Do you have an interest in meditation and are you cannabis friendly? And have you thought about combining the two as a spiritual practice? I do and many others do. And I’ve got five tips for you on how to do just that. My name is Eddie and Margaret and I are with a Mindful Emergence where we offer mindfulness, movement, and breathing practices as well as plant medicine when appropriate for those seeking healing and spiritual transformation. We’re in the waking up business. So, let’s get down to business of the five tips. The first one is pick the best method for you. Now, I’ll tell you straight up, I have found the best method for me is inhaling flour. But let’s go through the other options. In addition to smoking or vaping, the second option that you have is edibles. So these are the brownies, the gummies, the chocolate bars, and also the drinks. Well, the problem with that among others is the time it takes for it to affect you. Uh most edibles like gummies take you about an hour, and that’s you’re not sure like exactly when it’s kicking in. Drinks are faster, maybe 10 to 15 minutes. Um do you really want to wait around? Uh that doesn’t usually work for most people. All right. And also the other thing is you’re not getting in most cases the full spectrum of the flower and you really don’t have any idea for the most part what are the tarpen and endockinabonoids that are within that particular edible that’s going to affect you. I’ve done a video on flour versus ed edibles if that’s not clear to you. So I suggest you check that out. The third one is tinctures. Now tinctures are typically done subliminally but frankly t tinctures are really best for pain management and specific sort of medical if you want to say type of issues. I’ve used tinctures very effectively but I picked them that had a specific uh canabonoid content for that purpose. I don’t find it helpful at all for meditation. Another one way way of doing um taking in cannabis of course is topically and that’s also usually done for some type of pain management or therapeutic effect can be great for that. It’s not any good for meditation in my experience. And the last one is rectially using suppositories and I have really no idea what that’s about and I don’t think it’s good for meditation. So let’s circle back to the flower. So, when you get flour, uh, typically you get it when we’re talking about legal ways of accessing it, you go to a dispensary, whether it’s one of the 24 states where it’s fully legal or whether you’re in North Carolina like I am, where we have this phenomenon called THCA, which is basically the same thing. It’s just harvested early. That’s the simplistic description of THCA. Then you got to ask yourself, what strain? because you have all these different strains and if you’ve walked into a dispensary, you got all these containers of different kind of flowers. What to get? Well, typically the bud tender, the first thing he or she’s going to say is, “Do you like sativa? Do you like indica?” All right. Well, that might work, but what to choose? Even if you just sort of go along with what they suggest. I like sativa. And here’s why. Sativa tends to be more energizing, more uplifting and to me it gives more like a sharpness and a mental clarity that I don’t get on indica leaning flour. Indica tends to have a heaviness effect. It is relaxing but it doesn’t help with mental clarity and um also sometimes I just end up feeling like stoned and that’s not really what I’m going for. So, I’ve done a uh video on why tarpen are important. I suggest you look at that and start recognizing what tarpen are helpful. And when you go into a dispensary, uh just say, “Hey, do you have uh any flower that this is what I say that’s high in lmonine and pinine because I know those are the ones that work for me and I don’t just accept that whatever sativa they’re suggesting is going to work best for me.” and I buy a small amount, a gram if I can, just to test it out. So, flour, that’s what I recommend. Now, some people just can’t inhale for one reason or another. Smoking or vaping is not an option. So, then you need to consider exploring other options. They can work. It’s just in my experience, the flour is best. So, the first one is pick the right method for you, which includes the right strain if that in fact is flour. All right. Second tip is the right setting. Uh now when I smoke or vape, I always have everything set up ahead of time. First of all, I inform Margaret or anybody else that might be around me, I’m going to take some time to meditate and they allow me to get have that space undistracted and I’ve got the environment prepared. Uh I’m ready to go. That’s really important. and make sure it’s comfortable without any distraction. So, you can just step into the experience. Uh, if the weather’s nice, I usually sit out on my balcony and I just take a puff and then I meditate. Or if it’s cold or weather’s bad in some other