Today I’m featuring an interview with a wonderful woman who’s created her dream job by combining her love of yoga, cannabis, and community. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Stacey Mulvey discovered yoga and mindful movement after leaving the Mormon church at 21 in protest of their discriminatory practices. After an epiphany about her own mortality and the need to regain control over her quality of life, Stacey began practicing yoga and pilates, eventually discovering that cannabis helped her with motivation and concentration. After moving to Colorado, she taught pole dancing classes while training at the Pilates Center of Boulder and taking classes in yoga, painting, and psychology at Naropa University. After finishing school and refining her mindfulness and meditation skills, Stacey launched Marijuasana, a pop-up yoga event in cities with legal cannabis. There is also a series of online videos on her website, which you can subscribe to for your home practice. Her combination of movement with mindful consumption evokes a unique sensory experience that’s suitable for all skill levels.
A lot of people associate cannabis with laziness and the munchies, but you use it as a tool for mindfulness and movement in yoga practice. Do you find your classes have helped change people’s relationship with weed?
I do indeed. I believe it’s because I emphasize engagement rather than escapism. Escapism can be healthy and necessary for our emotional and mental health, but like all things, it must be done in moderation. When we approach cannabis as a way to become engaged with ourselves, we find that when paired with a mindful activity, cannabis can help us enter a state of flow.
I have seen several people, usually at least one per class, that come to my class having never done yoga or mindful movement before in their lives, much less with cannabis. It’s the aspect of being able to consume within a supportive community that seems to draw them in. Perhaps they’ve been curious about yoga, or have felt deep within that they need to do it but haven’t found the right opportunity to give it a try.
Do you recommend certain strains for mindfulness over others due to their focusing or calming effects?
I get this question a lot, but I do not have a specific recommendation. That’s for several reasons, but the main one is that cannabis affects people differently. I do suggest that people do some of their own critical thinking about any information they are being presented with, in terms of the claims that get made on the properties that certain strains have as opposed to others and to investigate which strains work best for them.
Your bio says you left the Mormon church at 21 in protest over their discriminatory practices. How do you think your spirituality has changed or evolved since leaving the church and discovering yoga and cannabis?
It’s been a journey. After leaving the church, I was an atheist for a long time. Looking back, I feel that I had to go to an extreme to pull myself out of the Mormon cult. Coming to the realization that I’d been lied to my entire life while being orphaned by my family for following my own beliefs was devastating. It hardened me against all religion. Any type of spirituality felt like a slippery slope back to indoctrination.
Consuming cannabis and mindfully working with my body softened me and my views on the spiritual side of existence, which evolved over time. Both yoga and cannabis encourage lateral thinking, and the release of old ways of perceiving our experience. Yoga and Pilates taught me that we store unprocessed emotions in our bodies, and those emotions create holding patterns that stay with us until we release them. I’ve done a lot of personal work to identify and release my own patterns. It’s an ongoing process. Healing myself in this way has been a profound experience, and has lent itself to my current spiritual views. The impact that cannabis had on my somatic practice when I reintroduced it after abstaining for several years amplified the spiritual effect. It helped me pinpoint exactly where the stagnation was being stored, helped me make the connections about where those emotions had originated and how to integrate them and move forward.
What tips do you have for someone looking to introduce cannabis to their yoga practice for the first time?
It depends on the level of experience one has with both practices. So as a general rule, I would recommend starting small and slow and gauging your personal reaction to both.
In my experience, both the cannabis and yoga communities are pretty welcoming and open-minded. What are some of the challenges you’ve had running a business that involves cannabis consumption and advocacy?
When it comes to the intersection of both communities, yoga has been the least welcoming. I believe this is due to the stigma of cannabis. And the stigma has been the biggest challenge in terms of positioning cannabis as the wellness product that it is.
How do you think we can all help to break the stigma and help people understand cannabis for the amazing and powerful plant that it is?
By “coming out” as cannabis consumers. The more of us that step out and identify ourselves, and stop concealing the truth about our consumption, the less power the stigma will have. The stigma has been a powerful tool used by prohibitionists to make us afraid to speak up about our own use. Fear can be powerful, but truth has so much more.