s something you’ve made your—obviously, have made your own name in the world.

Yarrow Willard:

I was a rebellious kid. My father created the “wild rose detox,” a really very popular cleanse. It was all capsules and I saw him eating handfuls of herbal capsules. That’s not the way herbs should be taken, so when we built our offering for the world we’re everything but capsules. We’ll do anything that has people have organoleptic connection to plants. That’s my way of rebelling.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I also really love you just keep bringing up the connection to nature, being out there and that’s something you and I share very much in common. I really love how that comes through. I know you mostly through your YouTube videos, which are phenomenal. I see that through that. I was telling I just watched one that you published about a month ago. I forget the title of it. It was like “Fir Medicine?” It was a two-part series. I watched the first one and that is just woven through everything that you’re doing. You’re connecting with the Douglas fir trees. Your love for the forest shines through. The videography on that is just so cool. It must have a drone. It’s looking at the different lenses and stuff, but it just really feels like I’m out in the forest with Yarrow right now. It’s really well done.

Yarrow Willard:

It looks like a drone. We have this selfie 360 stick for doing upper things. It’s like a fake drone almost. It’s really like walking through the forest with this big—my videographer used to be a musician and he really didn’t want to do that anymore. He’s a really good friend of mine. We just had so much fun exploring growth in the art of crafting something that it feels like a real music video/herbal connection.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

They’re just so much fun, so for anyone who hasn’t watched them, I highly recommend them. I loved the videos. They aren’t just like, “Here are the medicinal uses of Douglas fir.” Obviously, that would not be you, anyway, but you really do weave in that nature connection through everything you’re doing. That’s really beautiful to see.

Yarrow Willard:

It’s holistic frameworks. I think that’s one of our guiding lights as herbalists. We have our little base in this holistic system of integrating mind, body and spirit, but also more than just that allopathic model of problem-reaction solution that doesn’t fit for a lot of the herbalists I know, anyway.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Right. You mentioned the Vancouver Herbal Gathering, which I’ve heard about for years, I would like to make it one day. It just sounds so incredible.

Yarrow Willard:

You’d love that for sure. Because of COVID, we joined forces and created the Canadian Herb Conference. It’s a great online offering. There’s nothing like being in person though. That was the biggest reason we started this because there are so many people in the woodwork who are into plants and they don’t have community always, so when they come to these gatherings, it’s just such a beautiful celebration of plant people. The first [crosstalk] was, I think a Montana gathering. We were in herb school and we’re like, “Let’s go down to the Montana gathering.” Some of our favorite herbalists were there and it was just an impactful moment for me in the plant path to realize, wow! This is a much bigger community of people who are really connecting with the natural world in a really powerful way. That to me was really nourishing being siloed in my own little world at times.

Rosalee de la Forêt: 

I love that you mentioned that particular gathering, Montana Herb Gathering. I went there once and it was so beautiful just getting out there. That was such a special bioregional conference that really was you’re just hanging out like you’re best friends now. It was a really, really wonderful conference. I loved it.

Yarrow Willard:

Me too. There’s more and more of that. I’m in Canada, so we don’t have as much, but I remember Mountain Rose did Rootstock. We went down for that. It was super fun and just seeing—there’s more and more of those things. Been to the good medicine conference and a few of these other events. It’s really nice when it’s in nature though, I have to say. It’s my favorite place. Dandelion Seed Conference is a great one too. A bunch of these popping up.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I loved that I asked what herb you want to talk about and you said reishi. I love as herbalists, we just accept reishi and other mushrooms as an herb. Not even bat an eye. It’s just like, “Yep. That’s part of our materia medica.”

Yarrow Willard:

I think that stems from the way the Chinese view herbs. I say “herbs.” I know you guys say “erb.” It’s our-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Chanchal brought up that too. She said it in a very funny way. She said, “I practice holistic herbalism, which is the whole herb including the H.”

Yarrow Willard:

I love that. I love that. She’s a good friend of mine. She actually helps—we organize the gatherings together. I love that. It is always funny to me. You can always tell. If somebody says herb, they’re from Canada. If they say erb, they’re from America.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It’s funny how on my YouTube Channel that’s pretty much the most common negative comment I get, is people tell me I’m pronouncing the word—“She can’t even pronounce the word right,” is what people will say. Have you not heard of this phenomenon before? I think it’s the French influence. I think that is what it came from because in French, you don’t say the H either.

Yarrow Willard:

I think it’s silly though. One of the things I love about YouTube is the opportunity to grow past negative comments and trolls. Lots of people were—I get comments like, “You worship strange gods, but his content is okay.” There are a lot of really interesting, interesting comments. Some of them I bookmarked as, “This is great. The person is totally slamming me in a way that I just have to be tickled by because I know it’s not about me.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s something that’s easy to see. I was terrified getting on YouTube at first because the YouTube comments are so notorious. I was really nervous, but the herbal community, 99% of the comments we get are so kind. Just the occasional don’t think I know how to pronounce words right, which is true. Sometimes I don’t know how to pronounce all words correctly.

