I had my first psychedelic mushroom experience with my husband David and my (now) best friend in November of 2016. Or was it 2017? I don’t know.

 

We were out in the woods behind her house, climbing up the mountainside. Since it was early winter, there was a thin layer of ice and snow over everything — enough that, with my brain chemistry altered, it looked like intricate snow-lace doilies were laid over all the rocks.

 

My friend had a dagger in a sheath on her belt that day. At some point it became this kind of talking stick between us. We’d pass it back and forth, hold it up to the sky, and holler into the trees. There’s something about being out in the woods on mushrooms where your voice just wants to come out of you. Not words, just sound.

 

It was my first time in those woods. I didn’t know this land at all because we’d just moved here not even two years before. And by the time we started heading back down the mountain, it was dusk. The light was low and visibility wasn’t great.

 

Somewhere on the way down, I said I wanted to lead us back. I remember joking that I was going to follow my “womb compass,” which, at the time, was funny because I had no idea where I was going. I didn’t know this land, this terrain, or this path. Still, I felt very certain in my body about where to step next.

 

With the dagger in my right hand, I led us back through woods, over frozen ground, around trees and rocks, until I reached the edge of her yard. David and my friend were behind me a ways. To get back into her yard, I had to make one final push up a short, steep hill.

 

I could see the lights on in her house. I knew bone broth and herbal tea were waiting for us inside.

 

So, raising the dagger over my head, I dramatically charged up that hill, yelling and hollering what I’ve come to realize was my battle cry. When I got to the top, I dropped to my knees, completely out of breath.

 

Then, out of nowhere, my stepfather’s face flashed into my mind. I hadn’t been thinking about him at all that day. His wavy strawberry blonde hair, his stained teeth, and his wrinkled face were just… there.

 

Before I had time to make sense of it or even think about it, I dropped breathless onto my hands and knees and started stabbing the crust of snow and ice in front of me.

 

Over and over.

 

In my imagination, I was stabbing his face. Fast. Hard. No hesitation.

 

I didn’t stop to question it or pull myself out of it. My body just kept going. The movement was repetitive, forceful, exact. I did not feel chaotic or confused. It felt… good. It was like something in me had finally found the action it needed with this dagger and this snow.

 

Probably within 90 seconds, I have no idea, time is weird on ‘shrooms, my friend came up the little hill and placed her hand on my back.

 

Suddenly, I was aware again of where I was and what I was doing. Not in a dissociated way, but like I came back into our shared space. I knew she had seen me. I knew I wasn’t alone.

 

I told her what I had just imagined and asked her, afraid, “Am I a bad person for doing this?”

 

She didn’t hesitate. “No. You’re not a bad person,” she said with a calm smile. “Clearly, you needed to do that, and your body found a way.”

 

That was it. I was seen, witnessed, and validated. The fear that I was bad vanished. No one shamed me or warned me to keep it inside my imagination and not to actually stab my stepfather’s face. No one corrected me.

 

After that, it was over.

 

We went inside to drink bone broth and tea.

 

At the same time as this mushroom trip, I was in EMDR therapy, actively working on memories involving my stepfather. After that day, he never came up in therapy again.

 

He didn’t need to come up again. My Animal Body completed what she needed to complete — the actions of self-protection and righteous rage at a man who physically, verbally, spiritually, and sexually abused me and my younger brothers.

 

This was my first psychedelic experience ever. I had no idea what would happen or what to expect. I certainly didn’t go into the woods to process him. I didn’t set an intention to work on that relationship. I didn’t try to access anything.

 

But, my body found it anyway.

 

That’s the level I’m talking about when I say Animal Body.

 

I couldn’t have thought or talked my way into that expression of movement in a hundred years. Thank god I didn’t know about nervous system tools then, or I definitely would’ve tried to calm myself down with some sort of breathwork or tapping or something!

