Part One leads into this, and it's pretty brief so check it out then come back :)
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​Throughout the ages within numerous cultures and tribes, it's been used as an entheogen, and no surprise there.  Even the most primitive of humans felt a calling to something greater in this life, even when there were no words to label it.  Sacred plants all over this planet have helped us experience this greatness in a direct way, revealing truths that can only be confirmed by an inner knowing, never by spoken word. 

Now, a rewind back to those morning sessions...

So many impactful events unfolded next, and the first was 9/11.  At this time, I was working in Center City, Philadelphia.  Like many of us who are old enough to remember, I recall vividly where I was when I learned of the World Trade Center being hit.  Everyone in my office went to the basement and turned on the news.  I didn't see the first plane hit, but I watched live as the second hit.  It was absolutely unreal and we were all speechless...I still get chills every time I think back to that moment. My father had recently retired and given the time it happened in the morning, he would've been having coffee up on the 107th floor in the North Tower, looking out upon Manhattan from the Windows of the World restaurant.  Needless to say I was grateful for his retirement.  Bless everyone who perished that day.

The way this event impacted me was unexpected.  When my beloved and I began making a contingency plan for what we'd do and how we'd find each other if another act of terrorism happened that separated us in some way, the fragility of life really hit me for the first time.  Visions of having nothing but what I pack in a backpack, finding shelter wherever I could, became regular images in my mind.  I started asking myself penetrating questions I hadn't thought to ask before... Who am I underneath my conditioning?  What do I really like?  What do I really need?  What have I become addicted or attached to that I didn't realize I was addicted or attached to?  What would happen if I didn't have those things? 

I had been using cannabis nearly daily at this point, and knowing what a gift it was in my life and how much I enjoyed the relationship I had cultivated with it, I asked myself what I would do if life changed drastically and I had no access to it...could I find this state of being without it? 

Over the few months leading up to 9/11, I had been studying quantum theory which catalyzed a thought process - everything physical has a non-physical counterpart, its frequency.   Is there a way to tap into this frequency without the use of the physical substance?  Inside I felt a definite YES, so definite there was no room to question it.  I tasked myself, however long it took, to find a connection with cannabis' non-physical aspect. (I've been on this journey ever since)
 
What unfolded over the next few years was magic - with the help of cannabis intermittently, I learned how to: move prana/qi (I didn't know these names for energy at that time), unlock stagnation, identify limiting mental programs and stories, re-program new ones, question my beliefs/judgements/points of view, control my mind using the breath, and how it is 100% my choice how I feel inside.   My mind and body were shifting in ways where I was able to hold the new alignments I was being guided into and no longer reached for cannabis as often.   I shifted my relationship with it in the way it felt like it was asking me to.  Rather than relying on it on a daily basis, I placed it in the category of a tool.  

The analogy that first came to me when I did this made a lot of sense.  When you wish to put a nail in the wall, you use something like a hammer to hit the nail until it's in the wall enough to do its job, then you put down the hammer...you don't keep banging the wall incessantly.  In the same way, I'd learned to only work with cannabis when I felt a need for extra guidance to move along my evolutionary journey. 

At this point in time, I gained a level of self-awareness that showed me instant physical effects of toxic thoughts and words.  It became sickening to lie,  to gossip, or speak negatively about myself or others whether out loud or in my mind.  I had always been a people-pleaser, and began to feel a loss of energy when running that program. 

I remember the first time I realized how heavy it felt to put something on my calendar because my mind said I "should" go.  Instead of scheduling it, it being a non-essential company outing, I became curious how things would unfold if I follow what my body is telling me.  I learned later that week that everyone who went got caught in an accident on the only highway out of the city in that direction and missed the event altogether.  From that point forward, especially when it came to my calendar, only appointments and events that lifted my spirits in some way made the cut...of course except for those mandatory necessities that were exempt from choice if I wished to keep my job, haha. 