way, then I’ll take the puff outside because I don’t smoke inside. And then I come back in. But I’ve got the environment already prepared for me. And to the earlier point that I made, what I do is I take one puff. That’s all I do is I load my pipe and I usually use a water pipe. I find that best for me. Or I can vape. If it’s the water pipe, I usually just take about a quarter of a teaspoon of ground flour, put it in there, one puff, that’s it. I’m vaping. That affects a little bit differently. I may need to take two, three, four sips in order to get the same effect. So this really comes down to your own experience and how to get the effect based on how you’re ingesting it. So right setting is second. The third one is I suggest you approach this with an attitude of gratitude and reverence. Reverence. So what I do is before I even smoke, I hold the flower in my hand and I thank it. I thank it for being there for me to help heal me, to help heal the planet. And I honor the ground that it was grown on. I always reflect on the fact that I live on Cherokee land and I honor them. I honor the all the different directions that, you know, I just take a minute or two. This is a sacred plant to me and I want to honor it and have reverence and gratitude that I have this to use as an effective tool to help me wake up. Number three, the fourth one is I set an intention. Okay, why am I doing this? And this kind of comes down to what type of meditation you do. There are so many different styles of meditation. Now my way of approaching it is predominantly informed by the Buddhist tradition that I’ve been uh connected to for over 40 years and I also have a lot of experience in the nonduel tradition. So and within Buddhism I tend to lean more towards the vapasha or insight style but maybe you’re into vadriana or maybe you’re into Zen or maybe you’re into some of the more Hindu style traditions or maybe you’re into TM. Doesn’t matter what it is. Pick the one that works best for you. And even within the particular tradition that I pick, I ask myself, am I just going to sit and watch my breath? Am I going to work with thoughts that come up, work with sensations that arise in my body, or maybe I’m just going to do a loving kindness practice? Uh, or maybe some type of self-compassion practice. So when I sit down, I ask myself, what is it that what is my intention? Okay? And just in case you’re wondering, this meditation that I do after I smoke or vape, it’s usually about 15 minutes. You don’t have to meditate for an hour. And here’s what happened. Not only can that meditation sometimes reveal some extraordinary insights, but it also uh allows me to really uh have a better overall experience with the medicine. It seems to set the tone for it. So maybe after the meditation I get up and I go cook dinner, which is something I really enjoy doing uh after I smoke or maybe to have a conversation. But having spent that time in the meditation for those first 15 minutes or so really informs the direction the arc of that particular uh medicine as I use it. So intention is very important I think in life but especially in using plant medicine. So the fifth one is it’s really helpful when we use this plant for meditation if you have a regular meditation practice. Now, I teach meditation on a regular basis and I have a handout I give people when they come to my class on how to maintain a regular practice because most people struggle. They do it here, they do it there, maybe they’ve given up, maybe they think this isn’t for me. And if I say look, uh, just do what you can. If it’s just five minutes, 10 minutes, but see if you can do a regular practice every single day. And I’m sure I’ve got so many videos on meditation on this YouTube channel. I’m sure you can find something that that talks about that. And to to that point, I make myself available as a mentor, a teacher to help people in general on how to use cannabis intentionally for spiritual practice. And uh I encourage you to reach out to me. And if meditation is it, I can help you. I can either do it in person or virtually. And there is uh a link in the description that you can use to reach out and we’ll talk on Zoom and see if this is something that you’re interested in. So, I appreciate you watching this video. I’d love to hear your comments if you have any experience with meditation and cannabis. Of course, uh we always love it when people give us a thumbs up. And um if you haven’t subscribed to this channel and cannabis and spirituality is of interest to you, you really need to subscribe and hit that bell because I’m pumping out a lot of content that I think is is very helpful. I want to contribute to this conversation in a meaningful uh skillful way. So, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next video.
Video Tags: weed,pot,marijuana,grass,indica,sativa,spirituality,5 Tips on How to Mediate on Cannabis,anxiety,cannabis
Video Duration: 00:11:16
