Cannabis Meditation, as a formal practice, came to me in a particularly challenging season of life.
I had been meditating for a few years by this point, and smoking plenty of weed, but I had never put the two of them together. All meditation teachings on the planet tell you not to mix “mind-altering compounds” with meditation, and I was a bit fearful to find out what would happen if I did. But on this fateful day, I decided to create a safe space in my room, lit a few candles, and picked music that was meaningful to me. I blessed my cannabis, (just in case they were all right and something crazy was about to happen). I smoked some weed, laid down and began to do some deep breathing and a body scan meditation. After just a few moments of breathing, I dropped into the most profound and healing experience I had ever had up to that point. It changed my entire life, and the trajectory of my life that has led me here to this exact moment.
My name is Collette Patricia and because of that single life-changing experience with cannabis, I created my online platform called Balancing Cannabis, which is focused on education and experiences using cannabis inside sacred and somatic practices of healing.
Most people that do somatic and healing work wildly disagree with my stance on adding cannabis to these practices, but over the years, since the conception of Balancing Cannabis, I have witnessed the profound impact of this magical little herb in these spaces not only in my own healing, but in witnessing the hundreds of others that have come to my work.
Someone referred to me as a “legacy user” inside the industry, which is a nice way of saying I’ve been smoking weed for a long time. I’ve been in a relationship with this plant for more than half my life. Since I was a teenager, in fact. Most of that consumption was quite unconscious, as I used the cannabis to numb and get high to cope with the trauma I didn’t even know I held.
I became a medical cannabis patient in 2015 in California. The medical community was quite under-resourced and under-developed at that time, and even though I knew cannabis helped my mental health quite drastically, I struggled to articulate why or how.
Over the years, I’ve wrestled with my own internalized stigma of the consumption of this plant, but as I had more and more deeply healing and profound experiences with her, I slowly began to feel far more empowered in my consumption.
I was diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety when I was 14. In and out of the Western medical protocols for “mental health” that didn’t work, I struggled to get any relief from the chaos in my mind and body. In 2016, after the devastating collapse of a marriage, my career, and my religion, I broke all the way open, and began a relentless pursuit of healing myself of my mental illness. I studied everything I could get my hands on, from energy to neuroscience and the PolyVagal Theory. I began learning about trauma and how it impacts the brain and the nervous system. I studied meditation, mindfulness, yoga, buddhism and other sacred texts from around the globe. I devoured the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza and Paul Selig. All the while, never mixing cannabis with all the things I was studying.
After some time, I was noticing improvement to my mental state thanks to consistent meditation and movement practices, but I recognized that I was still trapped in something that felt out of my control. So, on that fateful day, when I meditated with cannabis in my system for the very first time, something changed within me in a way that no other practice had ever come close.
I knew it had to be shared.
Suddenly, everything I had been studying and practicing for years all made so much more sense. That experience in cannabis meditation took all these seemingly unrelated things and turned them into an entire system of healing that I have been practicing and sharing now for years.
Cannabis meditation took all of that knowledge and turned it into wisdom. Wisdom that I could feel in my body. A new “knowing,” something profound about this plant that had been regarded as evil for generations; this silly little flower that makes me laugh and calms my nervous system, all of a sudden became a powerful plant medicine ally and I fell in love with cannabis all over again. And that love has been the driving energy behind educating, sharing and empowering others to use cannabis in a similar way, both online and in-person.
The medical cannabis industry encourages people to use cannabis for healing, but in my opinion, there are still some gaps in how we educate patients to explore the potential of this plant. In all the healing work I have done on myself and in supporting others, the one irrefutable variable in healing the self, is that healing can not happen without stillness.
Sure, adding cannabis to one’s life will provide incredible relief and support for so many different ailments. Even if people never decided to meditate with cannabis in their system, they will still be amazed at what cannabis can do for them. If and when they decide to be guided through cannabis meditation – to drop into deep stillness with plant medicine in your body – this is where supernatural and miraculous healing can occur.
I have no intention of trying to convince others of this. I would simply love to invite others to experience it for themselves. But, here is what I know to be true with every cell of my being: healing can not occur if you are in a flight/flight/freeze/disassociate nervous system response state. Healing can not occur if the body is tense, tight, rigid and bound. Healing can not occur when we are spinning stories in the mind of fear or shame. So, the work that I do on my platform and with coaching clients, is to educate people about this and teach them the path to softening the nervous system, quieting the mind and sinking into deep states of relaxation, all while witnessing the energy of cannabis move through the body.
Cannabis is a plant medicine. In fact, it is regarded by many (myself included) that have explored her potential, to be a psychedelic. It can facilitate and support massive somatic experiences of the releasing and liberation of energy, similar to that of other psychedelic plant medicines. However, cannabis is different from the other plants like psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca, because of the way that a person has to be an active co-creator in the experience. A person won’t have a psychedelic experience with cannabis if the body and the mind do not feel safe enough to do so. My work is supporting the journey from a chronic, trauma-induced, stress response state, into a state of safety and relaxation that will allow cannabis to work in and through the body to its fullest potential.
Once those in my community find that level of safety and surrender in the body and the mind, our community supports each other in integrating and processing these types of experiences. It’s a magical practice, being shared with magical humans, making waves and ripples that will impact generations to come. I truly believe that.
I would like to humbly invite others to join me and my community for a virtual cannabis meditation from the comfort of their own home. I intend to share more through this media outlet in the coming issues, but experience is the greatest teacher. Every Monday night, my community and I meet via Zoom for a guided cannabis meditation that includes information, breathwork, and a guided experience. I would love to have others join us and just explore for themselves what cannabis meditation might do for them. There is a wealth of information about me and my work on my website: www.balancingcannabis.com or follow me on Instagram @balancingcannabis to stay up to date with all the offerings I am bringing to the Utah medical cannabis community. I will be offering in-person cannabis education and somatic practices like movement and breathwork, supported by cannabis, for those ready to explore this plant in more depth.
How to prepare for cannabis meditation:
- Create a warm space where you won’t be disturbed for ~90 minutes.
- Grab a pillow, blanket, eye mask, and headphones.
- Have some water or tea close by.
- Grab your cannabis, but wait to consume; we vape/smoke together as part of the experience. If you prefer to eat an edible or tincture, consume about 60 minutes before we begin.
- Log on at 7 p.m. MST by clicking on www.balancingcannabis.com/live and I will walk you through every step of the way.
