Psychedelics are all the rage these days. But have we had one under our nose this whole time, never fully appreciating it?
In today’s episode of the Wake + Bake Podcast, we’re talking to Cannabis Meditation Pioneer Collette Elosha about the power of cannabis as a psychedelic and integration tool.
If you’ve ever had an experience with cannabis that was “out there”, you’re not alone. Listen in as Elosha shares how to navigate cannabis before, during and after psychedelic experiences and reveals another layer of possibilities with this powerful plant.
Elosha shares tips and insights that we hope will help you harness the healing experience using cannabis as a psychedelic.
Themes: cannabis, healing, psychedelics, cannabis as medicine, cannabis careers
Show Resource Links:
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Get 10% off your first order using the code WAKEANDBAKE at Wake + Bake Hemp Co. – www.wakeandbakehemp.co
Visit Collette Elosha at Balancing Cannabis: http://www.balancingcannabis.com
Visit Andrea at Reveal Cannabis: www.revealcannabis.com
Visit Corinne at Wake + Bake: www.wakeandbake.co
Email us with questions and requests at [email protected]
Watch the Wake + Bake Podcast on YouTube
EPISODE 103 – Is Cannabis Psychedelic Transcription
Andrea Meharg: Thank you so much for joining us on another episode of the Wake and Bake Podcast. When Corrine and I started planning this episode with Collette, we wanted to ask her all kinds of questions about using cannabis in a meditation practice. And we did talk to her about that but the conversation actually morphed into discussing the question, is cannabis a psychedelic? In fact, Collette speaks about the plant in a way I’ve never heard anybody speak about the plant before talking to her. So, this is a fascinating conversation for you to listen to, if you’re interested in using cannabis in a more intentional and mind opening or enhancing way. It’s interesting for Corinne as well because she lives in Colorado and recently Colorado decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms, or magical mushrooms. So, thinking about all the different ways that cannabis and psilocybin might be used in similar ways was really interesting for us.
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Corinne Tobias: Welcome to the Wake and Bake Podcast.
We are so excited to have a very special guest with us today. Collette Elosha is a meditation teacher and personal development /spiritual coach. She created Balance In Cannabis and Love Culture, an online community that leverages plant medicine and sacred practices for healing and evolution. She’s an energy practitioner in space holder who focuses on trauma healing and womb work.
She guides cannabis meditations, breath work, and a movement class called Somatic Meditation Weekly on the Love Culture platform and works with people one on one in intimate coaching relationships. She’s an advocate for the conscious and ethical consumption of all plant medicines, the importance of integration and believes wildly in the humans innate ability to heal themselves.
Welcome, Collette. I love you so, so much. I love you. I’ve been doing Collette’s Cannabis meditations. I believe that’s how I first came into your work was a Monday Cannabis Meditation, and it blew my mind . I was like, Oh, this is gonna be relaxing. I’ve used cannabis, I’ve meditated, and I did that and I came to Andrea afterwards and I was like, Um, I didn’t know cannabis could do this.
I was like, Uh, we need to talk to Collette and see what is actually happening here. So welcome. Thank you so much for
Collette Elosha: Thank you. Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation and the warm welcome. I’m just so excited to be here.
Corinne Tobias: And we have Andrea as well here with us today. Andrea Meharg. Say hi.
Is Cannabis a Psychadelic?
Andrea Meharg: Hi everybody. We don’t often hear of cannabis being described as a psychedelic, but both Corinne and I have had this experience with THC. So how do you think about the role of cannabis in the psychedelic world and with our conscious mind?
Collette Elosha: This is probably one of my favorite things to talk about because most people don’t even classify cannabis as a psychedelic.
They’ve never experienced cannabis as a psychedelic, and they, they belittle it in a way and put it below or under these other plant medicines and it’s like, Oh, these plant medicines are psychedelics in cannabis. It’s not. So the definition of the word psychedelic is mind manifesting. So it’s an experience of an altered state of consciousness.
So even if you just use that definition, cannabis is already that. But for, you know, the people in the background that still are skeptical or don’t believe that when you work with cannabis, it does the same thing to the brain, to the default mode network. The part of the brain that houses the personality structure um, that and the ego essentially. So it works with the same part of the brain that these other plant medicines do. It just does it in a in a different way. And so I like to say that these other bigger plant medicines, psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, DMT, all these other psychedelics, they are blasting you beyond the default mode network, right?
They’re taking you out of the conscious waking thinking mind. And we refer to that or call that an ego death, right? And it’s not really a death, it’s just an experience of self. Without the ego, without the construct of the ego, the ego being the part of you that has been formed over your lifetime. It has your beliefs, your preferences, your worldview.
It has your conditioning, your programming, right? And so when we eat these medicines, We have a moment or moments where we’re not connected to our waking conscious brain. And that’s why it’s so transformative because that part of the brain is very, very rigid, particularly in those that struggle with mental illness or mental health in that sort of thing.
And that’s why the, the medicines are so powerful. Well, cannabis does the same thing. It just does it a little bit differently. And so instead of it turning it down, which it can do the same way that when you blast beyond in these other medicines, cannabis can do one of two things. It can either turn it down or turn it off.
