Lichen Health, The Hero's Journey Center and Mons Sana are three, independent organizations with a shared mission: To demonstrate that community-based, land-based, holistic functional medicine can deliver life-saving (and life-changing) care to veterans and first responders struggling with addiction, PTSD, TBI, moral injury, and developmental trauma.

Partnership

Like our namesake, each organization brings an independent piece of the puzzle, allowing us to pioneer next generation healing.

HEROES JOURNEY CENTER

Led by CEO Brian W. Sims, CPRS-V, CEI, VSR, CPPS, an army veteran who overcame homelessness, Substance User Disorder, Moral Injury, Post Traumatic Stress, and a 2015 suicide attempt thanks to peer-supported recovery, including Psychedelic Assisted Recovery.

HJC brings Clinical Expertise and Infrastructure, which:

1. Provides treatment facilities and programming that covers the entire continuum of care, while also complying with land use and zoning laws: Detox (ASAM 3.7/3.5) → IOP (ASAM 2.1-2.7) Residential → Reintegration
2. Bridges to government contracts via ASAM Level 4 criteria assessments with Joint Commission accreditation standards
3. Leverages the Project Rebirth peer support model—the first accredited national peer-support program for veterans and first responders

HJC also delivers Clinical Excellence, via:

1. Veteran-led leadership team with lived experience in trauma, PTSD, TBI, and recovery
2. Bridges to private-sector insurance coverage via a team of licensed clinicians experienced with veterans and first responders and entheogenic/plant medicine
3. Culturally competent care designed BY veterans FOR veterans

MONS SANA

Founded by Dr. Lance Cutsforth, Army veteran and double board-certified Doctor of Functional Medicine.

Mons Sana offers Eco-Spiritual Expertise and Infrastructure, via:

1. A land-based healing center, which offers fire circles, water therapies, nature immersion and other earth-based modalities
2. Community-based retreat programming, including psychedelic healing circles facilitated by experienced practitioners
3. Bridges to private sector insurance coverage (Lance to provide details)

3. Community Stewardship

• Ongoing community membership—participants become part of the healing community after completing the program

LICHEN HEALTH

501(c)(3) Nonprofit | Expanded Care Model + Technology Platform + Business Infrastructure

1. Consciousness-based framework that expands and deepens the participant experience
   • Web of Wellbeing: Adds biological, psychological, social, spiritual, and ecological health factors to the assessment process
   • Practitioner Network: Infuses additional modalities into the continuum of care
   • Kaleidoscope of Care: Further personalizes treatment plans, sequencing interventions for optimal healing
2. Technology Platform:
   • Empowers seamless care team collaboration
   • Enhances the depth and breadth of outcome measurement
   • Supports community health via a safe and comprehensive, online platform to collaborate and connect
3. Business Infrastructure:
   • Pass-Thru Funding: Expanding access to care by funneling donations to cover care that lacks public or private sector coverage
   • Lichen Land Trust: Expanding access to land-based healing infrastructure, while protecting community ownership

The Solution

An Integrated Healing Model: Four Pillars

• Land-Based Regulation: Nature immersion, fire circles, water therapies, land stewardship. Provided primarily through Mons Sana's retreat facility, with ongoing connection to land as a therapeutic partner
• Community-Based Healing: Pod cohorts of 8-12 individuals, shared meals, daily rituals, peer frameworks. Those who complete the program at Mons Sana become part of the ongoing healing community—because community-based healing for PTSD requires sustained connection, not episodic treatment
• Self-Regulation & Awareness: Somatic modalities, clinical treatment, integrative trauma care. Heroes Journey Center provides ASAM-compliant detox, IOP, and residential treatment with culturally competent, veteran-specific protocols
• Meaning & Purpose Reconstruction: Identity rebuild, leadership tracks, alumni transition pathways. The Heroes Journey model emphasizes that warriors don't just recover—they become beacons of strength and wellness who often return as donors and peer supporters

A Robust Measurement Protocol:

Assemble three groups of veterans and first responders with representative health profiles.

