What is the historical connection between Cannabis and Yoga in India?
What is the history of medical marijuana since 2900 BC?
What is the science behind Cannabis as Medicine?
Some medical benefits of Cannabis
Harvard Research finds benefits of Cannabis for Anxiety

written by Jane Lanza

In this fast-paced digital world anxiety abounds as well as chronic physical pain for many from a lack of time to stretch, meditate, and exercise. Yoga and CBD are excellent tools for healing, cultivating presence, and ease.

Cannabis and yoga can both be viewed as aids to meditation, balance, and enhanced comfort in the physical body, as well as gateways to subtle understanding of the self and connection to universal energy/spirit.

Does weed have a place in yoga?
Is weed a tool or an illusion? Pure or impure?

Like a breath technique, or a yoga pose, cannabis is one tool that can help toward self-knowing. Not all tools are for all people. Cannabis (when used with the right ingestion method, strain, and dosage), is a potential method for someone to feel comfortably embodied, regulate imbalance, and reestablish homeostasis.

There are myriad historical links between Yoga and cannabis that date back thousands of years with mentions in Hindu, Vedic, and Tantric writings along with other ancient cultures from around the world.

Nothing external is necessary to practice yoga, or to attain self realization. One goal, is to move from doing into being. From ego into one-ness. Most of us need many teachers along the way. Reminders to return over and over again to emptiness through the breath. One of my most insightful, loyal, and favorite vehicles inward, is Cannabis.

All humans have an Endocannabinoid System (ECS). The goal of the endocannabinoid system is maintain homeostasis in the physical body.  Cannabinoid receptors are located throughout the entire body (in the brain, organs, glands, muscles, connective tissues, and immune cells). Disregulation in the body leads to disease and imbalance. The ECS is involved in  regulating a variety of physiological processes including appetite, pain-sensation, regulation of sleep cycles, mood, memory, stress response, immune function and more. The ECS works to restore imbalance within these processes.

There is research on the neuroscience of cannabanoids being conducted more now that cannabis is becoming increasingly legitimized and accepted. This may help me and others understand why I have found the herb more helpful than pharmaceuticals, like yoga and meditation- it helps me feel things deeply and from a calm place.

Schedule 1 status on a federal level until 2020, coupled with xenophobia and cultural programming, leads to massive amounts of social misunderstanding, injustice, and a lack of proper education about the benefits of Cannabis. Growing science-based evidence about the healing nature of the plant is changing the legal landscape of it.

Over 100 compounds can be isolated from cannabis, called cannabinoids.  Various external phtyo (plant based) cannabinoids, including CBD, can support the ECS.  CBD is one of these and is a completely non-intoxicating compound that can help relieves chronic pain and inflammation, reduce anxiety and depression, alleviate nausea, help treat seizures, glaucoma, fight cancer cells, promote heart health, and relive some PTSD symptoms.

Keep in mind, not all strains and methods of ingestion are right for all people and there are some contraindications for this medicine including adolescence, psychosis, some thyroid issues, and more. In many states, where cannabis is now legal, you can visit a dispensary to learn what’s right for you. In this sense it is not an illusion but a naturally derived vehicle, an alchemy, to experience union (yoga).

Before practice, as you wish- choose from CBD oil, sublingually or topically applied, gummies, salve or organic smoke, to help deepen your practice of presence and self-care. Consider some restorative stretches.