So you can have this ego death or this dissolution of ego, or it can crank it up and it can turn it all the way up to a heightened sense. So the ego mind comes online really kind of aggressively, and we would experience that as extreme cases of paranoia, fear, discomfort, where the mind is just kind of frantic and going crazy.
I’m not really crazy, but you know, the mind is kind of spinning out a little bit. That to me is an exaggeration of the ego. And so when you understand the way that cannabis can work with the ego in two different distinct ways, we’re either gonna soften it and quiet it, or we’re gonna exasperate it, then you can start to see its benefits.
Because when you work with some of these other medicines and you are blasted out beyond the ego, when you finally come back to the conscious mind, the conscious thinking mind, you then have to make sense of two very different worlds, right? I was here and then I was not here, and I was over here and I was having this experience, but now I’m back in this brain and this body, and I have to make sense of two different realms of consciousness.
So for me, when you talk about cannabis inside this conversation, you can have those types of experience, but instead of shutting off that default mode network or shutting it down completely so that you’re in two different realms, the default mode network or the personality structure just kind of gets put on the back burner.
And I always kind of say that in a cannabis meditation or in a cannabis journey or a psychedelic cannabis experience, that part of your brain is sort of just like stunned with wide eyes in the background. Like, what the fuck is going on?
But then when you come back to your waking consciousness, you, you can make sense of those experiences with more ease, which allows for easier and more sustainable integration, right? Because if the ego mind, the waking conscious mind is just kind of quiet in the background, but watching you have an experience of dissolution of self and unity and connection to all things in the entire universe, then when you come back to your waking mind, the ego mind goes, Whoa, that was real.
We did that. That was crazy. Whereas if you’ve blasted beyond the default mode network using some of these stronger medicines, Then when you come back, it’s like, well, is that real? I don’t, that was crazy. I couldn’t make sense of what was upside down and left and right and everything was fractaling and, you know, my body was a pattern.
Those experiences are incredible and life changing. But also if you can’t make sense of them when you come back, then sometimes the brain just goes, eh, we’ll just, you know, we’ll just store that in the back because I, I don’t know how to integrate that. And so I have found that working with cannabis in as a psychedelic, you can have just as powerfully profound ego death or healing experiences.
And it’s a lot easier to integrate those experiences once you come back to your waking consciousness.
Corinne Tobias: Holy shit.
I have so many follow up questions about that.
Can You Use Cannabis To Help Integrate Other Psychadelic Experiences?
Corinne Tobias: You’re talking about this idea of cannabis being able or being easier to integrate, right? And like these experiences. Can it also be utilized when you’re using these other medicines and it is difficult to integrate those?
Is there, have you found any benefit to utilizing cannabis and what would that look like for people? ,
Collette Elosha: Absolutely. I have supported clients, um, and myself personally. I’ve used cannabis in specifically cannabis meditation, right? I think that I like to delineate our cannabis consumption to cannabis meditation as being two separate things.
I think that if you just smoke weed and go about your day, whether you’re integrating psychedelics, you’re trying to heal mental health, you’re trying to heal chronic pain, if you’re just smoking weed, then we’re not actually leveraging the potential of the plant, although you’ll get great benefit. But I wanna focus specifically on cannabis meditation as the mechanism for integration.
And so I use cannabis meditation with my, for myself when I’m integrating from a medicine experience or with clients because of the way that it can, not reactivate, so it’s not gonna take you all the way to that plant medicine experience that you had. But if you work with cannabis meditation pretty quickly, they’re following a very profound or big psychedelic experience where a lot of the moments of it are a little bit hazy or you’re having a hard time recalling. Then when you, if the days or a few days afterwards, you sit in cannabis meditation, you’re guided, then you can tap back into that same places that you were in, in these psychedelic medicines.
But again, doing it with that conscious mind, just sort of being in the background going, Oh, holy shit, that’s what that was, or, that’s what that moment was, or that’s what I felt, or whatever those experiences were that are so intangible and so difficult to articulate, you can kind of reactivate them or return to them in a way with your more awake mind in a, in a way that it helps you integrate them with more ease.
And so leveraging cannabis meditation as an integration tool has been probably one of the most profound, well, I mean everything, every way that I use this practice, it’s deeply profound and impactful, but, that when that one came really clear to use the practice as a way to integrate other psychedelic medicines, it was like, Okay, this is my lane.
Cannabis meditation before medicine at work is super helpful to prepare the mind, prepare, prepare the body, prepare the spirit, and then afterwards it’s really helpful to integrate those things. It’s also really amazing for people that are not ready yet for psychedelic medicines, and just because they’re trendy and cool does not mean that everybody should run out and try to get a handful of mushrooms and have that experience, right?
And so leveraging the cannabis to its fullest potential first before jumping into these bigger medicines to me, that’s the really ethical and conscious and responsible way that we bring plant medicine to the culture and society in masses, basically.
Corinne Tobias: I love that. That’s a really important point too, that, that idea that it’s, that you can work your way into and ease your way in.
Is There a Way to “Control” Your Experience with THC in Meditation?
Corinne Tobias: I do have another question. You talked about, um, you know, you can have these two different experiences with, you know, with high THC plant medicine, especially in meditation, you can have that like, Oh, my mind is just going and going and going, and I’m just watching that. Like, and it’s just an amplified version of what I’m living on the day to day basis.
