Today’s cannabis lesson is about ayurvedic health and balance. These are 2 key features in using cannabis healthily.
Cannabis is ayurvedically seen as a sub-toxic herb. Sub-toxic does not mean it isn’t toxic in itself, it means it supports toxicity in the body. Therefore, when cannabis is used holistically, it should only be used after a detoxifying program, and only in very small increments and never for extended periods.
In this form it helps reaching a meditative state.
Smoking cannabis is a very drying and mobile, airy action, just as dabbing is. This means we need to keep hydrated even more when we smoke, and that smoking will bring into the body more airy and mobile qualities, which can be good or bad depending on the state your body is in.
Using cannabis in food is a much better holistic approach. Adding oils and providing sufficient hydration will still be important to help better integrate it all healthily.
In both food and smoke, it influences temporal cues, meaning the body needs time to readjust to the natural timescales of life. It also influences the feeling of safety. The body, but not always the mind, recognizes cannabis intoxication as an unsafe state. Should we strive to keep high, then our bodies will try to readjust and find safety again by considering the high state a falsely safe state. This is part of the cause of addiction to cannabis, as the body then starts to rely on cannabis to feel (falsely) safe. Kept up for long enough, this can and will lead to degenerative disease.
Cannabis increases Vata (catabolic, using energy), supports Pitta (metabolic, generation of energy) and decreases Kapha (anabolic, storing energy). From this we can conclude that excessive cannabis use leads to your energy feeling used up, feeling heated in mind and/or body, and having trouble to keep muscles, tendons, and nervous system in a healthy state. Already skinny people will present with trouble keeping weight steady through the increase in energy metabolism and decrease in storage of energy.
Cannabis increases appetite and digestion, and can be used holistically to remedy a weak appetite and digestion.
In cannabis addiction, the body will strive to maintain homeostasis, and through this action it can happen that over time appetite actually decreases and digestion becomes impaired.
Cannabis in massaging oils can be used to relieve pain and to help blood flow increase to the area. Don’t apply to acute inflammation as this can increase redness.
Cannabis leaf paste can be used as a poultice over worm infested wounds and on atopic dermatitis.
Through it’s healthy action, it reduces anxiety by decreasing depression and increasing enthuse, temporarily lifting the heavy qualities of life. Through addiction, it will eventually increase anxiety by draining kapha’s energy of safety. This can then lead to various physical complaints, including but not limited to heart palpitations, jitteriness, the internal storing of toxicities, and eventually exhaustion, weakness and depression.
This theory can in essence be used to explain all paradoxical uses and effects of cannabis, and other herbs and foods as well with their specific kapha-pitta-vata actions and also to find out if you are using too much cannabis, or are using it too often. It can also be used to find remedies for addiction and easy methods to decrease that addiction
CBD, preferably as a full spectrum extract, can help in decreasing addiction to cannabis, but should still ideally not be used without end. It should serve as a way to reintegrate balance into the body, so the body can then heal itself from within that balance.
If you are already in a state of degeneration it would be wise to use these same principles to reverse that condition.
Cannabis is described in the Atharva Veda (the veda of rituals of traditional healing and magic) as “as one the five most sacred plants on Earth" It goes on to say that a guardian angel resides in its leaves. It also refers to it as a “source of happiness,” a “joy-giver” and a “liberator”.
