By Jon Hiltz
The History of Marijuana and Mindfulness
Cannabis is named as one of five sacred plants in the 3,000-year-old Hindu scripture known as Atharva Veda, a Vedic Sanskrit text that roughly translates to “knowledge for everyday life.” Revelations revealed in these texts came as a result of intense meditation by ancient sages who passed their knowledge throughout the Indian subcontinent. Part of this knowledge includes meditation and remedies from medicinal herbs and tinctures. According to professor and author Kenneth G. Zysk, hymns from the Athara Veda praise “medicinal herbs and plants, suggesting that speculations about the medical and health value of plants and herbs was an emerging field of knowledge in ancient India.” It’s a tradition that never should have gone out of style.
Why Meditate in Modern Society?
For those who don’t meditate, think of your brain as a smartphone and your thoughts as the applications.
Leave too many apps open for too long, and your phone will heat up as your processors reach the limits of their physical capacity. Eventually, the navigation stops functioning, the music starts to skip, and pages fail to load … and that’s with a new phone. How old is your phone?
Meditation is a way to close all of the applications to direct all processing power on “existing” — rebooting your brain. Practitioners of meditation refer to this state as being conscious. “Most people who use marijuana consciously will benefit from it,” says Joey Lundgreen, a practitioner at the ganja-friendly House of Yoga in Toronto. “You can’t help but meditate when you toke, depending on your definition of the word. Some people, when they say meditation, they also just mean contemplative thought.”
Joey goes on to add that the general public is not aware of the spiritual and meditative qualities of marijuana, because of its false imprisonment over the last several decades. The incorporation of marijuana in reflective practice has not been widespread in modern times. “It’s been affected by the fact that it has been illegal.”
One of the fantastic benefits of meditation is that it helps you look at the world through refreshed or perhaps even different eyes — a profound change of perspective. Cannabis also changes your perspective or “empty the trash” in your cluttered cranium. “Everybody I know that smokes pot, speaks about the world in a way that people who don’t smoke pot can’t speak about the world.”
Joey recommends that all who partake in the endless benefits of meditation, do so for at least ten minutes a day as it is a learned skill after all.
When he is teaching with cannabis, Joey usually incorporates it into his yoga and movement practices. The most common type of pot used at the beginning of a ganja yoga session is an energizing Sativa and the practice typically ends on a calming Indica. Experienced cannabis consumers are encouraged to experiment with their favorite strains to find the path feels correct.
Unleash Your Beast
Modern society is bursting with tasks and external stimuli that go against the nature of our species. In order to adapt to the demands of the first world, many of us have learned to ignore our body’s warning signs. “The ganja will get you into [your] animal body that wants to free itself from all those chains that happened to us through domestication.” Through marijuana and meditation, we gain the ability to temporarily shed the constraints of modernity to return our minds to their natural, quiet state.
Whether your reason for quieting the mind is decreased stress, more concentration or an enlightened existence, marijuana can help. If you’re having trouble finding your flow or want to enhance the way you brainstorm, cannabis and meditation are truly your pot of gold