 

For the first time in my life, I accessed the part of me that moves, acts, and protects itself in real time when the conditions allow it to. My childhood conditions never allowed me to protect myself or express rage. That mushroom journey with those two safe people gave me the conditions my Animal Body needed to access my rage and complete the actions of self-protection.

 

Your Soul Body animates your Animal Body. Soul Body expresses through Animal Body, moves through it, responds through it, and acts through it. Sometimes what that looks like is not something you would plan or choose in a neat, contained way, but it is precise.

 

The movements my Animal Body made that day aren’t socially acceptable. Had someone with less Animal Body wisdom been my witness that day, she might’ve tried to calm me down or tell me it was all in the past and I can be the bigger person now.

 

Animal Body work isn’t about trying to recreate the experience I had or push your body into big, intense expression. That kind of movement needs the right conditions, including safety and someone there with you.

 

I can access those states and memories and movements by myself now — because in the 10 years since that journey, I have devoted my life to studying how trauma impacts bodies and how primal and wordless it is to finally access that energy and give it somewhere to go. And, I still hold off on accessing those states until I have a witness and co-regulator.

 

Even though I technically can “do it for myself” now, I don’t. Because I know that Animal Bodies are meant to process that in the presence of their herd or pack. A wild mammal would never leave its herd to do that alone; it would be dangerous and maybe even deadly.

 

Had I had the strength, the agency, and the choice, my Animal Body would’ve fought my stepfather in 1993. It didn’t get to. It protected me instead by appeasing, pleasing, overfunctioning, and parenting my own parents.

 

The actions my body would’ve taken on my behalf to protect me didn’t disappear. The impulse to fight, to defend, to stop what was happening had nowhere to go, so it was in my body instead. For decades.

 

Until I was on a mountainside, in a body that finally had enough space, enough capacity, and someone there with me who didn’t interrupt it or turn away from it.

 

That’s when it moved. I didn’t go looking for a cathartic experience. I didn’t try to conjure anger, rage, and movement. I had no idea when I took those mushrooms hours earlier that this would be what unfolded.

 

I want you to understand this: Your body doesn’t forget these things. Time doesn’t heal shit. Your Animal Body holds them until there is enough safety, enough room, and often another person present who can witness what happens without shutting it down.

 

Animal Body work is two-fold:

 

First, we normalize that a lot of what you’re living with is your body holding things that never had the chance to be expressed as self-protection. Not just emotions, but actual movements, words, and sounds. The reach, the push, the yell, the fight, the protest — all of it gets held when it can’t be completed in the moment.

 

Second, no one gets left alone when their body finally does find a way to express that self-protection. Even when what’s coming out now is something your body would have done back then, it happens in the presence of someone who can stay with you, witness it, and not shut it down.

 

Your Animal Body isn’t keeping linear time. When those movements and sounds finally come through, your body isn’t experiencing them as “old.” It’s completing them as if it’s happening now, because for your body, it is happening now.

 

It matters that it’s not done alone. That it’s not forced. That it has somewhere to go and someone there to stay with it who isn’t you.

 

There’s a good chance your body is still holding something that never got to complete.

 

If you want to be in a space where your body is actually met when it starts to move, where nothing gets shut down or left hanging, please join over 75 women and me in ANIMAL BODY.

 

ANIMAL BODY is a 10-day immersion to understand and come into contact with the creature your Soul animates.

 

Starting on May 8th, you’ll receive one audio transmission from me per day. Because over 50 women have said yes, everyone will receive a BONUS audio transmission from me — so 11 audio drops total, 20-45 minutes long.

 

You’ll also be invited to join our ANIMAL BODY Discord server for 10 days. This is a temporary space for our shared field, for witnessing, for shared language, and for learning.

 

We’ll have two live calls together on May 12 @ 10am CST and May 17 @ 3pm CST. Replays of the calls are included.

 

All this for the ridiculously low price of $17!

 

I will 100% be over-delivering here. 🙂 Get in now and let’s circle up and give our Animal Bodies the love, reverence, and space they’ve always needed.

 

Join Animal Body with the link below.

Big love,

LL