Right. Um, and then there’s that other piece where you are, um, you know, you are moving past that ego mind. Is there a way to, is there a way to know which way you’re gonna go? Is there a way to, I don’t wanna say control, but kind of ease yourself in one direction or the. Yes. Or it’s just like whatever happens, happens, that’s your medicine for the day.
Collette Elosha: I think it’s a combination of both. And so what I teach people on my platform is that let, unlike the other medicines we have to kind of work with cannabis in order to drop into these deeper psychedelic states, right? If we don’t know how to work with her, then it’s kind of like, well, we’ll see what happens.
Let’s smoke some weed and lay down. And it might be a complete dissolving of the physical boundary of the body and, you know, immersed with all of oneness and love in the universe. Or you might be laying there deeply uncomfortable and deeply, uh, panicking in the mind and just uncomfortable or kind of just something in between.
Whereas with these other medicines, you eat those mushrooms, you’re going on the journey , you’re not really like in control of that, right? And so basically the way that I help people make sense of these experiences, whether they’re on the side of discomfort or they’re on the side of, you know, psychedelic and dissolving into bliss, is it’s a reflection to me of the felt sense of safety in the body.
And so if you don’t have a felt sense of safety or if the nervous system does not feel safe in dropping into these deep experiences, then the nervous system is gonna keep you out of those places. And when that happens, it can also likely trigger some form of discomfort. Now I say that, And also kind of just adding right onto it is that the discomfort carries so much wisdom. And in all psychedelic experiences and all plant medicine experiences, the point of these plants and their intelligence in the way that they work with the human body and the human mind is to reveal the entirety of the human experience, right?
We’re not eating mushrooms or smoking weed or having these experiences just to chase the good, right? Maybe some people are, but that’s only gonna get you so far, right? I genuinely believe that these plants are here to help us integrate our shadow, and if we don’t know what our shadow is or where it lives in our body and how it shows up, how do we ever integrate that?
And so these unpleasant or uncomfortable experiences, not only in cannabis meditation, but on any of the medicines, They reveal to us what is still needing love, what’s still needing our attention and the areas within our nervous system that we don’t feel safe, right? And so I’ve had a lot of people that don’t feel safe to be guided, right?
To, to surrender up their control in the experience and give over that, um, sort of authority, if you will, to me as I’m guiding this experience. And so there’s this resistance to even listening to my queuing. It’s like, relax this, relax that. It’s like, don’t tell me to relax. You know? And I’m like, we’re, well, we’re, it’s what we’re here to do, You know?
But that’s a very deep and old and ingrained belief system about trusting the guidance or leadership of somebody else. And so even that little tiny nugget of I’m uncomfortable being guided in this experience, there’s so much wisdom there. And so, when you know how to leverage the psychedelic potential of cannabis and you know where you’re gonna go when you do that, and the nervous system isn’t freaked out, or the ego isn’t freaked out about having an ego death, because if your mind or your ego knows that you’re entering into that, it’s gonna be like, Nah, let’s just stay here.
Let’s just talk about your grocery list and let’s just, I have so many other ideas that we can just like run through 4,000 of those instead of meditating. And so for me, it’s like if you’ve explored cannabis or you’ve explored psychedelics and you know how to surrender, then you can not control it. That you can al, you’ll always have that experience with cannabis because cannabis is tricky.
And as soon as you think you know her, she will come back and just be like, No, honey , no. Right? And so as soon as you think that you are above or stronger than the medicine, she will kind of come back and bite you in the butt a little bit. But in my community, we’re focusing on learning how to best set ourselves up for the greatest potential of the practice and of the plant medicine, which is to come to such a deep state of surrender in the body.
So first we start with just deep relaxation, but then also surrendering and quieting that thinking active monkey mind, and dropping into deeper brainwave states where the brain is quieter and the sensations in the body are really the focus of what we’re paying attention to. And when you know how to do that, and the brain and the nervous system are both comfortable doing that, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll drop into that space with cannabis every time.
Corinne Tobias: Yes. Oh my goodness. And can I say, just as a person who has taken your classes without really knowing what I was gonna get into at all, you know, I, I was like, like I said before, I was kind of like, Oh, okay, cool. This is gonna be great. I love that you say that like, cannabis is like, as soon as you’re like, Oh, I got this, no big deal, it’s like, ah, don’t tell me what to do,
I’m gonna do what I wanna do. Yes. But I will say that I think it’s interesting how you utilize the thinking mind, you know, in the beginning of your cannabis meditations usually explain some kind of concept that you’re working with. You get people tuned in. Whereas I think it’s popular to be like, Okay, now everybody, let’s just drop in and let’s get out of our thinking mind.
Like you really engage with it at first, which I thought was really interesting the first time I did one of your workshops and like, we’re in it and I’m like, Oh gosh, how are we gonna get out of here and into there? And then the cannabis started doing its work and I’m like, I didn’t use that much. It was really mind blowing. How powerful that was.
Doesn’t THC “Turn On” The Brain?
Collette Elosha: Well, I think it’s important to know, like I, I really know what cannabis does to the body and to the brain, right?
And it’s like, it activates the mind. It stirs the mind. This is why we get these creative insights. This is why we get these aha moments. This is why we’re more creative, or we’re more focused, or whatever. It’s like it turns on the brain. And so in some ways that’s counterproductive if you’re trying to meditate, right?