Yarrow Willard:

I screw up lots of Latin names. Reishi, basically back to what I was saying, in Chinese medicine, gecko is a herb. Ant is an herb. Animal parts, plant parts, mushrooms – they all fall into that category. It is one of those things that I think people think is just plants, but mushrooms to me are—there’s something really magical and wise about them that I just really, really resonate with their wisdom. Reishi and the ecosystems that it grows up in, wow! It doesn’t grow in new forests. It requires an intact biodiverse ecosystem before it emerges in as a consciousness.

I just think there’s something to that complex stability that creates this beautiful intelligence that is great with plants, especially fungi and the way that they work with the mother trees and help remediate and move chemistry around the environment to create a more healthy ecosystem. That in itself is probably one of my favorite things. They do the whole fungal network, the “wood wide web” as we call. Reishi in particular, has some real special qualities. There’s a lot. I could spend hours talking about this mushroom. I actually have a couple of videos that are almost like that. They are on our world of mushrooms series on wild rose.

I’d love to share a bit about it and why it’s my favorite herb. First off, I’ll say just to prove my point, I have a 24-year old daughter and her name is Reishi, so this isn’t just a new fangled favorite of mine. I’ve been a fan of the reishi mushroom for a long time. She’s amazing, my daughter is. She grounds me in a lot of ways that a reishi does. I think the old fabled line in China—there’s a bunch of names for it, but my favorite is “spiritual vegetable meat.” Vegetable meat or things like to protect the academic from their own brain. That’s what they say reishi is for. For those of us who think a lot or are on these devices, it has some great qualities for bioremediating out toxins, Wi-Fi signals and all that kind of stuff. It’s just healthy for radiation or just the techno age that we’re in, so that in itself is amazing. 

Everyone knows this is an adaptogen, but to me, the truth of an adaptogen is something that also can adapt to just multiple styles of people, not just a multiple balances and imbalances in the body. Reishi really is one that adapts to a lot of different people –the elderly, the young. Every different age group can benefit from reishi in such a powerful way. For me, I have a little bit of insomnia at times and reishi totally helps that. It helps with anxiety and heart palpitations, helping me breathe better, ground in the earth. I think of it as “nature’s internet” almost, because of the way it tunes in the communication to the natural world for me. It almost use reishi to Google what I need from the news in a way, so things like that. 

We have a bunch of different types of reishi out here on the West Coast. The Ganoderma oregonense is probably my favorite because it has this big red, fleshy top like lucidum which is the classic Chinese reishi. The fleshy top produces this big, white spore pad when it’s young. It bends over the top of the cap when it’s young. You can slice off a little piece of it. It has this buttery, umami steak feeling when it’s fresh. It’s just wow! When you eat a little bit of that, you don’t need to harvest all much. Just a little sliver off of the spore pad as it’s growing this time of year or midsummer is a good time to do that. What I found was right away, my eyesight was whoa! I had almost tingly brightness and an ethereal quality to my vision. It felt altered in a lot of ways from tuning in to reishi. That’s one of my favorites. I’m also a big fan of spore licking. That sounds weird, but I love to—these mushrooms...

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Please explain.

Yarrow Willard:

[crosstalk] spores and you can just go and lick the spores. They’re high in terpenes. They’re great for the immune system and antiviral qualities. They just tune you in in a really neat way. I find spores—I’m a big fan of the weird parts of plants. I guess I’ll call it almost it’s the sexual parts of plants like the pollens, the stamen, the spores. I think that they produce all these really unique, almost plant hormone, that can help us in balancing our endocrine system in that way. I just really love that about reishi this season. I spent a lot of time not picking reishi, just licking spores and eating the buttery umami steak pieces of the spore pad.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’m already seeing the YouTube comments like, “He licks spores, but his content is really good.”

Yarrow Willard:

I think this is something that the organoleptic senses of our body, our sensual way of communication is so much older than our social norms, our dialect and our collective awareness. It’s just an old system that is our best way of communicating still. It really is, especially with beings that don’t speak English. Plants really respond well to us and we respond well to them when we touch them, when we feel them, when we lick them, when we nibble them, when we spend time in and out of their harvest season. Where I find they don’t respond well to is when we just see them as an extraction resource, and we’re like, “Great! It’s nettle season. Go and see the nettles!” Did you spend time with the nettles outside of nettle season? Did you give some thanks to that area at any other time besides that harvest cycle? That’s the thing I like to think about and to connecting with this going to these places.

Reishi is a great example of it’s only there for a short period of time, but I can tune in to the reishi forest. Every time I walk in that forest, I’m like on the mycelium. I feel like I’m hanging out with reishi regardless of seeing a spore pad or a fruiting body of some form. It’s in there, so I could feel part of my, I guess forest bathing practice is just try to feel into the mycelium under my feet. It feels like a juicy place to spend time in, for my being anyway.

Rosalee de la Forêt: 

I love that you have the consciousness of reishi at all times even if the fruiting body is not visible at the time. I am curious about when harvest season is. I live in a dry side.

Yarrow Willard:

You’re here in Washington, right?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yeah.