Back to the system of Yoga.  It wasn't until yoga teacher training when we learned about the yamas and niyamas that I realized they were what cannabis had been guiding me to learn several years prior.   I knew them intimately, I was already practicing them consciously on a daily basis and they were such a foundational aspect of this new person I was becoming, the me underneath the me I had been identifying as throughout my life.  

This is a very short synopsis of how cannabis taught me yoga and to this day it reminds me of what my soul already knows...that which this world, especially the western world, has done a great job at obscuring.  The past two decades since have been a spiral dance around balance, sometimes hovering nearly at impeccable balance and other times spiraling far from from it. 

​Whenever I found myself a bit too far from my ideal state of coherence and needing a helping hand, there have been two loving Marys on my path that are ready and willing to help, Mary my mom and Miss Mary J.  

I can imagine this sounds ridiculous to most people.   And while I haven't heard anyone else talk about it this way, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had this experience with cannabis.  It makes so much sense to me, especially after learning what science has revealed over the years regarding the endocannabinoid system.  Cannabis taught me how to bring the practice out from within me.  Allow me to explain...

About a year after cannabis entered my life, yoga came onto the scene, first as a way to heal a spinal injury and then as a warm-up for cheerleading practice back in high school.   This is when I first experienced the amazing physical benefits of the practice.   Then in college, I had to do a lot of searching to find a yoga class, kripalu-based, which I finally found via a flier at a cafe.  It was outside the university ecosystem in the basement of a lovely 60-something year-old woman's home along with a group of other 60 to 70-somethings...I was by far the youngest student. 

It wasn't until my senior year that I began consuming cannabis intentionally, away from the social realm.  I realized this plant was a teacher, a guide, something I felt called to pay attention to.  Shortly thereafter, as I began my professional career, I found myself with nothing in my life to hold me accountable to keep my body limber (from 8 yrs to 21, I was always either on a cheerleading or dance team).  It was then I made a pact with myself to ensure I'd do the needful to always be able to do wheel pose, even when I became an old lady, since I knew I'd be only as young as my spine was flexible...a saying I came to learn years later.

Up until this point, I thought yoga was purely a physical practice.  The only ways it had been presented were through poses and breathing.  I had no idea there were any spiritual aspects, or anything else for that matter.  

Enter the school of cannabis I didn't realize I enrolled in.  I started waking up at 5am to enter into wake n' bake-style stretch sessions that concluded with vision work and journaling.  I created my own little routine that addressed all layers of my being so that when it came time to leave for work, I felt holistically nourished and able to anchor into a vibe that was unfuckwithable.   

I loved how present I was able to be with my breath and body while high.  I could feel all the nooks and crannies and realized very quickly that with each breath, I could follow the subtle sensations my body was giving me which would then lead me into a new shape.   And if I engaged in subtle ways in certain areas while slowly breathing, I could open pathways of energy to flow that were constricted in some way.  I didn't know this is what was happening, all I knew was that the places that felt not so bueno began feeling bueno after doing this, so I knew it was a good thing. 

I didn't think of it as yoga though, I just thought of it as stretching.  Of course I knew a bunch of poses from high school and college, but that number was quite limited and I thought they were only to stretch and create strength. 

I'll stop sharing about this here and fast-forward roughly four years to my first yoga teacher training.  The postures we learned as well as the primary yogic breath, ujjayi pranayam, were some of the things I learned through my wake n' bake sessions.  The plant literally guided me to bring these out of myself.  During training I felt so tickled inside...I already knew these things! And I knew them intimately, I now just had beautiful sanskrit names to label them with.  I recall being in the lobby and having an epiphany - this is the path I've been looking for, the path to the state cannabis dials me into but without needing the physical plant to reach it.  

Cannabis revealed that the state of yoga is already within me, that I just need to align with it and integrate it through all aspects of my life and being.  It nudged my awareness in the direction of the proper purview to see how this is so.     

Part Two coming soon...