Disaster MycoPsychology – Weaving a Web of Resilience
Join us in collaborating with Fungi to symbolically and practically find the potential for healing and transformation in the face of disaster.
Dear Fellow Myconauts,
We are delighted to share with you all that Maya Elson, one of the founders of the inspiring Radical Mycology movement, will join us next week for Earth Week, Wednesday, 4/23, 7 pm at Arlington Gardens. Maya will lead us through one of their “mycopyschology” experiences – a term they developed to facilitate more profound connection with fungi for personal and collective transformation. Maya calls it “embodied remediation,” inspired by the extensive experience Maya has with post-fire mycoremediation in California.
I am excited for you all to experience this generous offering from Maya!
📣📣📣 I am excited to announce I will be moderating a panel on Conservation & Stewardship at the Santa Cruz Mountain Mushroom Festival next month, May 3rd-4th, 2025. The lineup looks fun.✨
Maya Elson on Disaster MycoPsychology – Weaving a Web of Resilience
Wednesday, April 23rd, 7pm @ Arlington Garden, Pasadena, CA – Free by donation
In the aftermath of devastating events—such as wildfires that tear through communities—we often face a cascade of less visible disasters: housing instability, toxic exposure, illness, and deep psychological trauma. Yet within these challenges lies the potential for healing and transformation. This workshop invites us to explore how Fungi can guide us in holding each other’s needs and reconnecting with our ecosystems. Through building relationships with these remarkable organisms, we can support inner healing, decolonization, rewilding, and a deeper sense of belonging—both within human communities and the natural world. Together, we’ll engage in somatic practices to form “mycelial connections,” drawing inspiration from the ecological roles of Fungi as we reflect on our own. We will collaborate with Fungi to symbolically and practically decompose the trauma of wildfire and cultivate both personal and collective resilience in the face of disaster.
About our speaker, Maya Elson:
Maya Elson (they/she) is a co-founder of Radical Mycology, and has started Applied Mycology groups in Olympia, WA and the San Francisco Bay area. Maya was the Executive Director of CoRenewal from 2016-2021, where they supported research in Regenerative Mycology. They are the co-founder and Program Coordinator of the Post Fire Biofiltration Initiative, an effort and experiment using fungi to prevent toxins from burned homes from entering waterways in Central California after the 2020 wildfires. Maya has also played a central role in four studies that seek to develop methodologies for applying inocula post-fire for erosion control, toxin mitigation, forest fuels reduction, and ecological regeneration. Maya is a Maui Bioremediation Group consultant supporting the Southern California Post-Fire Bioremediation Coalition. At UC Santa Cruz, Maya is a guest instructor and researcher developing educational programs that expand our scientific understanding of the role of fungi for increasing wildfire resilience. At San Jose State University, Maya is a graduate student developing a nature-based method of wildfire hazard reduction with microbial inoculation called Biome Logs. Maya developed the term “Mycopsychology” as a modality for facilitating deeper connection with fungi for personal and planetary transformation, and runs a mycological education business called MycoPyschology Experiences.
📣 Maya will also speak next Monday, 4/21, at 7:30 p.m. in Glendale on their fire mycoremediation and prevention experience at their talk called “Megafires, Floods, and Fungi.”
Previously, in the Mycoverse… our celebration of spring and the more-than-human rights movement was filled full of electric conversation and electric colored plants! Discussion brought up the importance of our attention being drawn towards the more than human world, sharing the stories of how we make things, giving credit to our collaborators and inspirations, and how listening can be a radical act of reciprocity.
Spores That Caught Our Attention
Thank you for reading the Sporinator! Keep on spreading those spores.
Looking sporeward,
Aaron