Yarrow Willard:

You can dig a hop-skip and a jump over and visit it. I know I did a herb walk down there and I was asked, “We want to find some reishi.” I’m like, “Oh, my gosh. Okay, so I’m going to go to Google. I’m going to find a forest that looks just like my forest and we’re going to go do our plant walk there.” Five minutes later, bam! We found reishi.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That was in Western Washington though, I take it.

Yarrow Willard:

Yeah, Western Washington.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’m in Eastern Washington, so a little different.

Yarrow Willard:

The basic—in Washington, in the Pacific Northwest, anyway, the artist conk or the Ganoderma applanatum is the easier one. It’s the perennial reishi. It’s got the brown cap. It’s called “artist conk” because you use a feather, or a nail, or a needle or something, and you put a mark in the spore pad and it stays forever. You can make this beautiful art in the spore pads. It’s also really antibacterial, but it’s easier to find because it’s a perennial. It’s around and it just adds a new shelf to the spore pad every year. I have found ones like this. There was one that I harvested off of a big old maple and I could barely lift it. It was so big. The tree was dying. The spore pad still had some. I knew it was okay to harvest this one. It had its time. That one was easier to connect with because of that. It’s got a brown cap. It grows on maple. It will grow on a bunch of different–I’ve seen them on cottonwoods too, those ones. The reishi that I really love that’s like my Easter egg of the forest is the oregonense  or the tsugae. The oregonense has got a wider red, shiny—it’s called “red varnish conk.” It really grows on hemlock.

With mushroom, it’s really important to understand your trees. Hence, doing a fir video, I tuned in with the trees a lot around their barks. The hemlocks, especially the older ones, grow the most beautiful reishi. Harvest season is around September, but you can tune in with it as early as July. The thing that’s crazy is on the big ones, once you find a good hemlock that has reishi, it’s got a 20-year—pardon my pun—shelf life. Because the shelf mushrooms grow on it for the next 20 years. You kind of wax on and wax off. Almost every five years, you get a big flush and then you get smaller flushes throughout that. It starts as small caps and then it grows into bigger ones. I can gauge now after spending time with it, the age of how long that tree has been growing reishi approximately, because of the size of the mushrooms and the density of them. That’s about the time.

Again, I do love the new technology with the ability for me to—I find the tree that I tune in with and I can right away go and look it and pin it on a map and be like, “This is where I’m going to come next year.”  And then I also topple from that and say, “This is the kind of forest,” and then I can go. I went off time and be like, “I’m going to go to”—we have this forest around us that I know of. “I’m going to go to Manning Park,” which is another ecosystem an hour and a half away very similar, and right away tuning in with reishi very quickly. 

Once you know—even right in the heart of Vancouver, one of my favorite experiences with reishi, actually, was there’s this trade show that we go to every year for the health food convention. It happens in—I guess it’s February? Harvest season, like I said, is September. Anyway, I always go to Stanley Park, which is the main park in Vancouver, big, big park of old growth forest right in the heart of town. Really beautiful because of that. It’s my little place of nature bathing before I go to the big city. I know it’s crazy in the city. Go spend some time in the forest. I got out of my car. I was walking to go into the forest. There’s a bike path there and zoom, goes the bike. Zoom goes the other bike. Somebody goes running by. It’s so busy I can barely cross the bike path, but right on the other side of the bike path, is this giant, beautiful reishi glowing. I’m looking at all these people and I’m like, “Does nobody see that reishi?” There’s got to be a thousand people going by a day here. It’s well past reishi season. This reishi is calling me across the bike path saying, “Come visit me.”

I guess why it was so ironic and special to me was that here, in the middle of the city, all these people come to this place, maybe unknown to themselves, to tune in with reishi in a way, to ground into the ecosystem, to forest bathe, to be in nature. This is this prolific reishi forest who is the grand holder of space in this ecosystem. They don’t know it, but they’re benefitting from the reishi consciousness there. All of them are seeing it. They’re all just going by busy as can be. When you do tune those lenses a little bit differently, the reishi just beckons you. It says, “Come find me. Come find me. I’m here.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I love how you’re saying all these different levels of knowledge, like somebody could start out being interested in reishi as this medicinal substance. There are all these benefits, which you’ve mentioned some of them. As you talk about how the way you’re forming a relationship with reishi, and iIt’s not just with reishi. It’s not just with the mycelium, but it’s with the entire forest, with the mycelium, especially the trees and the ecosystem. You’re even finding that in different places. That to me is the epitome of what makes herbalism so beautiful.

Yarrow Willard:

There’s something to the wisdom of a lot of the intact indigenous systems that when you ask them where they learned about plant medicine, it’s like, “The plant told me.” I feel like finding that voice from the plant, it takes a lot of contact points. The one that I could invite people to is have more contact points with the herb that you’re excited about. Find ways to touch it. Grow it. Connect with it. Nibble it. Find it in a health food store. Find good quality, bad quality. Go visit it off season. How many contact points can you make? The more you do, that relationship just starts to build without putting—it’s not like you have to force it. Not like sitting there, meditating, getting into this space where, “The consciousness is connecting with me at this enlightened place.” Just like any relationship, I’m investing my energy into spending time to learn from it. It’s really simple. It seems so mythical, but it’s not. It’s actually if you care about that relationship, find new ways and other ways to deepen it.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I will almost say it’s almost both by being very practical and having all these connection points. I like how you put that. It creates this—I don’t want to say mythical necessarily—but there’s some type of joy and inherent magic that happens through the practicality of spending time with the plant. For me, I have a hard time describing what that is, but for me, that’s the heart of why I do what I do. It’s that incredible, joyful magical moments of connection.