• Control Group: Receives the incumbent standard of care
• Group 1: Lichen + Heroes Journey Center
• Group 2: Lichen + Heroes Journey Center + Mons Sana

We'll compare health outcomes and care costs across the three groups over time, serving as a proof of concept that:

• Mental, physical, spiritual, social and ecological health are interdependent
• Holistic, functional medicine is more effective than the incumbent standard of care
• Holistic, functional medicine is cheaper than the incumbent standard of care

What the Lichen Web of Wellbeing assessment tracks:

Biological

• Physiological wellbeing (e.g. BMI and blood pressure)
• Diagnostic (e.g. imaging and laboratory metrics)
• Nervous system regulation

Psychological

• Reduction in PTSD, depression, anxiety
• Sleep improvement
• Sobriety + relapse rates

Social

• Community reintegration
• Family repair
• Peer relationships

Spiritual/Purpose

• Identity clarity
• Employment/purpose alignment

Economic

• Economic security and prosperity
• Cost comparison to incumbent healthcare system

The Ask

Why Lichen + The Heroes Journey + Mons Sana

• Bullet

Philosophy:

Because the biological matter that makes up the human organism is just condensed light; if we maintain resonance with the greater truths that govern our divinity and humanity, our vibration will remain high, our mind will be happy, our body will be healthy and our soul will feel fulfilled.

When our light becomes discordant with the vibrational truths of our divinity and humanity, we suffer.

While blunt-force traumas (e.g. a car crash), environmental threats (e.g. a virus) and genetic diseases (e.g. cystic fibrosis) exist, the vast majority of our suffering is inflicted by cultural, religious, political and economic systems that are discordant with our true nature, the natural world and the universe we inhabit. Because the deepest survival imperative of a social primate is to be accepted by its family and community, the human ego is designed to internalize these belief systems, trapping our mental, emotional, physical and energetic bodies in lower vibrational states, eventually forcing the soul to vacated the body. Not only does this leave us less resilient in the face of accidents, pathogens and genetic abnormalities; if left untreated, we suffer the epidemic of chronic disease and premature death that we now face.

Assessment:

Because the human ego is designed to not only accept but normalize the systemic trauma of the systems we inhabit, we start by outlining what each human needs to maintain a healthy baseline:

We then identify the traumas and toxins that are negatively impacting your vibration:

Treatment:

While consciousness transcends space/time and light can move much more quickly and non-invasively than matter, the rate limits of the human body are real. In order to help you heal safely, sequentially and at a pace the body and mind can handle, your care team recommends the next, best intervention to address your symptoms in an order that optimizes your health outcomes. For example, if chemotherapy is impairing digestion for a cancer patient, nutrients may not be able to reach the body. Thus, Reiki may be needed to reset the gut before a nutritionist's cancer-busting diet plan can support the patient's recovery.

As you heal and your vibration rises, you naturally reconnect to your innate power to heal yourself, making external interventions with damaging side-effects less and less necessary, while at the beginning of your evolution, they may have been critical to your survival and wellbeing. When faced with blunt force traumas, environmental threats and genetic diseases, we tap in to western medicine's awesome capacity to act on the body on the soul's behalf through life-changing surgeries, gene therapies and other cutting edge technologies that are being developed as we speak.

Prevention:

Because the ego's job is to maintain the status quo; until a critical mass of those around you are re-awakening to their true nature, reinforcement is needed to assure that you remain in a ventral vagal state; and thus, in connection to your quantum capacity to maintain your wellbeing, despite what is going on around you. This means:

1. Seeing: Using cutting edge technology to show you the healing that results from harnessing energetic forces that you may not be able to see or feel; and,
2. Feeling: Reinforcing your reconnection to all that is, through continued access to the people, plants, animals, elements and land that forms the communities that keep is healthy over time
3. Doing: Committing to the lifestyle changes necessary to keep your vibration high

Lichen is a nonprofit that behaves like a startup. This allows our platform to be ignited by philanthropy, but sustained by ethical revenue streams over time. As a nonprofit, Lichen and its donors share the same goal: To expand access to holistic healthcare. Our donors simply realize that the best way to fuel innovation in the healthcare sector is to liberate Lichen from the conflicting interests of making money for investors while delivering care to clients. Said another way, success in the healthcare industry doesn't just mean stealing marketshare, it also means shrinking the market as much as you can.

