How Presence Transforms the Psychedelic Path
By Liddya Plenis — Magic Mushrooms Integration Coach & Contributing Writer at Magic Mush
A Mind Like Icy Tower
For years, my mind felt like a game of Icy Tower — thoughts bouncing endlessly, ricocheting off one another, climbing higher and faster with no exit. Even in silence, I wasn’t still. Meditation felt like torture. Rest felt like failure. Every time I tried to stop, the buzzing inside grew louder, as if the swarm in my head had been waiting for me to notice it.
I remember stumbling across Mooji’s guided meditations, his voice reminding me that the screen doesn’t burn when it shows a fire. Around the same time, I picked up When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön, and something cracked open. I realised that distraction wasn’t proof of failure. It was the practice itself. Presence wasn’t about emptying my mind — it was about learning to notice what was already here, without collapsing into it.
Later, mushrooms whispered the same lesson back to me, not in words but in sensation: You don’t need to escape your mind. You need to come home to it.
What Presence Really Means
Presence is one of those words people romanticise until it loses its shape. We imagine monks in caves, transcendent stillness, blissed-out silence. But in reality, presence is ordinary. It’s the moment you unclench your jaw without even realising you were holding it. It’s the sudden awareness of your breath moving in and out. It’s the way your body softens the instant you notice it.
Our nervous system reacts to thoughts as if they’re real fires. A single memory of failure and suddenly our shoulders tense, our stomach flips, our breath shallows. We live as though every passing thought is a life-or-death alarm. But presence gives us a way back: the reminder that the screen doesn’t burn.
Try it now. Close your eyes. Feel your shoulders. Notice the space inside your chest. Pay attention to the ground beneath your feet. That’s presence. Not a mystical state, just a gentle shift of attention — away from the story, back into the moment.
The Neuroscience of Mushrooms and Presence
Science has begun to map what mystics have always known: our default way of thinking is not always our friend.
The Default Mode Network (DMN) is the brain’s selfing system — the hub behind planning, self-criticism, and those endless mental loops. It’s necessary, but when it overactivates, it traps us in cycles of anxiety, rumination, and overthinking.
Psilocybin temporarily quiets the DMN. It softens the grip of the inner narrator and allows other brain networks to connect more freely. Functional MRI scans show heightened cross-network connectivity, which translates into lived experience as colours sharper, emotions slower, sensations clearer. You don’t become someone else — you just finally notice what’s been here all along.
This is the paradox: mushrooms don’t create presence. They amplify what you bring.
If you bring chaos, they mirror it. If you bring intention, they magnify it.
That’s why intention and setting matter so much. Mushrooms open the door, but what you see when you step through depends on how you arrive.
Using Mushrooms to Deepen Presence
Microdosing or low-dose work can become a living practice of presence if you choose it. Five things I’ve learned along the way — and now teach my clients:
1. Know Your Why
Don’t take a dose just to see what happens. Set one clear, simple intention: to soften inner noise, to notice my body, to come home to myself.
2. Less Is More
Especially with microdosing, the point isn’t to feel the mushrooms. The point is to feel yourself more clearly. Subtlety is the medicine.
3. Pair It With Ritual
Presence doesn’t grow from nowhere. Anchor your dose with a practice: five minutes of breathwork, a silent walk in nature, journalling. The ritual becomes the container.
4. Watch Your Patterns
Ask yourself: am I using mushrooms to check in, or to check out? If you only reach for them in stress, pause. Presence requires honesty.
5. Integration Is Where It Lands
The most important part isn’t the session — it’s what you do after. The conversations you soften into. The boundary you set. The way you treat yourself when no one is watching. That’s where presence becomes real.
Returning to Now
Mushrooms don’t save you. They show you.
Presence is the part you choose, over and over. The practice of noticing, releasing, noticing again. Sometimes it’s graceful, often it’s messy. But each return is a homecoming.
Even now, as I write this, I pause. My jaw has tightened. My shoulders have crept upward. I breathe, let them drop. This is integration in real time. Not something I’ll do later — something I do now.
So, let me leave you with this invitation:
Pause for just one breath. Notice what’s here. Not tomorrow, not yesterday. Now.
Because the greatest gift of mushrooms isn’t escape.
It’s the way they remind us that we already belong to this moment.
Liddya Plenis is a Magic Mushrooms Integration Coach and a contributing writer at Magic Mush. She supports people in weaving psychedelic insights back into daily life with compassion, grounding, and curiosity.
