Higher Learning: There's a Yoga Class Where You Can Smoke Weed

Ganja yoga (exactly what it sounds like) is located perilously close to a Baskin Robbins. The practice, appropriately, exists in the back room of High Times, a head shop on Toronto's Bloor Street. It takes place weekly, each class serving between 5 and 30 stoned yogis; today, I have joined their ranks. An effervescent Brazilian woman named Lu, who asked us not to use her last name, leads us all in aligning our chakras and elongating our spines.

I have trouble doing so. The presence of the Baskin Robbins looms over my entire practice. Visions of cookie dough bust in during pensive Chattarangas; thoughts about Turtle Pie invade the silence of my Warrior II's. I spend a lot of time wondering if anyone else is hungry, and I briefly become convinced that all my classmates know how unfocused I am because our thoughts are pooling together in some version of The Cloud that holds feelings. Ganja yoga got kind of real.

"People are very stressed!" says Lu, when asked what benefits the devil's lettuce brings to a Shavasana. "Sometimes you can go to a yoga class or exercise in the gym and still you are thinking about your problems. Cannabis taps into the parasympathetic nervous system, helping us relax, calm down, and connect to ourselves on the deepest level. There's lots of crying in ganja yoga… but lots of laughing too."

Lu has been teaching her class for three years, having inherited the class from a friend and teacher who moved away from the city (to California) (duh). Lu is passionate about ethnobotany--that is, the study of the relationship between people and plants. "Lots of people judge me," she says of her classes. "They think it's just a bunch of potheads that want to get high. It doesn't affect me. I just have to keep walking with my heart and my plants and give my love for the ones that want it. The others will find love in somewhere else."

The idea of getting high and doing yoga is not necessarily a palatable one to me--a bad pot smoker and novice yogi, I'm not sure I can hack it. My fears feel justified when I pay my $20 and enter the studio, a dimly-lit, scarf-draped room decorated with woodsy murals and a KEEP CALM KARMA ON poster. It's packed with men and women of varying ages, the unifying factor among them a preference for the kind of loose linen pants that say "I either have been or am currently planning a trip to Thailand." They are all extremely limber. In the middle of the room, a man plays a sitar. Behind him, a guy with a mohawk cycles through Sun Salutations. Candles and incense make the air smoky; the lack of windows makes it hot. The overall vibe is very "home birth."

It's so busy that a man in a shirt with an LED screen embedded in it that reacts to the sound levels of the room is turned away with a few of his friends. Undeterred, they spend the duration of class smoking weed in the parking lot, their laughter punctuating our group breathing exercises until Lu has to tell them to keep it down. "You just never know how busy it's going to be," a sweet-faced regular says as she sets up her mat beside mine. "Some weeks you need it more than others."

The purported benefits of ganja yoga are strikingly similar to those of regular yoga: flexibility, pain relief, relaxation, and an increased connection with one's body. In theory, the addition of marijuana allows a deeper meditative state, and an openness to the philosophical ideas behind yogic practice--it did feel a lot easier to get in touch with my "heart chakra" once blazed--as well as an increased concentration and capacity for stillness. Lu says people of all walks of life take her classes. "Doctors, nurses, painters, housewives, engineers… all kinds of beautiful people."

Lu's class is not unique in Toronto--there are at least four or five other options for yogis seeking an extra something with their stretching and nose breathing. Most of them are run out of other head shops, or in people's private homes. 420-friendly yoga classes are also reasonably common at medical marijuana dispensaries and compassion clubs in famously weed-friendly places like California, Colorado, and Vancouver.

Most attendees at Lu's seem to know each other. They gather mats and yoga blocks and woven blankets from racks at the back, chatting amicably and doing their own stretching in preparation for the class. To get around laws about distributing weed, participation in the class smoke is donation-based. Everyone brings their little nugs to Lu like pilgrims bearing offerings. Lu will serve a Sativa strain first, to "lift us up for practice." Before Shavasana, there will be a second serving, of Indica, to calm everyone down. The class is 140 minutes long, but the first half hour is about smoking weed. The last half hour is also about smoking weed. "Some days there's less yoga and some days there's more, it's really about how the group feels," my mat-neighbor says, passing me a huge bag of vaporized cannabinoids.

