Bob's Red Pill #1 - Tonic Herb Podcast Companion Piece

by Crypto Psi

We’ve finally discussed tonic herbalism on the podcast. A true watershed moment for Rare Candy! We brought Rehmannia Dean Thomas on and covered a wide range of topics, including the possibility that mushrooms are from outer space. Give it a go.

F*** it, let’s make this Bob’s Red Pill essay numero uno. Fitting, as this is perhaps the most important health discovery of my life — I promise I’m not being hyperbolic. Many of you are used to the plant-based ramblings emitting from my DHA-deficient brain. I commend you for your patience with me, but I guarantee tonic herbalism is a much more fun and potent subject.

Rehmannia Dean Thomas (RDT) is a tonic herbalist of the Taoist Chinese tradition. He studied under Ron Teeguarden of Dragon Herbs, the man who brought tonic herbalism to North American consciousness. Ron learned from an obscure Korean Taoist master, who eventually returned to Asia to live in trademark Taoist reclusion.

RDT was Ron’s personal assistant for years before founding Shaman Shack Herbs. I became familiar with him through his reishi extract, and his book Healing Thresholds. RDT has had a profoundly positive impact on my health and well-being.

Tonic herbalism is built on the foundation of creating health, as opposed to curing disease. While a tonic herbal program can and will reverse many conditions of ill-health (including serious disease), this distinction makes all the difference. The proactive nature of Taoist herbalism allows for an abundance mindset to flourish, where one can utilize their full “gas tank” to realize their full human potential. For the Taoist, this is a spiritual esoteric venture, but a Taoist is also quick to point out that any path in life can benefit from robust health that the tonic herbs foster.

What makes a classic tonic herb? It must 1) be safe to take on a daily basis and 2) produce profound health benefits that accrue over time. Rather than blindly experiment with a cupboard full of “flavor of the month” supplements, why not just take the top safest and most powerful longevity herbs ever discovered by humanity? In the 21st century, we have the privilege of taking herbal formulas reserved for emperors, top martial artists, and the most dedicated spiritual seekers in human history. Nothing against taking a random NOW-brand isolated mineral supplement (I do this as well), but let’s get our priorities straight!

The Three Treasures

Taoist herbalists refer to an herb’s ability to tonify one or more of the “three treasures” — Jing, Chi, and Shen. We’ve all heard of Chi in our everyday language. Chi is simply the kinetic energy of the human body. Of course, Chi can refer to energy outside of a human context as well: the chi of a river flow, universal chi, et cetera. Chi is just daily activity — working out, driving, speaking, eating. We gain chi from food and breath.

Jing is a very interesting concept. It is our gold vault, our battery pack, our deep Chi, the basis of our entire physical expression. Jing runs through our ancestral lines — strong ancestral Jing means healthy progeny. Pregnancy and childbirth are a huge Jing drain on the mother, and semen release is a huge Jing drain on males. This is seen throughout the animal kingdom.

Shen is our spiritual light, the result of our Jing and Chi manifest. Shen feels calm, peaceful, spiritual. It invokes a connection to all-that-is, the universal life force. In practical terms, it enables you to gracefully handle life’s challenges. Individuals that start taking Shen tonics often report feeling calmer and more balanced than any previous point in their lives. I find Shen herbs useful during periods of great upheaval: death of a loved one, new job, new chapter in life, any kind of trauma. People from unstable or abusive backgrounds often form a strong bond with Shen herbs.

An elegant analogy for the Three Treasures is a candle, representing your individual life — Jing represents the wax of the candle, Chi represents the flame, and Shen is simply the light generated by the entire process. Too thin of wax, or low quality wax to begin with, and your candle burn too fast, without consistency. Too vigorous a flame, and the candle will burn too quickly, yet too low a flame, and the candle doesn’t serve a function. Or perhaps you’re burning the candle at both ends. What you want to cultivate is a candle that brightly illuminates your life for a long time, without “burning out”.

Jing

Jing is my personal favorite health principle. Many others who find tonic herbs feel the same. That’s because tonifying Jing is an indescribable yet 100% tangible feeling. If you’re worried these concepts sound a little too esoteric and airy, I urge you to experiment with them. I guarantee you’ll feel Jing more than you’ll feel some random supplement.

Imagine going through your life on a quarter of a gas tank, constantly putting in 10 or 15 bucks to keep from going empty. Then one day, you wake up wealthy, and fill up your entire tank. This is exactly what it’s like when you discover Jing-tonifying herbs. It’s a feeling of restoration that is near-transcendent.

Men seem to have a special affinity and love for Jing herbs. I believe this is due to us losing a huge percentage of our life force through sexual fluid loss. Replenishing this lost Jing leads to regaining one’s vitality. This is a phenomenon that Taoists have stressed for thousands of years. They carefully tailored herbal formulas to replenish male Jing loss — and created techniques for avoiding such loss in the first place. Emperors kept Taoist herbal masters to provide these formulas at literally any cost.

