Dreams, Breath and The Mushroom: A Sacred Trio

In many Indigenous cultures, when a person stops dreaming, the question is not “Are you tired?”—but “What has gone out of alignment in your soul?”

Dreams have always been sacred. They are not random. They are communication from the spirit world, the subconscious, the ancestors. They guide us, reveal what we haven’t fully faced, offer healing, and remind us of who we truly are beneath the noise.

To stop dreaming is to stop listening.
And that kind of forgetting doesn’t happen all at once.

It happens quietly—beneath the surface.
Through chronic stress, shallow sleep, scattered energy, overthinking, and… something as simple as breathing through the mouth at night.

That’s how it began for me, though I didn’t realize it then.

A few years ago, I began taping my mouth at night. Just a small piece of tape. A subtle act of trust—an invitation to return to nasal breathing while I slept. What followed surprised me. My nervous system began to soften. My sleep deepened. I stopped waking in the night bracing for something invisible. It was like my body had been waiting to exhale for years.

Not long after, I began microdosing Amanita Muscaria. She came quietly, not with visions or force, but with deep steadiness. Her medicine moved through me like something ancient—calming my nerves, grounding me, and gradually awakening something I had lost touch with: my dreams.

Dreams have always been part of my life, but this… this was different.

With my breath returning to rhythm and my nervous system soothed by Amanita, the dreamwork I had practiced for years began to open up in new ways. The dreams became more vivid. More layered. Full of symbols, emotion, and insight that I hadn’t accessed before. They didn’t just tell me things. They changed me.

This is why I call these three practices—mouth taping, microdosing Amanita, and dreamwork—a sacred trio. Because they don’t stand alone. They support and activate each other in a natural, spiraling rhythm.

Mouth taping isn’t just about the breath—it’s about shifting the body out of survival mode so the nervous system can rest. It activates the parasympathetic state—the gateway to deep, restorative NREM and dream-rich REM sleep.

Amanita doesn’t push—it invites. Working through the GABA system, she soothes anxiety, quiets the noise, and allows the body to sleep deeply again. But more than that, she reawakens the dreamer. Dreams often return within days or weeks of beginning microdosing—and not just any dreams, but the kind that speak in symbols and soul.

And dreamwork—when supported by real rest and deepened awareness—becomes so much more than journaling your night visions. It becomes a dialogue. A map. A mirror.

What’s often less spoken—but deeply important—is how this rhythm affects the long-term health of the mind. When we lose REM and NREM sleep, not only do we stop dreaming—we also stop clearing waste from the brain, consolidating memory, and supporting the neural regeneration that protects us over time. Chronic mouth breathing, fragmented sleep, and suppressed dream states are now being looked at by researchers as early contributors to cognitive decline, including Alzheimer’s.

But when we restore the rhythm—of breath, rest, and dreaming—we’re not just healing in the now. We’re protecting the future. We’re tending to the brain, the body, and the soul as one living system—designed to regenerate when given the chance.

Over time, this trio of practices became a living rhythm for me. Not a protocol, not a formula—something more cyclical, intuitive, and embodied. When the breath is aligned, sleep deepens. When sleep deepens, dreams return. When dreams return, guidance flows. And as I walk through the waking world, that guidance becomes action, insight, and expression. Which then returns to the breath… and the rhythm continues.

In our modern world, we underestimate the power of sleep. Of rest. Of stillness. We’re taught to override and override and override—until the body breaks down or the soul goes quiet.

But when we stop dreaming, something inside us knows. We may call it burnout. Or fog. Or apathy. But what it often is… is a call to return.

To the breath.
To the body.
To the dream.

This unlikely trio—mouth taping, Amanita, and dreamwork—restores the sacred architecture of sleep. NREM and REM cycles become intact again. The body remembers how to heal. The nervous system re-regulates. The soul begins to whisper again through symbols, intuition, and emotion.

And slowly, something inside says:
Yes. This is the rhythm I was made for.
This is the place where I rest, remember, and awaken.