Working with Cannabis
A new look at cannabis
The plant cannabis staiva is known by many names - weed, pot, marijuana, ganja, reefer, grass and so on and son. Just as many are the ways it is used by people all over the world. Though certain aspects of its effects on consciousness are universal, the sheer diversity of its uses is remarkable - for relief from physical and psychological pain, for enjoyment and sensory enhancement, for thinking deeply and for creating freely, for extra energy and for relaxation, for sleeping and for working, for connecting with others and connecting with self. By now, cannabis is legal for recreational use in 19 states and the District of Columbia, and legal for medical use in 38 states. There is a growing consensus that allowing widespread access to this plant and its many helpful qualities is much less dangerous to human health than repressing and criminalizing its possession and use.
The reason most people don’t think of cannabis as a psychedelic plant is that its psychedelic qualities are not as immediately obvious and overpowering as those of psilocybin or ayahuasca. Cannabis requires us to partner with it more consciously to invite forward its psychedelic effects. We do so by bringing ongoing mindful attention to the sensations, feelings, and other inner experiences it brings about (McQueen, 2021). Mindfulness, as the modern definition goes, is simply the act of offering non-judgmental awareness to the present moment. By turning mindfully toward the ways cannabis is interacting with our system, we invite the medicine to help facilitate the physical release or emotional reprocessing that is needed. Sometimes this will involve movement and working with breath, and other times it will be letting the body relax while stuck emotions and new insights flow more freely. As an experienced practitioner of Hakomi mindfulness-centered somatic psychotherapy, I will be able to guide and assist you in approaching the cannabis experience in this way.
The process
The first step is to get in touch using the contact form to set up a free phone consultation. On the call, we’ll talk about your interest in psychedelic cannabis and decide together whether it is the right step for you. Following that, we’ll set up an initial preparatory session so that I can continue to learn about you and your healing needs. We’ll make a plan together that will likely include a couple more preparation sessions and schedule our first medicine session.
The medicine sessions are 3 hours long, allowing us enough time to settle in, connect, create intentional space, have an unhurried trip 1-2 hour trip, and then do some debrief and integration before you go. The number of cannabis sessions will vary depending on your healing needs and individual preferences, and there is no hard and fast rule about when they have to occur. If your trips will be spread out over time, we can easily plan virtual or in-person integration sessions in between them to keep in contact and process how the medicine is working in your life.
Following your cannabis session, we will schedule an integration session (also considered psychotherapy for insurance purposes). At this session we will process how the work has gone so far and make a plan for your ongoing journey. This may mean scheduling a few more integration sessions, connecting with a psychotherapist, or joining a psychedelic integration group or other supportive context. The important thing is that you have some kind of support in place to allow your your journey process to keep unfolding over at least a few months, as psychedelic work is often the beginning, rather than the end, of a period of healing and change.
Looking to the future, once you get a feel for psychedelic cannabis work, it may become something you want to come back to on a seasonal or annual basis. Once our rapport has been established, I will be glad welcome you back for cannabis work for as long as the medicine serves you.