Yarrow Willard:

I love that. I agree with you there. I think it was Buhner who said it--using the heart is the primary organ of perception. I just love that concept of getting out of the head and into the heart when we’re spending time and using that as our primary filter. The concept that I’ve modeled off that is that the brain will entrain to the heart if the heart guides first. It’s how do I take this big dome and drop it down through my throat into my heart and just melts my awareness and soften my edges a little bit. That’s where I find that magic happen.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I want to say that spending time with nature with the plant world makes that easier, I think because I had to learn that as an adult. I wasn’t already in that space, but it really came. Without trying, like you said, it wasn’t a forced thing. It just happens.

Yarrow Willard:

It does. I guess I say from a practical level is that it seems like a giant leap for those of us who are steeped in an academic world, it’s not a big leap. It’s just also allowing your inner child to speak for you sometimes, to be playful, to be open and inquisitive, and all that stuff. It takes work for the adult brain to do. It’s not like it’s hard work. It’s just letting go. It’s unlearning a little bit.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Unlearning. So true. You’ve mentioned these amazing gifts of reishi, like it helps you sleep, helping breathe better, talking about clarity of vision. You mentioned all these things that it makes me wonder. It makes it sound like maybe you work with reishi often and I’m wondering how you like to do so.

Yarrow Willard:

I do. There are a lot of different ways to work with reishi. I mentioned licking the spores and sometimes I’ll actually just take a little piece of paper and a brush and I’ll sweep spores on. I like to dehydrate it, slice it and make tea with it. Or I would put it into our broths. We do a lot of bone broths with a lot of mushrooms and seaweeds, and things like that. Reishi is often in there. It has a little bit of a bitter quality because of the terpenes. You want to be careful not to throw off a recipe with too much reishi.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yeah, I’ve done that before.

Yarrow Willard:

It’s easy to do that if you overdo it. My favorite way is actually to make a dual extracted tincture because I think it’s the easiest way to connect with all the parts because of its terpenes profiles and it has polysaccharides. Polysaccharides are water soluble. The terpenes are alcohol soluble, so you have to do two different extractions and to put those together. That makes it an easy form for people. The beautiful thing about tinctures is that you can titrate the dosage. I love how Matthew really brought to the world a lot more about single drop dosage, but then I also love the idea of a combination of single drop dosage, breathe in the medicine, tune in to the vibration, and then actually take a physiological dose of something.

There’s a few different ways I would look at it that way. If you get into the alchemy, you can actually make mushroom essences. You do that out of the moonlight of the full moon vs. plant essences where you’re making them under the sunlight. You could add some vibrational reishi into your alchemical one. You could do some spagyrics with it. It does a great job of that. If you want to get more nerdy, there are also some great reishi extracts. I’ve been a big fan of using dual extracted powder because it comes out as really easy and convenient to add into things and get a lot of the qualities in just the format that’s digestible.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Can you speak to that for just a moment of why you would want a dual extract powder vs. a raw powder?

Yarrow Willard:

Mushrooms have a lot of chitin in them. That’s basically what the—mushroom transforms the lignans of the trees into the hard exoskeleton of the mushroom. That locks the chemistry in, so you can’t really digest it in a lot of ways. When you grind up reishi mushroom powder, it’s totally useless. I mean, not totally useless. You get some of the water soluble components, but they’re all locked in these chitin cells. Hot water extraction opens those up and makes them really bioavailable, whereas alcohol extraction also breaks open the cell walls and brings out the terpenes. There’s a few—let’s see, the terpenes, some saponins. Not a lot in there, but there’s ergosterols. Some sterols in there and some phenols, and things like that. They’re all alcohol soluble, and that’s only in the spore pad.

One of the debates we have in North America around mushrooms is actually mycelium vs. fruiting body. You don’t see that debate in Europe. That debate is not in China either. They only use fruiting bodies, and that’s really where the ancient wisdom comes with thousands of years. That’s because it’s the reproductive part. If you look at it from a HPLC, you see so many terpene profiles and all these other really cool bits of chemistry that are those mushroom hormones. I’m a big fan of that.

The dual extraction powder, the idea is—and this is something that most people can’t make themselves that have to purchase because the way it’s done is it’s a decoction. A big double, double boiling trouble kind of ear of mushroom, eye of mushroom and wing of other mushroom cooked down to a thick tar, and then an alcohol tincture brought down to almost evaporated off. Those are put into a vacuum chamber. The vacuum chamber changes the atmosphere at pressure, so that it takes all of the liquid off at room temperature so it doesn’t denature anything. That’s the piece of equipment that most of us don’t have a million dollars to buy and do that. From there, it has to be put into a spray dryer kind of thing, so it’s then sprayed back into a powder. That’s basically taking a dual extracted tincture and evaporating it down into a powder.