Most of us suffer from Jing depletion. This is often called “adrenal burnout” in modern naturopathy-speak. Consider this: in the Taoist system, Jing energy is stored in the kidneys. The kidneys are thought of as the “battery pack” of the human system in Chinese medicine. The adrenals rest directly on top of the kidneys, and can easily be considered the part of the kidney system. How does Chinese medicine and Taoist herbalism so consistently and accurately predict modern scientific observations, but without the modern tools of observation? I’m often left astonished by the wisdom of this healing system, thousands of years in the making. Ignoring it would be a mistake.

How do I start?

If your interest is sufficiently piqued, you may be wondering how to begin a tonic herbal regimen. I’ll give you some hints that I’ve learned along my journey.

Start with the top tonic herbs of all time

No need to reinvent the wheel. Stick with the time-honored tonics. At the top of my list would be reishi mushroom, schizandra, he shou wu extract, rehmannia, American ginseng, goji, gynostemma, cordyceps, cistanche, and astragalus. Later on, you can experiment with more sophisticated formulations featuring more supportive herbs.

Quick note: some herbs like rehmannia and he shou wu have a very specific preparation process that is traditionally used to make them tonic herbs (safe and beneficial for daily use). Search for a “prepared extract” of these herbs.

At the very tippy-top of my list, my “desert island” herbs, would be a good reishi mushroom extract, a good he shou wu extract, and a good schizandra extract. These would be my top three herbs hands-down. Reishi is the most powerful Shen tonic. He shou wu is an incredibly potent yin Jing tonic, and I believe the “yin” (restorative) tonics are more important in today’s world. And schizandra is an all-around super herb, also very underrated and overlooked by modern herbalists.

You may have noticed I stressed obtaining a good extract, which brings me to my second tip:

Quality over quantity, extracts over everything else

Tonic herbs reward you for going for the highest quality you can find. There is a vast spectrum of herbal quality on the market. Top quality herbs are life changing, low quality herbs are worthless, or even harmful (if contaminated with heavy metals et cetera). Buy herbs from herbalists that are passionate about their products and actually consume them daily. You’ll find that even as tonics grow in popularity, there’s a pretty small circle of brands and producers you’ll settle on and vibe with. Use you intuition.

Next is just use an extract. We discuss this at length in our podcast with RDT. Industry standard (thanks to RDT) is now a 10:1 extract of any given herb: in other words, 10 pounds of reishi is used to produce 1 pound of concentrated extract. This extract is almost always a hot water extraction, spray-dried, to form a powder. This is essentially an instant “tea”, just add hot water. Or encapsulate and take on the go. I usually go with three large capsules stuffed full, twice a day.

The benefits of using an extract? It’s easier to use every day, so you’ll stay consistent. It’s easier to achieve a “wow” dose where you actually feel the Shen of reishi, you feel the restorative Jing of he shou wu, on just a teaspoon or less. And it’s easier to assure quality from a producer, where they have to reveal 3rd party independent testing of their final product.

There is a benefit to doing it “the old way”, or extracting your own herbs in a big pot on the stove full of filtered water. This connects you to your herbs, and allows for customizing a formulation. I find I do this only when time allows, and even then, the results aren’t as impressive as a simple extract. Still, I highly recommend getting some whole herbs and experimenting with your own decoctions. As your herbal expertise grows, you’ll crave doing traditional formulas with 10+ herbs all working in synergy.

Simple habit changes

Like your morning coffee? Play around with adding mushrooms to coffee, a burgeoning industry in its own right. We poke a little fun at “reishi cappuccinos” in this episode, but please use whatever technique palatable to get the herbs into your body consistently. Consistency is key with tonic herbalism.

I love to add a reishi extract to a pu’er tea, froth it with one of those little frother things (alpha), and add some creamer like young Laird’s Functional Mushrooms (why not).

If you’re trying to get off caffeine, may I suggest a little experiment: go cold turkey and replace all coffee with the dankest reishi you can find. Keep track of how you’re feeling, maybe keep a little journal. You may be surprised and transformed.

Learn from the best

RDT and his mentor Ron Teeguarden (of Dragon Herbs) are the most passionate tonic herbalists that I am aware of in this country. I’ve read RDT’s book Healing Thresholds and highly recommend it. However, the fastest way to learn is just scrolling their websites and looking at their posts, their formula ingredients, their ethos, to get a general feel for what this is all about.

What I love about this branch of naturopathy is it is so purely driven by the passion of its purveyors. It’s an infectious kind of excitement that you understand when you have a real reishi experience, or a real he shou wu experience — and then you remember that some old Chinese guy 12,000 years ago had the exact same revelations, and you feel connected to something much bigger. This is way cooler than “going keto”, or “vegan”, or more importantly, arguing about which of these diets is better (something I’m admittedly guilty of).

A lot of tonic herbalists have been inspired by these two men. We’re honored to have RDT on the show, and we’ll surely have him back. Maybe we can get Ron on someday as well, wink wink! Let us know if you give these herbs a shot, and if they live up to the hype we’ve attempted to generate. I know for at least some of you, they absolutely will.

To health!

-Psi

PS: This sounds dumb to even say, but for the record there are no affiliate links in this piece, and we receive no commission for any sales of these products — this is simply a passion of mine. But bitch we might someday God willing, I have zero qualms about making money promoting radiant health. Cheers.