Another bag starts to circulate, and the sitar guy keeps going as we pass the bags around, filling and refilling as needed. I've brought my stoner husband with me, and watch him suck back the vapors like the room's most seasoned regulars, while I take little bitch breaths and hope no one notices. Eventually I lose track of how many times the bag has come around. Somewhere during this time I think up the phrase "nama-stoned" and that's how I realize I am it. Also, I've started to wonder if maybe I will be incredible at yoga. My feet feel very powerful.

Once the vape buffet closes its first seating, we all move to the center of the room and raise our hands to the sky, bringing them to rest in a prayer-like position over our hearts. Lu starts a long "Om" chant that we do for… a while. I think about my feet, feeling them make contact with the floor beneath me. Powerfully, I think. I try to really notice my head, pulling it up to straighten my posture and elongate my spine. I start to think about ice cream again, and then we're moving into the main event.

All of the stoned people are extremely good at yoga. It is a disaster for my husband and me, whose "practice" consists of attending a beginner class at our local GoodLife every few weeks when we're feeling fat. All around us, stoned people are doing very dangerous-looking handstands, concentrated ujjayi breathing, and that pose where you support your entire body with your legs on your elbows. Lu uses only the Sanskrit words for the poses. This is a problem for no one but me. My powerful feet mean nothing.

I wish I could tell you that despite the potent combo of Sativa and three-legged dog poses I remain a vigilant, hyper-aware reporter, more high on journalism than THC, but I'm going to be very honest with you: I do not even keep doing the yoga. When everyone starts stretching out into full, real handstands I sort of fold in half and spend… ten..? …minutes? touching my toes and humming gently. It feels pretty good. My notes from this period read "room surprisingly atletic [sic]," "paraboia [sic]" and "ice cream?" The class continues for… some amount of time, and I get sweatier and worse at yoga. The calming effects of the weed aren't really happening for me, but my husband seems to be having a pretty good time. At one point he joins everyone with his legs on his elbows and sits in a little frog-like crouch, suspended off the ground, muscles straining but working fine. To me, it is ludicrously impressive. I reach for my toes again and fail to touch them.

I try to check in with myself to make extra sure I'm not transcending without realizing. That's when I get worried we're uploading our consciousnesses into some kind of yogic Cloud. Before I can figure out if this is true, practice is over and we're gearing down for Shavasana. Everyone passes around bags of Indica and cuddles up under the blankets we got at the beginning of class. It's like hippie sleepaway camp. It's someone's birthday so we all send her good energy with our hands and she sings a song while we meditate.

Halfway through the meditation I realize I am draped in what is probably just a colony of bed bugs woven together, let's be honest, and throw my blankets off, disturbing the woman beside me. I am harshing people's buzzes, I can just tell. I am not chill enough for this. The birthday girl sings for what is realistically too long, and soon is joined by a white guy on a djembe: the fourth horseman signifying the end of any gathering, no matter where you are or what you're doing. He starts really grooving and the sitar guy comes back and the birthday girl really goes for it. A woman in a sports bra starts handing out big bowls of fresh strawberries.

At this point I'm stressing out big time because it's raining very hard outside and I can see a few people's feet standing around the doorway outside. It sounds like they're trying to break in. To add to this, a drum circle has started. People are dancing and the entire vibe is very "is this an orgy." For a second I legitimately wonder if this is how I die: in the middle of a drum circle, with an unlikely raid (rival drug yoga gang? crooked police? regular police?) on a yoga studio in the back of a head shop. Everyone would be like "She died as she lived… wait, what? How? Where was this. You're sure it was her?" And then everyone at my funeral would laugh and laugh. Even the strawberries are not helping, although I eat a lot of them. I realize that Baskin Robbins is probably closed, and wonder if death is better than not having any mint chocolate chip right now.

As I'm staring at the floor, the door slams open: it's the LED shirt guy and his friends from earlier. They're getting poured on. Taking my chance at freedom and life, I spring up from my mat (fairly limber-ly I have to admit), grab my husband and run into the rain, into the street, and finally into the sweet, sweet embrace of too much Indian food. Namaste, you guys. Namaste.