Weed Yoga
by Alice Grace
Suffer from chronic pain? Anxiety? Flabby tummy? Boring existence? Well, all around California (and elsewhere) classes are popping up that cater to individuals in need of a relaxing exercise experience that incorporates cannabis into the practice. Welcome to Weed Yoga…
What is it?
Weed Yoga is billed as a transformative meditative experience that allows practicers to hone in and focus on their yoga routine. The several studios I’ve researched advertise the classes as a relaxed, all over meditative and communal experience. Just as people sometimes use candles, music, plants or scents to enhance their yoga experience, cannabis is being used in a similar way. Practicers come together and smoke, vape or eat edibles at the start of class sharing what they have and communing together before hitting their mats and getting into their poses. Marrying the forms of herbal and spiritual practice the devotees of weed yoga opens the individual up to a new and exciting mind-body experience and clients gush about the classes stating the practice fosters an awareness in their bodies they’d never experienced before. Others remark on how their overall exercise experience was enhanced and many more discuss how incorporating cannabis into their exercise routine relaxed them and even helped to improve their sleep habits.
What goes down?
Practicing yoga is already an inward experience – one of breathing, stretching and meditatively engrossing oneself in the form and control of the body. Incorporating cannabis into the session can provide a uniquely personal transformative experience. Different studios follow different protocols but most often sharing a joint with other classmates as a way to connect and commune and ideally elevate the mind is the method of choice. Some studios participate in a tea ceremony prior to ingesting cannabis and some incorporate the sharing of cannabis post-exercise, but that is more rare.
Where is it?
In California from San Francisco to Los Angeles and San Diego yogis have been popping up all over the place. At LA’s Lit Yoga, a tea ritual precedes twenty minutes of a passed joint session before the yoga practice itself begins.
Some studios even offer private consultations as a means to introduce the practice to those in need of guidance and specific training or for those who are less experienced and want to glide into the form of weed yoga with more caution.
Overall, clients express the practice has created a heightened awareness of breath and more relaxed poses and an ability to delve deeper into stretches.
The practice of weed yoga in studio form is gaining in mainstream popularity and is helping many to experience mediative exercise in a communal way thereby knocking down walls and erasing negative stigma. It is important to note that studios require proof of identification for clients to ensure all are over twenty-one. So, add some yoga to your session or session to your yoga and either way your golden. Namaste.