Reisebüro am Hafen would never have come into being without fungi. Not in the psychonautic sense, but in the documentary one. The research for the film The Mushroom Speaks fundamentally changed my view of connectedness.

Fungi live in networks. They connect trees to one another, share nutrients, send signals. They know no boundaries between individuals — or rather: their boundaries are permeable. What one needs, another gives.

In therapeutic work I experience something similar. People who come to me often sense that they are cut off — from themselves, from others, from something larger. The work does not consist of creating new connections. But of perceiving the existing ones again.

The mushroom does not speak in words. It speaks through its existence, through its network, through its persistence. Perhaps that is the most important lesson: you don't have to be loud to be heard.