And so for me, it’s like if you’re gonna use cannabis to meditate, you have to learn I call it the arc of cannabis meditation. It’s something that I teach inside of my cannabis meditation facilitator training is where I help people understand that as once you consume the cannabis, this activation that happens in the brain, in the nervous system, in the body, that’s bringing us to a peak experience before we can drop into deep states of meditation.
So those first 20 minutes after you’ve smoked weed, you can anticipate that the brain is gonna be more active, the body’s gonna be more active. So it’s very difficult to just smoke weed and drop in. Right? So this is why we do a little bit of breath work. I do a little bit of, it’s not storytelling, but it’s a lot of visualization.
So I’m engaging the mind and the way that I look at it is like, I kind of wanna be like, Hey, ooh, look at me. Look at me. Hey, I’m like enchanting the mind in a way so that your mind will at least stop thinking about grocery lists and to-dos and responsibilities. And at least it can be here with me in this experience so that by the time that energy starts to settle down on the other side of that bell curve, then I’m like, Okay, now let’s go.
Let’s drop in. Stay with me here. Drop in, drop in, drop in. And so I kind of feel, it’s funny, my friends call me Ms. Frizzle, . Um, I don’t know if you remember Ms. Frizzle from the cartoon . Yes. Right. So it’s like, come on, kids, get on the school bus. Let’s go explore energy in the body. And so it is like, that’s how I feel like that to me, of all the things I’ve been called, that’s the one that I resonate with the most because it’s like, that’s exactly what it is.
I’m gonna help you get on the bus. I’m gonna help you feel safe, make sure you buckle up. Kids. We’re going on a journey, you know? And so there’s an element of my work that is. It’s not performance art in the sense that I’m acting or being inauthentic, but it is performance art in the element of wanting to encapture the attention of that mind once you’ve had a little weed.
And so I do that with music. I do that with my voice. I do that with breathwork. I do that with different cuing so that I can kind of hook that thinking mind into the experience. And then let’s hop on the elevator and go down and get in the bus and get into the body. And then now let’s feel. And so it’s, it’s an, uh, the journey or the architecture of cannabis meditation has been, uh, well, I believe it was divinely revealed to me and first and foremost, and then it has been re refined through sharing the practice with hundreds and hundreds of other people.
And now I’ve done it so many times, like I know this practice inside, outside, upside down that I know exactly where we are on that bell curve. With a few variables obviously it’s not a perfect science, but I know pretty much where we are in the bell curve and how to stay with the mind and dropping us into the body simultaneously.
And so it’s it, I’m teaching people how to meditate, particularly those that don’t have experience with meditation because people think that, Oh, I have to sit here and be still, and then my mind goes quiet like I’m a monk. And it’s like, no, that’s not what meditation is and that’s not what meditation will ever be for you unless you’re a monk.
And so it’s like for you to have that type of experiences, you have to devote hours and hours and hours a day. So I’m using the body to teach people how to meditate, and I do so by sort of gesture clowning the mind for a second and like, Hey, pay attention to me. I’m here. Don’t forget, you know, And then we, we drop in.
Corinne Tobias: You are truly masterful. Andrea was just like laughing and pointing at me cuz she knew I was about to explode at your Miss Frizzle. Like, I’m like, everything should be taught like the Magic School Bus. Why is not everything taught that way? Yes. Like, shrink me down, blow me up, put me on a bus.
Get me a good guide who’s like, Yes, whoa, isn’t this amazing , And then I’m, I’m in. That’s why I love you so much. Now I get it. I’m like, Oh, she’s the Frizzle archetype.
Collette Elosha: I’m the Frizzle archetype. It’s me. Yeah.
Corinne Tobias: For anyone who’s listening, who’s like, What is this experience that you’re talking about?
Yeah, we’ll talk about how to connect with this, but it’s something that I feel like everyone, especially people who work in cannabis, right, there’s this huge industry, We’ve got a lot of coaches and educators and stuff over at CCI. You know, there are people who are entering this industry from other industries.
I just really. It’s important work, um, as you develop a relationship with this plant. I know it deepened my relationship with this plant doing it with you. And then I did seven days solid. I was like, I’m gonna just keep doing it and see how it goes. And it was incredible. It was just, it was really amazing to me how, what an impact it can have on you and your relationship with actually knowing this plant, not just knowing about this plant.
Yes. Which, you know, I think a lot of us, my, myself included, it’s like, um, you know, it’s easy to kind of intellectualize the plant medicine, especially with all the new research and all the new data. And we’re like, Look, we’ve got an endocannabinoid system. Look, we’ve got these receptors. Look everybody, this is what this cannabinoid does.
And when you’re talking about is this like this true experience with it, what you’re really, really good at from my perspective is like, is that piece of really being able to guide in the moment with what’s happening in the magic part of the medicine that we often don’t talk about because we don’t wanna seem too like woo hippie. You know, we’re trying to legitimize something. Right? Right. So you just like, Oh yeah, it does that too. And just like, you know, you’re like, No, it doesn’t. It does it now and this is how it does it, and I’m gonna guide this experience and it’s fucking mind blowing. I’m gonna let Andrea ask you another question instead of like, just love bombing you over here.