The reason I love that is you could easily put it in people’s coffee. I’m a big fan. I often joke in some of my classes. I’m like, “Where is your water reservoir? I want to drop a couple of liters of reishi tincture in it just so that everybody gets the vibration of reishi in this town or this city because I think we all need it. We all need a little more grounding, a little more connection. Reishi is amazing antiviral, amazing for cancer, really good as an autoimmune support and immune modulator. Like I mentioned, the insomnia, but also anxiety, tension and radiation. There are just so many ways that this mushroom can support us in building healthy cells.

The way I like to think of that is that it actually just like most plants, they don’t actually heal us. They inform our body of the wisdom that the plants have gained over the thousands of generations they’ve been on this earth. That teaches us. It’s almost like reading a book when we are hanging with the plant. We’re learning from the plant. Our cells are learning at that level and then they’re showing up in better integrity. That’s how reishi works in my mind. It actually tunes our own immune system into a little more knowledgeable educated way of showing up. We can recognize a lot of these disease states and a lot of these things, so that our body actually heals itself.

One winded way of saying put a little bit of reishi in people’s Starbucks. Put a little reishi in people’s—especially, those people who are allergic to health food stores, reishi is a great medicine for that. They probably could use a little bit of that grounding. It’s a really good gateway into the intelligence of the natural world.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Wow. That was so awesome. A couple of things, one, I love your explanation of how herbs are working with our body in a dynamic way because I think that’s often missed. Because people are used to thinking of pharmaceuticals as this thing we take, and then it does this thing to our body. Herbs are so different. I just love the way you said that. I’m going to watch that several times, I’m pretty sure. Our body is adapting and learning from the plant intelligence, or the mushroom intelligence in this case. That’s beautiful. Now, I forgot the second point. Actually, everything you’re saying is just fabulous.

Yarrow Willard:

If you think of it even from a chemistry perspective, just to break it back into maybe less etherical. The chemical, the degrees, angles and branching of the matrix of how the chemicals are formed together, when our bodies are exposed to that, it says, “Oh, wow. Here’s a really cool way of showing up in the world. Maybe I can do that too.” It starts to build some of that chemistry itself. It’s almost like if you look at it as that’s how we read, that’s how our body reads. It’s just how our organoleptics work. They recognize the chemistry and they say, “This is an interesting way of showing up. It’s useful for me. If it is, yes, I’m going to learn from it and keep learning.” To me, that’s the real truth that plants offer us--this beautiful knowledge bank of ancestry from their own way of showing up on the planet.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes, I love that. I remembered my second point, which is the way you want to share reishi with everybody, that’s what I say about hawthorn. Same thing. We just need everybody like, “Why do we have Heinz ketchup in the stores? That should just be hawthorn ketchup.” We should be giving hawthorn to everybody all the time, but I’m definitely into the reishi as well.

Yarrow Willard:

Hawthorn is a great heart medicine. Not just a heart medicine, but just a beautiful—I like to think that one sews up a broken heart.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

You talked about the mechanics of making a dual powder extraction which most of us can’t do at home, but you’re going to share with us how to do a dual extraction that we can do at home.

Yarrow Willard:

That’s the way—just to take a back step, the best way to practice plant medicine is to make it yourself, and that is another contact point. Dual extraction powder is almost once removed from that, so it’s not quite the same. But getting out, connecting with the reishi and the ecosystem, drying it out, slicing it, cooking it down, making a tincture--these are so many different ways in which you’re building a relationship with it. Probably a lot of your viewers or listeners know that how you set intention in that process is a big part of that medicine too. A little bit of an offering, a sacred space, no distractions, makes a big difference to your medicine making. Also, doing it within a timely manner of harvest is important. I call it a “crime against wisdom,” which I fully admit I’ve done, where it’s like, “I really should have dealt with that three days ago. What was I thinking?” but I know better.

When it comes to making a dual extracted tincture, it’s a little more complicated than just a regular tincture. Layman’s tincture, very simple. Fill the jar as much as you can and put in alcohol. With a dual extracted tincture, you have two steps. One of them is a water step and that water step could have—it could go off if you don’t add some kind of preservative. Whereas, a tincture takes a couple of weeks usually to really macerate properly. You could powder it down and put it in a conical filter, and do that process of those types of extracts and do it quicker.

Most people or myself anyway, I really—I’m going to speak for myself—I really love the magic that happens when you macerate an herb for at least half a moon cycle. Something happens not just the first day, not the third day, but seven days in, the herb and the alcohol have started to marry and started to, “I’m going to tell you some of my secrets. A little more of my secrets are going to come out.” There’s something about that and something about shaking it and spending time with it like, “I’m making medicine. I’m spending time.” There’s magic to that. Just a regular tincture like anybody—however you choose to make a tincture is one part.