The good news is, having philanthropic backing provides three, massive competitive advantages:

1. Because we are not beholden to deliver profits to investors, Lichen and its clients share the same goal: To be so good at helping people heal and stay healthy that they no longer need our services.
2. Because we are not beholden to deliver value back to shareholders, all of the equity that our platform generates can be reinvested into expanding access to care.
3. Because we are focused on improving, connecting and integrating existing healing infrastructure, we save the time and money necessary to build a proprietary platform, find product/market fit, drive brand awareness and compete for marketshare. By facilitating collaboration with the client at the center (instead of our brand), we remove significant friction for both clinicians and clients, leading to faster, better care for less money.

So, what's the plan?

Step 1:

Deliver a proof of concept in the form of a Pilot Program, which will take an estimated $5M of the $57B addressable philanthropic market at the intersection of individual, social and ecological healing. We have identified a land partner who is willing to host the pilot program, as well as multiple, reputable research partners across the academic, public and private sectors.

Step 2:

Translate the IP, best practices and business learnings from the pilot program into a holistic healing template that is publicly available, along with the technological infrastructure developed for the pilot. Identify communities who are interested in becoming part of the network. Share learnings, current offerings and interested communities with potential donors to further philanthropic investment.

Step 3:

As network revenue grows, we will subsidize less profitable business units (e.g. Training, Treatment and Research) with more profitable revenue streams across the business. Once an existing community network is self sustaining, we will invest profits in opening up additional locations, pairing a high SES community with a lower SES community, to equitably expand access to care

As for our path to self sustainability: There are many potential revenue streams, some are dependent on procuring a large user base, while others are not. Because users own their data, any data monetization efforts would be approved by network members. All research will be double-blind to protect user privacy.

So, let's say we're successful at building our network. How will we distribute resources across it?

Because health is balance and reciprocity restores balance across complex ecosystems, we consider the entire healing ecosystem when investing resources at the community level. As always, this means starting with ourselves, so we can best support the land, plants and animals who hold the healers, who hold those healing.

Employees

While Lichen will have a small employee footprint due to the nature of our platform, employee pay is based on individual need, not position or rank. Because our mental, physical, social and environmental health is dependent on our economic wellbeing, delivering need-based compensation is a healing act.

Land

We know that the land, animals and elements are conscious beings with their own needs and desires. That said, we live in a system that assigns ownership to land. If network members require resources to restore, protect or maintain the land on which they offer healing to the community, donations, and/or revenue is passed through to the land steward via the Lichen Land Trust. If private owners wish to remove their land from the trust, they must demonstrate that any investment made in their property has been repaid to the community via free or reduced fee services. If they wish to sell the land for profit, the value added via Lichen Land Trust must be paid out to the community to use in service of healing as the community sees fit. Where local investment in community infrastructure is made, a community-elected council will determine how to best spend money paid out via the trust.

Practitioners

Like employees, the financial situation of the practitioner is considered when they set fees. While the healing arts are often a calling, not a profession; the economic wellbeing of the practitioner is critical to their wellbeing, which is critical to the quality of the client's care. Alchemizing disease into wellbeing often requires significant investment of the practitioner's energy, which requires that they also receive the healing support they need to fully transmute it when their work is done. When a client is in need of a service from a practitioner but cannot pay the wage they've set to meet their needs, Lichen subsidizes the difference to assure that neither practitioner nor client needs to sacrifice their wellbeing due to lack of resources.

Clients

Like employees and practitioners, Lichen assesses the complete delta between what the client needs to heal and the resources they have at their disposal. For some this could mean paid time off work, as well as subsidized treatment. For others, no support will be required. Wherever possible, Lichen will help the client access available resources (like insurance coverage or public benefits) before dipping into philanthropic donations and profitable revenue streams to cover client care.

We have a ton more detail about our business vision and plan. We'd love to connect with you and share more.