Collette Elosha: I received the Love Bomb.
How Much is a Psychadelic Dose of Cannabis?
Andrea Meharg: Three years ago had a very profound experience with a continued cannabis meditation practice that was nothing like what you’re talking about. I smoked weed, and then I would lay down and be like, Okay, now meditate. And even that had profound impacts on my life. So hopefully everybody listening and watching wants to go and experience a meditation with you, but can you talk to us about just like beginner tips, Like for somebody like me who’s like, Oh, I don’t understand this world at all.
How are I wanna know? Like, how are you figuring out what a psychedelic dose of cannabis is? How do you suggest that somebody’s somebody who’s new to this practice enters it to have the kind of beautiful experience that you two are talking about?
Collette Elosha: Well, first and foremost, I think a psychedelic dose of cannabis is actually less cannabis. I don’t think that you need more cannabis in order to have a psychedelic do dose. I think, in fact, the more cannabis that you in consume, especially if you’re gonna meditate, you’re putting yourself at not risk. I don’t like that word. I don’t ever wanna associate that word with cannabis. But you’re, you’re increasing the challenge of not having an intense experience.
Right. Cannabis is incredibly powerful, but because we smoke weed all day, every day, we think that we need that much weed all day, every day. Or because most cannabis consumers or advocates have such a casual relationship to it, that we really downplay it’s potency. And so this is even what Corinne was saying, like, I love it when stoners are people that are like, Oh, I know weed.
You know, I love it when they come to my meditation. I know. I know how I’m gonna have what I, you know, I, I got this, and I’m like, mm-hmm. . Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Good luck. You know, . So it is really funny to me because, We think more is more and more is not more, right? And so what I talk about is like the minimum effective dose to get you where you need to go.
But that also being said is that there’s a difference between hanging out with your friends, smoking a joint and having a conversation or consuming cannabis for medicine in some like regimented sort of way, versus doing a cannabis meditation. Because if we’re consuming cannabis and going about our lives, then we smoke this or we consume this plant medicine, it builds this energy in our body, but that energy goes extends outward.
So if I’m sitting here having a conversation with you and we’re smoking some weed, then that energy’s going outward. Your energy’s coming here. It’s kind of flowing around. And we’re in this exchange. If I use it for medicine and I just have a a daily regimented consumption, I have my cannabis, and then I go about my day and I do all of my things.
So the energy that the cannabis puts into the body sort of gets used, it gets burnt up. But you could think of the analogy like gasoline in a way, right? Smoke a little bit of weed, consume a little bit of tincture, whatever. Now there’s this influx of energy that gives me the energy that I need to do X, y, or Z thing.
When you consume cannabis and meditate, however, you’re retracting your senses, right? Where our eyes are closed, we have an eye mask on that your headphones are on, so all you can hear is the music and my voice, right? You’re laying down, you’re being still. So all of that energy that you’re normally using and expending outward when you consume cannabis is now inside the body.
And so once it stays inside the body, it starts to build. And in that building is where it’s like, Holy shit, I didn’t know cannabis could do this. And that’s because every time we smoke weed or consume cannabis, even if you’re working with small doses, you’re still sending that energy out of the body. And so for a beginner, but even for anybody, I would say less is more, right?
If you’re a beginner to cannabis and you. Consume that often. If you’re coming to, and you’re gonna smoke weed with us during the meditation, literally one breath, one breath of cannabis would be enough. If you’re like, I, I’m, I’m, I’m uncomfortable with cannabis. I consume a little bit here and there, like, I’m good.
Maybe two, maybe three breaths, right? If you’re a psychonaut, and you be blasting off all the time, you still probably only need four breaths of cannabis to get where you want to go, right? And so I always tell people, try less. And then say, Okay, I could have had a little bit more than trying to hold more cannabis.
And so what happens if you’ve had too much cannabis inside of a cannabis meditation? One is that perhaps you will get uncomfortable in the mind, right? The mind is just gonna be going crazy. I’m uncomfortable. This is too much. I can’t, because all that energy is just. Stuck inside your body, Right? And it’s gonna reveal, like I was saying before, the state of your nervous system.
So if you’re in a chronic like fight, flight, freeze, or stress response, it’s gonna exasperate that, right? Cannabis is an exasperater, it’s an opener. And so if you have too much in meditation, it’s harder to hold the energy. And so I’m very sensitive to THC as well. And so when I have too much cannabis in a cannabis meditation, it would look like I’m almost having a seizure.
Like my whole body is twitching and shaking, convulsing. Like I cannot hold still because the energy inside of me is moving so rapidly and so intensely that I can’t hold it. And if that’s the process, then I’m not able to drop in fully because my mind has to be like, Okay, breathe, focus, you’re fine, breathe, focus, you’re fine.
Right? And so there’s. Element of my mind needing to self soothe or self-regulate, which keeps me out of meditation as well. And so this is why more is not always more. In fact, the less that you can consume in order to get your, find that sweet spot of opening and relaxing the body and quieting that mind and dropping into sensation, that’s really what we’re looking for.
So for a psychedelic cannabis experience, you just need the minimum effective dose. Now, if you’re a huge, huge cannabis consumer and you’re oversaturating the endocannabinoid system just hitting dabs all day, every day, and you’re just, you have a tolerance that’s way, way, way up here, then yeah, you’ll probably need a little bit more.