Typically, because it’s terpenes—this is something I loved about Michael Moore’s—he’s got a website and a great book around tinctures. The old books that I—one of my first ones I got around—every herb has a different level of alcohol. With terpenes, we’re looking at 75% alcohol. That’s ideal. Whereas, polysaccharides, which are the water soluble, they don’t want 75% alcohol. They do not like it at all. They’re like, “Yikes! This stuff hurts me. It burns me. It breaks me apart. No, thanks.” It denatures the polysaccharides. They want a really low alcohol or no alcohol environments. That’s what you’re pulling out of the water.

So, you do the high alcohol. Seventy-five percent is what I like to get the ergosterols and the plant hormones, or the mushroom hormones in that. You let that sit for two weeks. That’s one way. It’s called the “volcano method,” I guess is one of the things. Then you take another batch or if you want to press off that batch and by using the same mushrooms that you alcohol-tinctured, it’s broken their cell walls open a little bit, and then you make the decoction with that. Or what I do because—it’s not that I’m lazy, but that I like to just have more abundance of the medicine–is I’ll take a fresh batch of dried reishi slices that I’ve done and I’ll do my decoction.

With reishi, I find the decoctions are far better if I’ve dried out the mushroom vs. do it fresh. I just play with it in both ways. It’s way easier to chop when it’s fresh, but by drying it out a little bit, it doesn’t have to be perfectly crispy dry, but there’s something about it. The chemistry changes a little bit. I find that that works as a better mushroom tincture. 

I’ll do a decoction which is a light simmer, not rolling boil for a number of hours. I’ll pray to it and talk to the weird gods as I’m making it. I love the imagery I have is the “double double boiling trouble” and I bring in the energy of three witches in a cauldron just brewing up some magical potion when I’m doing decoctions. Reishi gets that energy usually when I decoct it in it. Minimum four hours. Usually, I’ll start early in the day and towards the end of the day, if it’s four to eight hours, if I’m doing a small batch—because most of us don’t need 10 liters of reishi tincture—we could probably get away with one liter of reishi tincture. Sometimes it could be down to 500ml, half and half mixing the alcohol part at 50% and the water part at 50%. Then I’m going to add more water as I go because I’m going to simmer it down in low volumes. It evaporates really quickly. Don’t be afraid. You don’t need to start with this huge amount of water and evaporate it down to nothing. In my experience, you’re better to just add a little more water as you go and it’s just another contact point. You’re in tune with it in that way when you’re doing decoctions. I got it down to a nice thick, thick strong reishi brew.

While the heat is on, I’ll turn the heat off. While it’s warm and the cells are all excited and the mushrooms are all open and the polysaccharides are dancing around in the liquid, that’s when you pour the alcohol in and you put the lid on right away. I let that sit for another two days. At this point, it’s preserved so no problem. You could let it sit for a week, two weeks if you want. Better to let it sit for a couple of days, and then it marries for a bit before you press it off. That’s the method I like. Some of the other herbalists that I know, they prefer to do—or one of my friends, this great, great herbal chemist kind of guy—he prefers to freeze his decoction. He does that same decoction, but he throws it into the freezer. Again, how do you break open cell walls while freezing is another way? That decoction freezes and the cell walls open up a little bit more. He takes that out after he freezes it, reheats it and puts his tincture in that way afterwards.

There are different ways you can do that. The beauty of the freezing method is you can make them both at the same time, so you can do tincture and decoction, went into the freezer for two weeks while the decoction is–or the tincture is going. You can do that at the same time and then it’s just the reheat. It’s two different steps, but I’m a big fan of just making the decoction once my tincture is ready and putting them together. It’s simple.

Once you’ve done that, the big trick though is you need about 25% alcohol to preserve. At thirty to thirty-five percent alcohol, the polysaccharides just start to get scared. They start to go, “Oh, I don’t like this. This is not a comfortable environment,” and they follow a solution. You see this with things like marshmallow tincture too. A lot of those demulcent compounds, they turn into a goo and nobody wants goo on the top of their tincture. It doesn’t work, the mouthfeel, and you lose some of the chemistry. You don’t want to add too much alcohol. It’s 75%, mixing it around 50%, you’re getting it down there to around 30%. That’s about ideal.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you so much for explaining all of that and also for explaining the whys in different ways. There’s just so much learning in there. For the listeners, if you want to download your recipe card, you could do that at herbswithrosaleepodcast.com. It would all be written up for you.

Yarrow Willard:

I have a lot of videos. I have a video on that I can share with you too.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I will put that on the show notes as well. I’ll get that from you. Awesome! Was there anything else you’d like to share about reishi before we move on?

Yarrow Willard:

I think the biggest thing to me is that it’s not just people like me who are excited about reishi. It stems back over 2,000 years of written history on this. So many fables of the mythical reishi in the mountains. The ecosystems that it is in are feigned in the Chinese lore. There’s a quality to it. When I spend time in China—I went and visited a reishi farm up in the Nine Dragons Mountain. It was just this beautiful space all in the basswood or the dawn wood logs.