The plants, animals, elements, healers and healing wisdom necessary to revolutionize healthcare exists. All that is needed is a technology platform and the business infrastructure necessary to integrate these healing resources into a community operated, community owned holistic healthcare network that people can access centrally, but experience locally. As such, Lichen's platform is organized to support individuals throughout each phase of the horizontal healing process:

Central

Central is an open platform that educates the public about holistic healing, connects clients to the treatment they need to heal, and clinicians to the training they require to grow. Members can:

• Navigate the platform based on the aspects of health that interest them
• Filter results by the type of information they're seeking
• Further refine results by the Practices, Symptoms, and/or Treatment
• Discover educational content, training, treatment and research that is recommended by the peers and professionals they trust

Local

Local provides Business Pages and Practitioner Profiles provide individuals and organizations with a no-cost website alternative/supplement that connect local organizations and practitioners to clients in their community.

Members can leverage Geo-Enabled search to identify local education, training, treatment and research options in their area, which can be further refined by peer, and/or professional recommendations to streamline the referral process. In addition:

• Insurance information, Web of Wellbeing Assessments and Kaleidoscope of Care Treatment Plans can be shared between clients and practitioners to streamline collaboration across the continuum of care
• A central fund for training and treatment scholarships is available for members who cannot afford the recommended care or training they need

Network

Each member's Kaleidoscope of Care is available to them as a digital care plan, which updates along with their progress. Practitioners will also have access to a Kaleidoscope of Training Plan, so they can continue to grow as healers with support from the wisdom of the network.

Each individual's Web of Wellbeing© tracks Qualitative, Physiological, Pathological, Energetic, Transpersonal, Social, Demographic and Environmental health factors, over time. In aggregate, Lichen's Database has the capacity to identify care optimizations at the individual level, while monitoring and addressing shifts in wellbeing at the population level. Clients can overlay their Lichen WOW with data that they import from the western medical system, to get a more complete picture of their health and optimize their healing.

Clients decide whether they want their individual data used to help automate care recommendations based on platform level insights and optimization. They also decide whether their data can be included in internal, and/or approved, 3rd party research. All research including external data is double blind and will be performed via a 3rd party to ensure the data privacy of all involved. All revenue from data monetization flows back to support network expansion.

Data Privacy

"I see a time of seven generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again.” - Crazy Horse

Our Version:

Humanity working together to restore individual, social and ecological balance

The Details:

It is now 2050 and a significant portion of the wild spaces of every nation have been protected and restored. In every community on earth there is a holistic, sustainable healing center that weaves ancient wisdom with cutting edge science and technology to help its members heal and grow into new levels of health, wellbeing and creative potential. Thanks to the eco-spiritual wisdom of indigenous healers, those of us who lost our capacity to access the wisdom of the universe through the human body have been safely guided through the process of reconnecting to our biological power. With a critical mass of humans re-naturalized, Blue Zones explode and longevity skyrockets.

Local and national governments, businesses and economic structures have shifted from a focus on competition, control and exploitation, to collaboration, stewardship and reciprocity. The World Bank performs a global karma audit, issuing reparations to the cultures, communities and ecosystems that suffered centuries of oppression and exploitation, due to the lesser angels of our primate nature. Unhindered by the limits of biological intelligence, AI helps us monitor for shortages and excesses within communities and ecosystems, effectively automating and scaling the capacity to maintain individual, social and ecological balance and diversity.

Since the Military Industrial Complex has become obsolete, humanity has repurposed powerful infrastructure around the world to make sure that our biological needs are met with far less effort. This frees up humanity to create, play and explore. NASA is tracking how the consequent increase in human vibration is changing the energetic field around earth. The capacity to manifest a better reality in on track to break previously assumed rate limits, thereby signaling to more evolved species that humanity is ready to reconnect with our galactic families as mother earth ascends.

Virtual reality and the Metaverse provide technology to help those who struggle to explore non-human consciousness through their biological bodies, because everyone deserves to have a direct relationship with Source.

After a decade working at Google, Meta and Pinterest, I left Silicon Valley to pursue a life-long dream to become a trauma therapist. I was on a mission to understand human suffering and how best to heal it, starting with myself. I enthusiastically signed up for therapy. I devoured all the latest literature across the fields of Psychology, Biology and Spirituality. I trained in every evidence-based modality that I could get my hands on.

As I began to practice, my experience corroborated what spiritual traditions have taught, biologists have measured and quantum physicists are beginning to discover: The human mind, body and spirit are an integrated system that cannot be separated from the community, environment, universe and universal consciousness from which it emerges and to which it will return. Said another way: We are all God/Source/The divine.