But for the average person, the average person probably listening to this, the coaches that are, have gone through your, um, through your, uh, education program, the people that generally come to my platform that I’m speaking to, these are just, you know, They’re not dabbing all day every day. Right. It’s like they’ve just started using medical cannabis like a year ago, and so most of the people that I get to be in space with are still learning and exploring this medicine and.
Just trust me that less is more.
Heroic Doses Of THC – Pros and Cons
Collette Elosha: And then when you’re ready to say, Okay, what is a full blown cannabis journey? You know, I, I had a cannabis journey once. I wanted to know what it would feel like to eat 40 milligrams of edible cannabis. I don’t recommend that if you’re new to cannabis until you’re ready for that type of hours long journey, until you know how to hold cannabis in the body for that way.
I don’t, I don’t recommend that. But also it was a very profound experience. Right.
Corinne Tobias: I’m gonna, I’m gonna dial back on that because I say the same thing all the time. I, I don’t know if you’ve heard this story, but I once accidentally ate a 300 milligram hash infused grilled cheese.
Um, before I, I was doing the dosage math after I ate, I was so hungry after doing the shoot, I ate half of it . And I remember just like doing the math and it was like, so visual. It was like, 3, 0 0. And I was like, uh oh. . And then my whole world turned upside down and it was awful.
I would say that it was one of the worst physical experiences of my life. I was like, vomiting into this giant bowl. Like I, I couldn’t, I had no motor function and I was like in this really crazy state that I’ve never been with any amount of other psychedelics that I’ve ever utilized. And then the next day I woke up and my, I changed my whole life.
Yes. The whole thing changed. Yes. My own bullshit was intolerable to me at that pointable you’re barfing it into a bowl. . I barked it all into a bowl. And so there is a part of me that’s like the chronic over consumption is, I think, challenging for, for me after we’ve learned a lot of this, like you said, oversaturating, your endocannabinoid system
however, I do think there might be space for kicking it up a notch.
Collette Elosha: Oh, a hundred percent.
Corinne Tobias: Like do you feel as a guide that that’s something. that is, I mean, I don’t know. I’m just curious how you feel about that, cuz I was like, it changed my whole life. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it changed my whole life.
Collette Elosha: So, like, I don’t recommend it if you’re new to cannabis, because I don’t want people to over consume and get scared of cannabis and then never come back. Right. That’s my whole biggest thing. I’ll bang on that drum. Now, if you’re a cannabis consumer and you’ve been consuming cannabis and you have a, uh, questionable at best relationship to your consumption with her, then yeah, eat the fucking eat it, you know, and go all the way in.
And so as a facilitator, I would love to hold big cannabis journeys for people. Most people are too scared to do ’em. So I’m just kind of like waiting for the right person who’s like, Hey, I wanna eat a hundred milligrams of cannabis. Be held in the My shadow, because pretty much if you eat that much cannabis, you can be damn sure that it’s gonna be uncomfortable and the shadow experience is gonna be present for you both in the physical and in the spiritual sense.
And so, and I don’t, I don’t say this to scared anybody away from it, but it’s like, if you’re ready to do deep work and really change your life, then sure, yeah, let’s, a big dose of cannabis will do that, but it will be uncomfortable as hell. And so if you’re gonna do it, making sure that you either have somebody who can sit with you through the, the discomfort or you have worked with enough.
All of the bigger medicines that you’ve worked with those enough that you do feel comfortable in that degree of an altered state of consciousness. But even then, I’m just like, I’ve worked with plenty of plants and I’m like, I don’t do big journeys without a friend or a guide, or not even a guide, just a space holder because a.
Getting to the bathroom is hard when you don’t know where your legs are. You know, it’s just like, I just need just to have somebody there that can hold the space and support you. They don’t have to be guiding you or facilitating you or doing any of that type of experience, but just like, Hey, I can hold your hand if you’re scared, Hey, I can help you to the bathroom.
Hey, I’m not grossed out by you baring into a bowl. Like, let me sit there with you. So I think there’s a huge space for big cannabis journeys inside of the psychedelic conversation, but I think for Mo the most part, you’re gonna have an unpleasant time. It’s not gonna be like on a handful, a big dose of mushrooms where a lot of it’s uncomfortable, but then a lot of it’s really fucking magical and weird and bizarre, right?
I think for the most part, at that high dose cannabis is gonna bring out a lot of heaviness. And so just entering into that informed right in your informed consent and uh, making sure that you’re really ready to, to be in that space with yourself.
Corinne Tobias: I’m like, massive cannabis journeys with Collette in Colorado.
Collette Elosha: Oh, come on, let’s go. I’m down. I’m down. You know, And it would be, I, I have so many ideas already running through my head. If you have enough people, a handful of women that wanna do that, like that would be a beautiful experience. So let’s get it on the books cause I, I really, really appreciate holding space for big journeys because I feel like when we break through in big journeys, whether it’s cannabis or other medicines, like when we break through into that space where we finally collapse all of those defense mechanisms that we build, that is where true lasting transformation really can occur.
And so it’s like, I’m, I’m very humbled and honored to hold, to hold space for big journeys for sure. So I’m definitely ready to do more cannabis big journeys.
