It has been nearly 5 years since our discovery of Shilajit. I saw the first Shilajit growth (yes it grows!) over a year prior to harvesting any. One of my greatest joys in life is climbing, hiking, and ofttimes foraging on the Continental Divide of the Colorado Rockies. When I first saw Shilajit, I had not one clue as to what it was. I first learned of Shilajit through my wife and had an idea of what it proclaimed to do for human and plant health. But to see it in the wild for the first time, I concluded that this odd looking substance must be…actually, I had no clue.

It was early summer when heading down a mountain after a very good hike and climb, I met a man, total stranger and we had a nice chat about our dogs and the awesome day laid out before us. He then asked me if there were any noteworthy spots that he should visit. I gave him one spot that was simply fantastic – a small cascading stream with moss and pooling water that resembled a fairyland of sorts. As we parted, I asked him, “Say, I keep seeing this mass of black material that looks like its flowing or growing out of the rocks. It looks like certain bat guano deposits I have seen in the past, any ideas?” His reply, “sounds like it could be Shilajit…”

What?!! I was both skeptical and excited. Skeptical because I knew Shilajit was found in the Himalayas and the Ural Mountains of India, China, Tibet and Russia. Excited because even if it was just bat guano, I could harvest a bit and incorporate it into my gardening. And if it was Shilajit, wow, a lifetime’s worth of Shilajit for me and mine. It was not until late July when I returned on a mushroom foraging trek (King Boletus/porcini mushroom season at 9000+ feet) that I made the climb to harvest a bit of “bat guano.”

By every measure that I could match, this guano could be Shilajit. The rank, manure like smell; resin that was rock-like and the color was appropriate. Still, I had no real expectations that this black resin-like material was Shilajit. My next step was to send a sample to my testing company. On the work order, I put Bat Guano as the possible substance, that’s how unsure I was that this could be Shilajit. When the test results came back, the numbers were incredulous; Humic and Fulvic acids levels that only occur naturally in Shilajit! I called the lab to see if they had ever seen this type of material in their lab. They had. The lab manager had been involved with testing for another company who were importing raw Shilajit from Russia. She was also a long time user and we had a very lively conversation about how incredible it was that this Shilajit was from the good ol’ US of A!

My understanding of Shilajit was nominal at that point. The amount of information, from the many studies and almost innumerable historical to anecdotal references, was massive. And when I began learning the benefits of Shilajit’s main components – Fulvic and Humic Acids, I knew that this substance is the Blood of the Earth, almost literally.

I did not contemplate marketing Shilajit until a full year had passed. I made several climbs and solo harvest 118 pounds of this miracle. Harvesting Shilajit is work and required a full day to get up and get down with a load. And at that time, I had no idea how much pure Shilajit could be had from the raw harvest. After study and engaging with an local Ayurveda healer who had come back from studying in India, I decided to purify the Shilajit in two ways; heat processing and in keeping to my traditional methods of homeopathic plant macerations, cold processing.

Always a learning curve. I sent two purified samples to the lab, one was cold water processed and the other was heat processed as is most common in India. Heat processing is much faster and much easier in making  purified Shilajit paste. This method is most common among Ayurveda protocols and these protocols have been in use for many thousands of years. I am of the German school of homeopathic tincture making and that meant that my preference would be cold processing. And testing provided me the reason to keep it cold; heat caused one of the major elements found in Shilajit to disappear – Selenium among others.

This story will continued as time permits. In the course of the last two years, we have learned many things about Shilajit that appears to be new information. Keep tuned and perhaps even subscribe to our blog (patience please) as we begin to publish our findings on the types of Shilajit found in Colorado, how it may be formed, how our blood reacts to Shilajit protocols as we tackle new health issues unseen until now and review Shilajit as gifted to us and told to us in the Old Testament. Read about it here⇒

Shilajit is THEE GIFT, to be used by all. Shilajit does not only heal, Shilajit amplifies health to a point where one may not know what true health feels like until Shilajit is part of the daily life.

Thanks for reading. May we all live long and prosper!
Samio Jung K.
Master Herbalist & Shilajit Hunter

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