While I was deeply inspired by what I was learning and observing through my work with clients, I had come to a standstill on my own healing path. I couldn't connect deeply to my own humanity, much less my divinity. At the same time, my proficiency in Spanish and my passion for Community Mental Health led me to work with children and families from Central and South America that were somatically gifted, eco-spiritually connected and deeply brave. How could I guide them down a healing path I couldn't even access?

It was the Spring of 2018 and Michael Pollan had just released 'How to Change Your Mind.' I found myself wondering if plant medicine could help me get past my defenses. I dropped in to my first MDMA journey with no idea what to expect. Over the next four hours, I traveled through punctuation points of trauma on each side of my lineage. From watching my ancient, Celtic village burn, to awaiting my impending hanging at the Salem witch trials, to reliving the trauma of my birth.

As I walked back into my daily life, situations that would have garnered a great deal of anxiety were not eliciting the same reaction in my body. I was also markedly more present with but less reactive to the pain and suffering of my clients. Because the central nervous system is interwoven with the immune system, I was shocked but not surprised to find that my life-long asthma and allergies had vanished.

While I was still digesting the power of my own experiences, my thoughts immediately turned to the countless clients who's human trauma, and/or spiritual disconnection was too severe to treat with the mainstream interventions at my disposal. I spent the next seven years healing, training in and integrating consciousness expanding modalities into my practice, collaborating with naturopaths, energy workers, akashic records readers and western medical professionals to better support my client's holistic healing and evolution.

While I loved working with individuals, a nagging pull to help on a systemic level began to grow within me. Fast forward to Winter Solstice, 2022: I was preparing for bed when I sensed a powerful energy wanting to express through me. Curious, I invited it in. What followed was a high-pitched scream that lasted for several minutes. While I did not know how my body could produce a sound of that power for that long without requiring a single breath, I was certain that I had just channeled a message: The old paradigm was crumbling to make way for the new.

As I pondered my experience, I remembered a powerful moment in a mushroom ceremony three years prior. Guadalupe appeared on a massive thunderbolt of energy that pierced through the spirit realm, straight into my guide's office. Her message was concise and clear: My experience building and monetizing social networks would someday prove helpful to support human healing and awakening. While I had no idea what that meant at the time, it was all starting to make sense. I opened my laptop and began to type. As Crazy Horse's vision poured through my fingers, a bolt of lightning pierced my Crown Chakra and exploded through my right palm. My computer screen went blank. If this is what happens when you work directly with Spirit on a business plan, I had a sneaking suspicion that bringing Lichen to life was going to be an adventure.

Over the two years that followed, I channeled the blueprint for a global, functional medicine network that can be funded ethically and scaled sustainably, while simultaneously navigating a personal, kundalini awakening and spiritual emergence that could have been disastrous but proved transformational, thanks to the land, plants, animals, elements and functional medicine team that guided me through it. I emerged from the experience humbled, grateful and inspired to do what I could to ensure that everyone has access to the wisdom and care that I received.

As the cultural, political and economic systems that have perpetuated human suffering crumble, a time of great individual, social and ecological transformation has begun. Humanity has the opportunity to build new systems, including a healthcare system that honors the spiritual, biological and mathematical truth of the interconnection of all things. Where attention goes, energy flows. If your soul's purpose is to prepare humanity for what's next, we'd love for you to join us.

Sincerely,

Lichen

Having made the leap from social and digital media to therapy, people frequently ask me whether activities like texting or scrolling social media are bad for our mental health. We know a lot about what our nervous systems need from relationships and how various mediums of digital connection fair in meeting those needs. We also understand the physiological, emotional and cognitive impact of engaging in the digital world during instead of the physical world throughout the brain's development from 0-26 years of age. With the hope that a brief overview will empower you to make the best possible digital media consumption decisions for you, here’s a bit of the science behind what your social engagement system needs to stay healthy, as well as some tips to make sure you’re getting your daily, minimum dose.