Collette’s Meditations aren’t Like Other Cannabis Meditations
Corinne Tobias: Hell yeah. I’m so stoked cuz I mean, I really love that you’re, you’re doing this on every level right now, right? You’re doing this with beginners and in Monday community meditations, you’re teaching facilitators, you are like, What I would say, like masterful way of doing this work.
Cause I’ve done other cannabis meditation, I’ve done other cannabis yoga classes. It’s not like that had never been in my field before. But the way you do it is different, man. , that’s all I can say is like, you really have to experience it. I couldn’t shut up about it. Andrea knows. I was like, I still can’t shut up about it.
You know? Like it’s, it’s something I can’t stop talking about. I’m like, I don’t know what she’s doing exactly. But it’s incredible. Um, and then now talking about doing these bigger journeys, uh, I, this is something that’s been on my mind pretty much this entire conversation that we’ve been having.
What’s it Like Living and Working in “Medical Cannabis Only” Utah?
Corinne Tobias: And when I said, Oh, you can come over to Colorado and do that, the reason I said that is because you live in Utah.
Mm-hmm. , which is a, a tightly regulated medical state where like, I think you get flower right. But they don’t want you to do anything with it afterwards. Like, that’s what somebody told us yesterday. They’re very like, it’s pretty intense.
Collette Elosha: Well, I will say actually it’s one of the best medical programs I’ve ever seen. And so the dispensary and the product availability here in the state of Utah for medical card patients is exceptional. Like they have, they just brought in concentrates as well, so that was like a whole big thing when they finally allowed concentrates. So it’s tightly regulated in the sense that if you don’t have a medical card, then it’s still 100% illegal.
Right. But with the medical program, they have done a fantastic job of advocating for patients, getting the products that are necessary and needed and creating products that are sur serving of wide variety of needs. And so even though it is, it’s not recreational, so we can’t consume publicly together.
That’s probably the only hindrance to my work from a legality perspective. When I was living in California, I could do cannabis meditations in a yoga studio and have no qualms about it. So I can’t do that here. Um, which is, it kind of sucks, but also it’s fine, you know, like I can, I’m close enough to California, I’m close enough to Arizona, to Nevada, or to Colorado that I can do cannabis meditations in public or in public spaces, you know, in any of those other spots.
Um, but that being said, the Utah Medical Program, honestly is, is quite impressive. Like I’m really impressed and the people that are pushing this program through are very, very, patient focused. And that’s the part of it that I actually really like. After coming from the rec market in California, which it felt degrading to the plant, it felt just belittling to people that were in it.
I felt like in a lot of ways, the stigma, the industry was perpetuating the stigma. And so to be here in a medical state and then to speak about cannabis meditation as a means to support pain, sleep, mood disorder, you know, inflammation, it’s, I’m not just talking about a the woo woo shit, but I’m also not just talking to stoners or people that smoke weed.
Like, hey, try it in meditation. I write for, it’s called Salt Baked City Magazine, and it’s like the first and only cannabis publication here in the state of Utah. So I’ve been invited to write for them and write articles for them. So I get to speak to these people, these patients that have this true medicinal need and, and medicinal pursuit of the plant in a way that I didn’t get to experience really in California.
And educating them that it’s not an like, yes, if you just started consuming cannabis, it’s gonna reduce your pain, it’s gonna help your sleep, it’s gonna help on so many levels, but only level one through six, right? If you meditate with cannabis, now we’re going level six to a hundred. And so the potential for your pain relief, the potential for your sleep support the potential for your mood regulation and your emotional support, the potential for all of the different things that medical cannabis can serve.
If you do it inside of a meditation practice, particularly one that’s guided by someone who knows how to walk you through this space, you’re gonna get exponential results, if you will, or exponential relief or exponential growth through the process of whatever it is, why you’re seeking medical cannabis.
And so it’s, it’s an interesting state because I do feel like most people here are very open to cannabis. And so I was living in Atlanta for a while and that’s like, that was just a ridiculously closed state and culture. Whereas here, the people in Utah, They are so open and so receptive, and they want to learn from someone that they trust.
And I think that that’s really what I talk to my facilitators about the people who go through my training is that when you position yourself as an expert or even just an advocate for cannabis, but you market yourself or you speak about the plant intelligently, ethically consciously than people who have never smoked weed their whole entire lives that are now either coming to it medicinally or coming to it adult use for the first time because now they’re getting access to legal cannabis.
They don’t wanna learn from some smoker toker who’s just like, Yo bro, let’s just like fucking smoke some weed, man. You know, like weed fixes all your problem. Like they don’t want that. They want this intelligent, conscious understanding of. This is gonna help you, but too much of this is gonna be a miserable experience, right?
Too much is not a good thing. And so helping the people that come through my training, and I know that you guys over at Cannabis Coaching Institute do the same thing of this, advocating through this conscious intelligence and speaking of the plant from a position that speaks not only authority, but it helps break the stigma.
Every time I speak of cannabis here in the state of Utah, normally a very conservative state, a very, very restricted state in lots of different ways, culturally speaking. And the people who are a, they’re really ready for some healing. They’re looking for something beyond what they’ve been told, and they wanna learn from someone that they trust.
