GANJA YOGA COMBINES MARIJUANA AND MEDITATION

Following on the barefoot heels of hot yoga, circus yoga and hip hop
yoga, cannabis-enhanced classes offer a way to cut through inhibitions
David Silverberg, From Thursday's Globe and Mail

They chat away breezily between vaporizer tokes, sometimes veering off
into conspiracy theories about the government or discussions of the
healthiest way to smoke marijuana. Then the 12 yoga lovers extend
their arms and breathe deeply. Yoga mats cover the floor. A guitarist
strums chords as incense weaves its tendrils across the room.

As the light haze of pot smoke dissipates in the downtown Toronto
living room, the ganja yoga session begins.

"When you're high, you can focus better on your breath," says Dee
Dussault, who runs a monthly session of "cannabis-enhanced yoga" at
her home dubbed Follow Your Bliss.

She says smoking marijuana in small doses before a yoga class also
makes students more receptive to the poses and philosophies behind the
activities. "For some people, it makes them uninhibited and open to
the idea of the heart chakra, for example."

Heart chakras aside, ganja yoga has the THC whiff of being the latest
yoga fad, following on the heels of hot yoga, circus yoga, pre- and
postnatal yoga, acro yoga (acrobatics), even hip-hop yoga. While
cannabis has been deeply entwined with spiritualism over the
centuries, some yoga practitioners say that a pure body is ideal for
the exercise and that smoking pot could cause an unwieldy imbalance.
As one online-forum commenter opined: "Why should we try to purify our
body and soul through yoga if we later intoxicate it again with
marijuana or other substances?"

But Dan Skye, senior editor at New York-based High Times magazine,
which tracks marijuana trends, disagrees with yoga purists who believe
getting high before a class is detrimental. "Pot is changing medicine;
it's changing recreational habits," he says. The latest research seems
to back up his claim: A recent McGill University study found that
cannabis helped alleviate chronic neuropathic pain.

Ms. Dussault remains unfazed. For the past year, she has run ganja
yoga out of her home studio as well as at the Hot Box Cafe in
Toronto's Kensington Market. The class takes place on the last Friday
of the month, after work, and she charges $15 for each session. Often,
she invites a musician to play some relaxing tunes during the 90
minutes, and she gives out munchies - fruits, nuts, tea - after the
class.

Because Ms. Dussault publicizes ganja yoga openly, there is the
question of legal repercussions. But she's quick to say, "No, I've
never been worried about cops. I think they have bigger fish to fry."

Among the ground rules at the studio, participants must bring their
own pot - and there's no dealing or mooching. And she makes a point of
meeting students before the session "to determine if they want to come
just to get stoned."

Ms. Dussault also encourages participants to fine-tune their yoga
skills before embracing ganja yoga. She wants to ensure that people
"first experience the true teachings of yoga" and then try ganja yoga
to enjoy a different yoga flavour.

Her studio isn't the only site for cannabis-enhanced yoga. The B.C.
Compassion Club Society, a full-service compassion club in Vancouver,
offers yoga sessions for those who use medicinal marijuana. Nicole
Marcia, the club's yoga therapist, says she notices that many yoga
patrons are "medicated" once they start the session, but for one
important reason.

"They need marijuana in order to fight the chronic pain and anxiety
they feel," Ms. Marcia says. She notices that some patients with
multiple sclerosis, for instance, are able to "be present" and
practise yoga once they've gotten high.

Many pot dispensaries and compassion clubs in California and Colorado
- - where pot is decriminalized - offer yoga classes, including The Herb
Shoppe in Colorado Springs. Qat Carter, who teaches there, says that
some of her students prefer to eat marijuana edibles, such as pot
brownies, because ingesting cooked pot lengthens the high. "My husband
says it helps him increase his body awareness and makes him more
relaxed when he does the poses."

Torontonian Melinda Reidl, 36, enjoys how the marijuana buzz
complements the yoga experience. "Marijuana quells those voices in
your mind," she says, adding that ganja yoga encourages more
deliberate movements. It's not a competition to push you to sweat
hard, like in some hot yoga studios, Ms. Reidl notes. She calls Ms.
Dussault's sessions "a slow-dub version of yoga."

Blending a stoned perspective and the precision of yoga could be
dangerous, warns Monica Voss, an instructor of 30 years who practises
out of Esther Myers Yoga Studio in Toronto. "Some people might not be
aware of their body when they're high and maybe they would injure
themselves," she points out

She would like to see academic studies done to determine cannabis's
relation with pain release and concentration. That way, yoga
practitioners may feel more comfortable recommending this type of yoga
combination. "It's healthy to see all these yoga variations, but buyer
beware," she adds.

But Mr. Skye, who used to work in the fitness industry, says he saw
many people smoking before stretching. "I knew a few muscle heads who
used to toke up on the gym's fire escape just before class," he says.

"I like the idea of smoking pot as a spiritual experience, not just
for recreational use," says Tanya Pillay, 35, who attended her first
ganja yoga class in August. "When you take an activity like yoga and
take the altered state smoking pot creates, it combines to make the
whole greater than the sum of its parts."

"Yoga and marijuana, together," Ms. Pillay says, "it's like putting
salt on your food. It's just a little enhancement."

Special to The Globe and Mail