ART BY STEVE CUTTS

To understand what we need, it is imperative to understand how we’re built. Until very recently (in evolutionary terms), our survival depended upon maintaining strong bonds with a small group of people, working together to stay safe, fed and healthy. Today, the humans we work with to pay the bills are rarely the humans who make us feel safe and understood. In fact, they may make us feel the opposite! While strong bonds play an increasingly small role in our daily survival, our nervous system is still operating under the assumption that close relationships are a biological imperative. Said another way, the release of the iSapien is thousands of years out. Until then, we’re stuck with Sapien.us.

If you read the user’s manual for the Sapien.us, you’ll discover that the nervous system relies on constant, positive signals from the touch, embrace, gaze, vocal tones, facial expressions and gestures of those around us. These signals tell our entire nervous system that we are safe within our troop. In turn, we remain calm and balanced. * When these signals are absent, our nervous system becomes chronically stressed, leading to hypertension, anxiety depression and other illnesses that result from chronic sympathetic activation. That’s why strong, social bonds are the most important predictor of longevity, beating out smoking, drinking and obesity, by a country-mile. *

Alarmingly, many of us report having few-to-no strong connections, or a severe lack of quality time with the few connections that we maintain. * While digital technologies can help us with the latter challenge, even the most cathartic face-time with a bestie robs us of the oxytocin releasing power of a hug, the regulating pulse of a heartbeat, or the parasympathetic activation of a relaxed jaw. Switch to a phone call, and all of the visual cues in the social engagement system are gone. Analyze a text message, and the social engagement system is completely absent! That’s why we like Emojis so much - if we can send each other faces, hands and feet, we aren’t completely disembodied!

Things get worse when we move from direct communication to passively consumption of an endless barrage of curated social media. To feel connected, we need to feel that all of us is not only seen but accepted by our tribe or community of origin.* That's because we are wired to live in small villages and nomadic tribes that relied on social cohesion and transparency to survive.

Conversely, in today’s world:

1. It requires bravery to make an authentic bid for acceptance, when everyone around you seems to be having a spill-free, blemish free, perfect hair day life on Instagram
2. Social media is a place to throw mud at the "other side," versus coming together to better understand each other and heal divides

Division has become so profound that opposing sides have chosen their own platforms and created echo-chambers, closing the door on mutual understanding and reconciliation altogether. So, we airbrush our appearance on zoom, generate a flattering profile picture with AI and post content that draws ire from our perceived adversaries and adulation from our perceived allies, allowing the underlying wound to fester while we experience some temporary but unsatisfying relief from the suffering we're creating.

When you look at social media's impact on the developing brain, the negative repercussions becomes more sinister. Humans have the awesome capacity to learn the rules of our environment and use our incredible dexterity to build things that make our environment more habitable. As such, our brains are not pre-programmed with instincts alone. Instead, we are sophisticated at tracking what gets positive and negative reinforcement (or no reinforcement at all) and build neural networks that run programs that prune away what isn't engaged (via a process called apoptosis) and deny or turn against what is rejected with guilt, shame and fear. For example, a child who does not receive cataract surgery by the age of one will never see, not because the eye hasn't been properly corrected, but because the necessary circuitry in the visual cortex was pruned away from lack of stimulation during development. You use it or you really do lose it when it comes to receiving proper stimulation as the brain as it develops pre-birth to age 26-30.*

Because the social engagement system (which tracks the visual, auditory and body proximity and communication of others) are not engaged in social media; not only is the brain less engaged in digital social interactions; as it develops, it is under-utilized and therefore under-developed, leading the order of magnitude increases of diseases associated with social sensory disorders and attention deficit disorders. In addition, while people think of dopamine as a happy chemical, it doesn't just make us feel good when we're developing; we associate the behavior with a developmental survival need. As such, if the need for positive social reinforcement is tied to followers on Instagram as the adolescent brain is developing; we falsely feel as though we NEED to be on Instagram or we become agitated and experience withdrawal.

If you’re still reading this post, I’ve either completely bummed you out; or, you’re searching for a technology-free commune to join ASAP. In reality, the majority of us cannot lead a lifestyle that makes our rather antiquated nervous system content, nor can we download an “I-don’t-need-relationships-patch.” That said, we can invest in coping strategies that will help our fancy primate plumbing run as smoothly as possible in a world full of blockages and barriers.