The quality to that ecosystem and to the—I could understand the mythos around the reishi. When we went to a reishi museum even, they just specialize—there are over 70 different species of reishi in China alone. There are hundreds around the world. When I went to Costa Rica, when I spent time in other countries, there is a reishi in every one of these intact ecosystems. Every temperate rain forest has its own reishi. To me, it’s like it is a symbol of a quality ecosystem that has water in it. It’s going to grow this grandmother or Merlin wise energy--this quality, so I really loved that. Even in South America, they have a beautiful reishi that the Shamans down there use when they go to the big city to help ground them to connect back to the forest. In every place that it grows, there’s some reverence for it. It’s not just us.

I think Jane Goodall did a study on apes and gorillas, and the artist conks, when they found them, they were prized. They would fight over these artist conks, these reishis. They would chew on those spore pads and the strength that they would get from that. Immune integrity that became like a dog with its toy, almost like, “No, this is mine. You can’t just”—this quality is really valuable to them.

I find that the ecosystems that it grows in are really valuable to this planet. This planet cares about those ecosystems and we care about those ecosystems. The benefits to both us and the planet are astronomical. They just are so multifaceted that I get a lot of humbleness when I think about reishi and what it does for planet Gaia and for the human body.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’m feeling very inspired to deepen my relationship with reishi. I’ve gone through times where I took it every day for a year, and haven’t had that in a while. No, I’m feeling called to work with reishi again, so thank you for the inspiration.

Yarrow Willard:

The invite is, “Can you make some reishi yourself?” How can you deepen that experience the reishi can offer?” My dad said it once. I thought it was really funny the way he said it. He’s like, “I happen to know that herbs grow in bottles.” The concept of consuming something that we find from a store is kind of once removed from the herbs sometimes. I love that about grassroots herbalism. It’s coming back a big resurgence. People want to do it themselves. There’s something magical about that. Even if it’s a friend that’s making it or there’s some kind of contact to its origin story, that matters. That matters a lot.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It’s so much fun to work with them--the reishi slices. It just feels really cool to put that in the broths or I make an astragalus reishi spiced tea. It just always feels special.

Yarrow Willard:

Astragalus reishi goji--that’s a good one. I like that one.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Astragalus reishi goji.

Yarrow Willard:

Actually, a lot of mushrooms like a bit of Vitamin C. It helps them absorb better, so like an amla, or a rosehip, or a goji are all really good add-ins to that immune broth with this.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Interesting. Speaking of formulas, one of my favorite—and I did this for taste. I wasn’t trying to—it wasn’t for any particular reason, but I was combining all in a tincture, reishi schisandra chocolates, and then a touch of licorice for the sweetness. It was like candy. It was like herbal candy.

Yarrow Willard:

Do you—so cacao is one that I only tincture the shells or the hulls. I’ve tried that vs. the whole fatty bean, but I’ve found that the hulls have a lot of the qualities that I want. This is the growing edges or the outer edges where there’s just neat - the cambium layers in trees, that outer hull on it. I learned it from somebody who makes tea with that. They’re like, “I just use the hulls for tea. I don’t use the chocolate bean itself.” So I started tincturing the hulls of cacao. I was like, “Wow! This is beautiful! What a great tincture.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Interesting. Thanks for that. Yarrow, for people who are wondering where they can learn more from you, what programs you might offer. I know you mentioned some things, the Vancouver Herb Gathering, the Canadian Herb Gathering, you mentioned your school. You have a mushrooms class. Is that right?

Yarrow Willard:

I do have a mushrooms class. It isn’t just the medicinal qualities. There’s a huge section on that, but it talks about cooking with mushrooms, making those different tincture extracts, do different ways of processing, making herbal lattes using mushrooms and broths doing that. Also, tuning in to the ecosystem and some of the intelligence. It’s a great, great class. That’s in wildrosecollege.com. That’s where a lot of my education offering are other than YouTube. Herbal Jedi YouTube is just a great free way to connect with me. There are over a hundred videos. There is a lot of—you can have, as they say, a Netflix-binge on my channel if you wanted because there’s a lot of fun.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Because it’s so much fun. It really is. It’s really fun and informative.

Yarrow Willard:

Herbs should be fun. I feel there’s something about animating the enjoyment of the experience, and just playing in that world of plant medicine. It feels really right to me. That’s what that channel is all about--really tuning the forest and connecting with different plants at many different levels.

At wildrosecollege.com, I have a herbal pharmacy course where we go deeper into shrubs, cordials, mocktails and all kinds of fun stuff as well as creams, and all that type of thing. I have a wild foraging course there as well as a mushroom course. That’s a great place. Yarrowwillard.com is my personal website. That’s another place people can find out my different links. Harmonicarts.ca or .com is our business. We have a pretty neat herbal business that is doing some good work. We’re B Corp. We do 1% for the planet. We do a lot of give-back to protect second-growth forests. We’re on Vancouver Island doing really awesome herbal work.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes, you are. If anyone missed all those links, we’re going to put them all on the show notes so it will be easy to get to including the recipes, so be sure to check out the show notes then make those connections.

Yarrow Willard:

There’s almost too many. It’s like a mycelium of-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It’s very inspiring. You’re doing a lot of really cool projects.

