Cannabis and meditation share one crucial trait: Both endeavors take your mind to elevated places.
This similarity tells you why they could be a match made in heaven.
Yet, it’s worth asking—could this shared characteristic cause both cannabis and meditation to work against each other? It’s always possible. Too much sugar ruins a cake; over-salting can destroy even the crispiest french fries.
We’ll be honest with you. There’s little more than anecdotal research on how well weed pairs with meditation.
That said, THC causes psychoactive effects, and meditation alters your mind state much the same. It only makes sense to experiment with the two until you discover a happy medium, which common sense dictates must exist.
Below, we’ll offer tips on finding the harmony between cannabis and meditation to enhance both experiences and possibly even reach a different plane of consciousness.
Disclaimer: Meditation Doesn’t Work For Everyone
Meditation is much like any other discipline or art. You must work at it to improve and reap its benefits.
You’d likely be disappointed if you expect to enter your first meditation session high as a kite and achieve your most centered, calm state.
Every type of meditation requires practice and repetition to improve and achieve the utmost benefits.
Throwing cannabis into the mix indeed adds a different wrinkle and can alter the experience (for the better or worse). Still, without committing to properly learning a given (or multiple) meditation techniques, don’t get your hopes up for an elevated experience, even after consuming the most appropriate strain.
Alternatively, those willing to familiarize themselves with given forms of meditation and immerse themselves in the process would likely gain something from toking and meditating.
How Can Cannabis And Meditation Complement Each Other?
Here, we’ll examine how cannabis might help with your meditation efforts (and vice versa):
- Cannabis (depending on the strain) can help you concentrate and intensify your focus, which might help you during meditation.
- The right type of cannabis relaxes you and reduces your tension, helping you ease into your meditation session.
- Specific cannabis strains will bolster your sensory experiences, potentially conjuring a more immersive and dynamic meditation session.
- Various cannabis products can reduce mental self-talk, keeping you locked in and ensuring your mind doesn’t wander during your meditation.
- Specific cannabis types make you more emotionally receptive, so you’ll open yourself to more profound feelings and spiritual exploration as you meditate.
- Meditation and cannabis can make you more aware of yourself. Combined, the two might help you better understand your inner workings and what makes you tick.
What Types Of Meditation Seem To Pair Well With Cannabis?
Successfully pairing cannabis and meditation requires choosing a technique that complements your chosen strain.
Below, we’ll delve into two specific types of meditation—body scan and loving-kindness—and explain how they might mesh with cannabis consumption.
Body Scan Meditation
Body scan meditation and cannabis share traits that could help you release physical tension, unwind, and become the most relaxed version of yourself.
Through a heightened sense of bodily awareness, the potent mix of cannabis and body scanning can make you feel like you’re floating on a cloud.
Indica strains enhance your bodily sensations, potentially helping you attune to the subtlest tension release as you engage in your scanning session. Ideally, each breath will connect you more with your body’s comings and goings as your stress and discomfort melt away.
Here are some tips to aid your body scan meditation efforts:
- Ensure you have 10 minutes to a half-hour set aside for your session.
- Lie down or sit in a quiet, comfortable space.
- Start by closing your eyes and taking some deep breaths.
- After focusing on your toes, notice the sensations in your body—but don’t judge them.
- Slowly scan your entire body, focusing on each specific area individually.
- Be sure to breathe into tense areas while envisioning the spread of relaxation.
- Your mindset should be curious and gentle—like it’s your first time exploring your body.
- Don’t worry if your mind wanders. Simply refocus and continue scanning your body.
- Discomfort and pain should be met without judgment.
- Relaxation isn’t the primary goal. It should be more of a residual result of the practice.
- Finish up with a few deep breaths while registering your feelings.
- Open your eyes gradually before slowly transitioning back to your day.
Loving-Kindness Meditation
Indulging in a sativa strain before loving-kindness meditation can amplify one’s feelings of empathy, warmth, and compassion.
Since a sativa strain can make you more emotionally receptive, the mantras of love and kindness repeated during these meditation sessions can hit harder, cultivating genuine understanding and self-love.
Loving-kindness meditation helps connect you with yourself and others, and certain sativas make your emotional boundaries more malleable. This synergy will make you more open-hearted and tender with yourself, your friends and family, and even strangers.
Here are some tips to enhance your loving-kindness meditation sessions:
- Ensure you have 10 minutes to a half-hour set aside for your session.
- Lie down or sit in a quiet, comfortable space.
- Start by closing your eyes and taking some deep breaths.
- Start with phrases like, “May I be happy, healthy, and at peace with myself,” to direct kindness at yourself.
- Repeat these phrases as mantras until they sink in.
- Expand your kindness and compassion to your friends, loved ones, acquaintances, difficult people, and everyone else.
- Attune yourself to the feelings of kindness in your heart.
- Be sincere while you repeat your phrases, and return your attention to the phrases if you get distracted.
- Finish by noticing your feelings and taking a few deep breaths.
- Open your eyes gradually and hold onto the kindness you’re feeling for the rest of the day.
Pairing The Ideal Cannabis Strain With Meditation
While you want to engage in cannabis-friendly meditation techniques, you also want to consume meditation-friendly cannabis.
Finding the appropriate strain can take some doing since everyone’s different and responds uniquely to cannabis products.
We suggest speaking to one of Phasal’s knowledgeable budtenders at our Runnemede location. Our passionate team is filled with experts on our strains, and they’ll have a solid idea of what would pair well with meditation—enough to point you in a few helpful directions.