Here are three tips for maintaining a healthy, social engagement system:

1. If you don’t spend the majority of your day with people who provide social cues that you’re seen, safe and cared for; assume that you’re in a state of chronic sympathetic arousal. * While consistent access to at least 3 strong relationships is ideal, there are a bunch of non-social tools that help to restore sympathetic/parasympathetic balance, like yoga, singing (chanting at a low frequency is especially regulating), Chigong and Meditation (make sure there is significant breath work involved)
2. When the humans around you aren’t doing the trick, other species can step in to provide unconditional, positive regard. In fact, humans have co-evolved with certain domesticated animals (like dogs) to the degree that we activate each other’s oxytocin release systems consistently; * leading to a 10-year increase in longevity for the human involved.* So yes, I’m telling you to get a dog; or, at least to start volunteering at the SPCA once a week
3. Treat your relationships as imperative to your health, because they are! Save not sleeping, drinking water or eating, isolation will kill you faster than almost anything else. Knowing that we are increasingly anxious about getting close (and being vulnerable); it may take some courage to be the instigator of authentic community building. Wouldn’t it feel really good to be on the receiving end of this compliment: “There’s a lot of evidence that close relationships are imperative to your health. You are really important to me and your friendship is such a joy in my life. I know we’re both busy and it isn’t always easy, but spending time with you is a priority for me.” Being that vulnerable is scary, but essential if we hope to thrive.

Finally, follow the money. Understand that your outrage is lucrative, driving clicks, purchases and a sense of fear and outrage based affiliation with members of your "team." Whenever possible, opt offline and engage with positive curiosity when you come across someone who thinks differently from you. Remember that the powers that be profit from our continued division; and, what you've been told about the "other team" is far worse than the reality that you'll find when you have the courage to connect with someone you've been actively coerced to denagrate or hate.

Physicists and Biologists are beginning to rediscover what eco-spiritual healers have never forgotten:

1. There is a conscious creator behind the space/time universe we inhabit
2. The universe is conscious, and so is our planet
3. Humans have the capacity to access higher levels of consciousness to heal and grow

Said another way, science is finally proving what indigenous peoples have embodied for millennia: The human organism only perceives its material separation from the natural world and the cosmos. That means, maintaining our health and realizing our potential requires remembering our personal, social and planetary interconnection.

These discoveries couldn't have come at a better time. For generations, we have been trapped in cultural, religious, political and economic systems that have abused, neglected and denied our divine interconnection with each other, the planet and the cosmos, leading us to:

1. Abuse and neglect ourselves in the ways we were abused and neglected
2. Dehumanize, compete with, oppress or attack those we perceive as different
3. Poison ourselves by contaminating our water, soil, food and air

In response, our mental, emotional, physical and energetic bodies have shifted into lower vibrational states, forcing many of our souls to vacated our bodies. The resulting epidemic of mental and emotional suffering, physical disease and premature death has begun to bring down global life expectancy.

Unfortunately, the mainstream medical system is not equipped to address the problem because they have neither the infrastructure nor the wisdom to treat humans holistically. Drug companies are incentivized to manage instead of cure disease, because throwing medications at chronic suffering is more profitable than healing people. Insurance companies are pressured to maintain the status quo short-term, because restricting coverage and denying claims increases profits and minimizes losses.

Fortunately, the systems that have perpetuated our suffering are being dismantled and re-imagined, giving us the opportunity to build a healthcare model that shifts from helping people cope with, to helping people heal from the disempowerment of our perceived separation from others, the planet and the divine. And, the people are ready for change.

Only 27% of Americans feel that our Healthcare system meets their needs*. In response, people are increasingly integrating ancient wisdom and earth-based healing practices into their continuum of care; a trend that will accelerate as mainstream availability of psychedelic therapies reconnect us to our innate healing wisdom and our interdependence with each other and the natural world. 

