Weed and the Warrior Pose

Greetings, everyone, welcome to yoga class. Grab a mat, get comfortable — and have your marijuana ready.

Yes, yogis, your weed.

“It’s emblematic of an industry that’s trying to push its product into every nook and cranny of America — because it’s profitable,” said one policy expert.

Ganja yoga isn’t anything new — it’s been gaining momentum for years as legalization spreads throughout the U.S. But with a hit in The New York Times over the weekend, ganja yoga has gotten quite a bit more attention.

Reporter Thomas Fuller, who has lived abroad the past 27 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia covering civil unrest and poverty, penned a piece for the Sunday Review section about having moved back to the U.S. recently. He shared his thoughts about life in San Francisco:

“I stop and stare at the giant trucks in San Francisco designed for the specific purpose of shredding and hauling documents. What a luxury as a society to produce tons of confidential documents and then deploy specialized trucks to destroy them. I knew yoga was big in California and ditto for cannabis. But it was still a surprise to discover ‘ganja yoga.'”

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A San Francisco studio, responding to the article, offered a link to its class on Twitter and an outline of what participants can expect. “Ganja Yoga is a weekly cannabis-enhanced, relaxation-based hatha yoga that emphasizes relaxation, pain relief, well-being, and the cultivation of inner peace. Less physically intense than most yoga, Ganja Yoga is high-quality instruction, based on mindfulness and good alignment for injury prevention designed for any body. All levels are welcome, as this form of yoga is especially inward and non-competitive.”

Of course it’s less intense — how often do you see someone stoned doing anything strenuous?

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Oh, and by the way, the class offers complimentary vape pens and cannabis joints.

Yoga is supposed to be about relaxation and meditation. It’s also about improving one’s mental health, building a strong mind and strong body, and having strong breath. How then, does throwing marijuana into the mix work here? It doesn’t.

Marijuana use is increasingly tied to psychotic illness, IQ decline, depression, downward socioeconomic mobility, anxiety, and even gum disease, to name a few side effects.

“The active ingredient in marijuana damages the brain in many ways and some long-lasting ways,” said one policy expert.

Plus, “We don’t smoke any ‘medicine,'” Dr. Kevin Sabet, co-founder of SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana), previously told LifeZette. Sabet is also an assistant professor of psychiatry and director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida. “If anything, the science is very clear that because THC has grown in potency so much — the active ingredient in marijuana that gets you high — it actually damages the brain in many ways and in some long-lasting ways.”

“It’s very emblematic of an industry that’s trying to push its product into every nook and cranny of America — because it’s profitable,” said Jeffrey Zinsmeister, executive vice president and director of government relations for SAM, from Washington, D.C.

None of it surprises him. What is interesting though, said Zinsmeister, is how author Thomas Fuller juxtaposed his comments on things like ganga yoga with his shock at seeing rampant homelessness in San Francisco.

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“It seems a terrible statement about my home country that my children will encounter homelessness and mental illness much more vividly in the wealthiest nation in the world than they did in Thailand, where we previously lived,” Fuller wrote.

It is telling, Zinsmeister added, that wealthy San Franciscans are pairing marijuana use with yoga while the people who don’t have any money are suffering from homelessness and mental health issues — which are often exacerbated by the legalization of marijuana. And he’s not just blowing smoke here.

The homeless problem in Denver has exploded, as have mental health issues in Denver, he added, since the legalization of marijuana there.

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“It’s too bad, but it’s not a surprise. The industry measures itself by profits and not by any other yardstick. The attempt to normalize its use in this way is not surprising,” Zinsmeister told LifeZette.

So is it about improving your health? Or is it just another class your local studio hopes will bring in additional revenue?

Something to meditate on, potheads.

Namaste.