Yarrow Willard:

The plants told me to. It’s them doing the work through us I find sometimes.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That is very true. Before I let you go, Yarrow, I have one more question for you and I’m excited to hear your answer. This question is, “How do herbs instill hope in you?”

Yarrow Willard:

Through tea. No, I mean, that’s how they instill it in me. I think about it as an evening beverage. I spoke to it a couple of times here and it’s weaving us back into the natural world as part of an ecosystem. A lot of humans have just a relationship with their humans. That’s really monocropping our communication with this planet. We live in this beautiful place with such a diversity of conversations going on.

To me, how they instill hope is they’re like a gateway into exploring a much more diverse way of building relationships. They help us with that interspecies relationship development, which is something I think we all need a little more of. We get it from our cats and dogs, a lot of us, but there’s so much bigger conversations going on that we can be part of through herbal medicine. That’s a personal thing for each individual at whatever level they want to join that conversation, but that’s what gives me hope: more people are having that conversation because of plant medicine.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s so beautiful. As you said, people might find their own herb that they connect on with, but I can just really see how reishi is the perfect example of that – that mycelium connection, that connection to the ecosystem, that conversation that happens there.

Yarrow Willard:

It’s like the more you dig, the deeper it gets. There are all kinds of stories about the consciousness of reishi. They’re trying to measure. There’s like an electromagnetic way of seeing this energy moving across the mycelium. It’s this one giant brain. This nervous system that’s like putting its attention over to this hypha. It was a new tree that falls. It’s neat. The more we’re learning about this from measurable ways, the more it’s giving us the reminders of there’s a magic to this too. There’s a consciousness in there somewhere moving around in a really beautiful way that we can now almost measure, which is cool. That is a lot there.

One more thing about hypha that I think is so awesome, just like our brains and our nervous system are 80/20, feedback from the gut to the brain and then back to the gut is 80% information going through the brain from the gut telling it what to do. The brain says, “Okay. I guess this is what we do.” Every little hypha on our mushroom has that same feedback to the mother nervous system. It’s just this constant communication dance that is so beautiful that we can now see through the chemistry moving around these mycelial nets. I just think it’s a great example of the larger intelligence that is out there.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

You said you could spend hours talking about reishi and I believe it. I 100% believe it. I’m also just so inspired about how much there is to learn, and I really am taking to heart one of your first messages that learning often comes from the connection. Thank you for sharing that.

Yarrow Willard:

May the forest be with you. As we say, “Live long and prospore, my friends.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you so much for being here, Yarrow.

Yarrow Willard:

Alright. Bye for now.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

As always, thanks for being here. Don’t forget to download your beautifully illustrated recipe card above the transcript of this show. You can also sign up for my weekly newsletter, which is the best way to stay in touch with me, below. You can also find more from Yarrow on YouTube at herbal_jedi. If you’d  like more herbal episodes come your way, then one of the best ways to support this podcast is by subscribing on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. 

I deeply believe that this world needs more herbalists and plant-centered folks, and I’m so glad that you’re here as part of this herbal community. Also, a big round of thanks to the people all over the world who make this podcast happen week to week:

Nicole Paull is the Project Manager who oversees the whole operation from guest outreach, to writing show notes, to actually uploading each episode and so many other things I don’t even know. She really holds this whole thing together. 

Francesca is our fabulous video and audio editor. She not only makes listening more pleasant. She also adds beauty to the YouTube videos with plant images and video overlays. Tatiana Rusakova is the botanical illustrator who creates gorgeous plant and recipe illustrations for us. I love them. I know that you do too. Kristy edits the recipe cards and then Jenny creates them, as well as the thumbnail images for YouTube. Alex is our tech support and Social Media Manager, and Karin and Emilie are our Student Services Coordinators and Community Support. For those of you who like to read along, Jennifer is who creates the transcripts for us each week. Xavier, my handsome French husband, is the cameraman and website IT guy. It takes an herbal village to make it all happen including you. 

One of my favorite things about this podcast is hearing from you. I read every comment that comes in, and I’m excited to hear your herbal thoughts on reishi. 

Okay. You’ve lasted to the very end of the show, which means you get a gold star and this herbal tidbit:

I’m really feeling so inspired about reishi right now. Is it just me? Are you excited to work with reishi more too? I’d love to hear about it. 

After our conversation, I headed over to PubMed to see if there’s been any interesting research on reishi lately and here’s what I found: 

There is a 2020 clinical trial showing that reishi supplementation could improve quality of life in people with lung cancer who are undergoing chemotherapy. There was a 2021 study which looked at several herbs were helping people with Gulf War syndrome. In this case, interestingly, reishi didn’t seem all that helpful, but another plant that we love, stinging nettle, did. The researchers called for additional research to be done. There were other studies looking at reishi’s ability to reduce oxidative stress, which had benefits for anti-aging and liver protection. 

This is truly a fascinating mushroom. I’m a bit jealous of all of you who may have it growing abundantly near you. If that is you, I hope this conversation with Yarrow has inspired you to get out and spend some time with reishi.

Citations for Benefits of Reishi Mushroom

Coming Soon!