The exciting news is: Our government is taking action. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department has already announced plans to:

1. Reduce the amount of toxins allowed in our food, water and soil, which will not only heal disease, but re-awaken our innate ability to access the wisdom of higher levels of Source consciousness
2. Legalize psychedelic medicines, reconnecting us to the elemental, plant and animal allies that have helped us reclaim our quantum capacity to heal and grow for thousands of years
3. Fund organic and sustainable farm-based, holistic healing centers that provide the mind, body and spirit with the environment people need to heal in the arms of community and mother nature

Finally, our scientific tools are now precise enough to measure how returning to clean living and reconnecting to each other, the land and the divine impacts our overall health. This allows those who cannot feel their divine interconnection with everything around them to see it; and thus, to believe it because it has been demonstrated by the science and technology they trust. As such, with a disciplined, focused and iterative strategy, the opportunity to disrupt the 3-trillion dollar US healthcare market has never been better.

Human suffering results when we are disconnected from ourselves, each other, the planet and the spiritual realm. Our maladaptive response to this suffering is the cause of individual, social and environmental disease. As such, a scaled effort to foment human healing and growth is the solution.* To become worthy stewards of our cognitive power, we must balance the urgency to rediscover that we are all one,* with the knowledge that healing the trauma of disconnection moves fastest when we have the courage to go slow.* Only when we can accept and hold compassion for the damage we've done while suffering and asleep, can we collaborate and innovate to protect what remains; repair what can be restored; and, accept, grieve, and honor what's been lost to evolution.

A Practical Approach to Systemic Change

Based on the evolutionary recency of our outsized cognitive capacities and the architecture of our nervous systems, we must wake up and heal at the same time. We can only do this when we feel safe, and we can only feel safe if we have the unconditional support of fellow humans and the flora, fauna and elements of the natural world that soothe and sustain us. As such, expanding human consciousness and reducing human suffering, in community and in reciprocity with the land is not an idealistic vision or an uninformed pipe dream. Instead, Lichen's mission outlines a comprehensive, practical and realistic approach to managing this period of great tumult and transformation with as little suffering and destruction as possible.

Expand Consciousness

While there are technological innovations that can improve the wellbeing of all, the majority of our healing and growth comes from remembering our interdependence with everything then working to restore balance within ourselves, between each other and with the planet. Because neocortical mutations in our brains merely ~75,000 years ago gave us access to collective wisdom without the evolutionary runway for our instincts and senses to catch up; as spiritual traditions have done for thousands of years, we must put our powerful ego in check by returning to a regular practice of deconstructing the separate self.

Reduce Suffering

Because every layer of our biology is programmed to hate or banish the parts of ourselves that are abused and neglected in our families and systems of origin, we must simultaneously become aware of, accept, have compassion for and love ourselves in corrective, human relationship. Healthy attachment is required to feel safe on a daily basis and to override the inherent bias against the "other" baked into our endocrine system.* Since this state is a prerequisite to implementing social, economic and spiritual systems that honor the sanctity of all beings, our humanity needs constant, secure attached to other humans, while our soul needs to honor that the self as separate from the collective divine is a biological facade. *

In Community

While our cognitive capacities allow us to circumvent authentic attachment to collaborate, our bodies are still wired for five to eight close human connections, up to one hundred social connections;* and, a consistent relationship with the land, plants and animals around us. These connections are maintained and reinforced through reciprocal acts of service and love, which release happy chemicals in the brain and turn on critical genes in the body, which keeps us healthy over time.* Because close human bonds are our deepest survival imperative; without them, we become overwhelmed, burned out, numbed out and sick.** Because we cannot "hack" these biological imperatives; to act as a one, global tribe, our health must be maintained in our local "troop," in reciprocal relationship with the land. Said another way, the corrective social network must be analog and local.

In Reciprocity with the land

In deep meditation and restorative sleep, our brains sync with Earth's electromagnetic frequency (~7.83 Hz), triggering cellular repair, reducing cortisol, increasing gray matter and myriad other health benefits associated with tapping into the unified field of energy that governs the body that stewards our soul. From the antidepressant properties of soil,* to the positive impact that horses have on the nervous system,* to the years that are added to one's life with the love of a dog;* to the anxiety, depression and addiction treatment capacities and neurogenesis fomented by psychoactive plant medicines;* holistic, earth-based healthcare is the minimum viable treatment model to prepare individuals and communities to become prosocial and environmental advocates for global systems change. Luckily, the measurement tools of these same systems have become powerful enough to measure the holistic energetic forces behind the healing and growth that happens at the holistic crossroads of physics and biology.