Andrea Meharg: I feel so grateful for the internet right now, just to be able to like have this conversation with you and have you talk about the plant as her and an intelligent being and a trickster and your super unique relationship with the plant. I don’t think I’ve heard someone talk about cannabis the way that you speak about it, so thank you.
I am definitely coming to Monday Night Meditation, like I also need my life changed, so thank you. Yeah.
Find and Work with Collette Elosha
Andrea Meharg: Can you tell us like all about where can people find you? What do you offer? Yes. Um, plug yourself. Let’s hear.
Collette Elosha: Okay. Okay. So, um, if you go to my website, which is balancingcannabis.com, and that has all the information about my live virtual meditations on Monday nights. It has information about my cannabis meditation facilitator training, so I’m teaching other people how to guide cannabis meditation. Um, it has information just about me and my position. It has information about my coaching and the way that I use cannabis meditation as a mo, a mechanism of discovery inside of a coaching relationship.
And so I’m doing one on one guided meditations with people and then extracting all of the nutrients and goodness that we get in those experiences and use that as the framework for the coaching and, and what we’re working through. We just let the subconscious and the nervous system tell us what’s going on, and then we unpack it from there inside of coaching.
So those are like the three main offerings that I personally am doing. I’ve also built, um, a platform called Love Culture, and Love Culture is a virtual studio that has, um, over a dozen different professional practitioners offering everything from movement, meditation, energy healing, sound baths. We do workshops.
I’m in process of bringing on more experts to speak of cannabis science, to talk about cannabis and pregnancy and postpartum. Um, we have. Cannabis meditation guided in Spanish starting, um, started last week, which is really exciting. Like so many beautiful offerings happening on that platform.
if it feels skeptical or scary or uneasy for anybody to jump into a Monday night virtual cannabis meditation with me, then come without plants, just come and experience my way of sharing information and my way of guiding without cannabis first and foremost, so that your mind can be present and gauge through its informed consent if this practice feels aligned to you.
So just come without plants, experience the practice without cannabis in your system, and then decide if it’s something that you’re ready to jump into.
On Love Culture, I also teach breathwork, which you can choose to consume cannabis beforehand or not. If you wanna have a psychedelic, you wanna have a guaranteed psychedelic experience on cannabis, come to that class , and that will happen for sure. And then I teach something called somatic meditation, somatic meaning body, and obviously meditation.
And so it’s how I teach people how to meditate using the body as the object of our meditation. So we do some gentle movement, some bizarre kind of movement to activate sensation in the body. And then we do kind of interval training in dropping into paying attention to what we feel. And that’s teaching our brain how to concentrate on these sensations.
And that really will set you up for Monday night meditations when you’re ready to really get on the Miss Frizzle school bus and go all the way into the body. Um, and so balancingcannabis.com is the, is the cannabis website. My personal website is just my name, Colletteelosha.com, and you can read more about my approach to mental health, to trauma healing, um, and to other plant medicines and integration in the way that I’m using all of the plants and this information about them to just support the collective at this point in time.
So Love Culture is, there’s a membership option. People can drop in for one class or you can join as a member and take all the classes. Um, yeah, and then starting next year I’ll be doing a lot more retreats. So I’m really excited about retreats.
Corinne Tobias: Come to me, Collette. Yes, Yes. . Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here, Collette. This has been incredible and eye opening and I’m so, so grateful that you came so that we can share this with the world because I really truly believe that everyone needs to know about it. And I don’t think I do as good of a job as you as explaining it cuz I’m like, it’s amazing. And that’s really all I can say.
I’m like, there are no words for it. And so thank you for putting all of the words to it and for helping us understand exactly what the implications of this work are. It’s really incredible.
Collette Elosha: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It’s such a pleasure just to share and talk about it more, and just to be so warmly welcomed and received in a way that I don’t feel like I have to justify.
Right. I don’t feel like I have to convince you that the work is valuable or that the practice is legitimate, because after, literally since the dawn of time, every spiritual teaching on the planet has said, Don’t mix with cannabis, Don’t mix with mind altering compounds, yet simultaneously there’s reference to some magical herbs in every single sacred practice.
And so, um, yeah, it’s, it’s a beautiful space to just come and receive. And so thank you for welcoming me and, and giving, sharing your platform with me so that I can share the information.
Corinne Tobias: And even if you are like, you get to the end of this conversation with us, maybe you’re listening and you’re like, I don’t know about all that stuff.
My, my challenge to you is just experience it, just come in and experience it because it is one of those things that mm-hmm. , you can’t unexperience after you’ve experienced it, it stay with you. So I think I’m gonna quit all my jobs and I’m gonna follow flood around and I’m just gonna, I’m gonna move to Utah.
It’s easier to talk about cannabis apparently. Yes. If you could talk about this forever. But I love you so much. I hope you come back and join us soon and um, and I hope that we can be sharing your retreats and stuff that everybody can come. Thank you so much, Collette.
Andrea Meharg: Corinne and I are so excited to get your feedback about this episode. What do you think is cannabis a psychedelic for you? Have you ever had psychedelic experiences with it? Have you used it for integration? We want to hear about it. Please let us know. Tag us on social media or reach out to [email protected]
And don’t forget the Black Friday sale on the Certified Cannabis Educator Program where you can say $500 off tuition ends on Friday. So use code blackfriday at checkout. We can’t wait to see you on the inside.
