Daniel Versus Yoga

Daniel vs. Yoga

In 2014, I moved to California for a medical cannabis internship I made up. I was running Halcyon Organics and needed more experience breeding, cultivating, and working with CBD strains of Cannabis. At the time, Georgia still did the death penalty for marijuana cultivation, so I had to leave my home state to chase The American Dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I lived in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in Humboldt County in a tent for a month. Every day, I would go work on a commercial outdoor grow to learn stuff. Then I lived in Sacramento for a few months, Auburn for a few months, and LA for a few months. I spent a lot of time in the SF Bay because those dispensaries paid high prices for good product and the arbitrage was huge. I got the California world tour for a year.

The takeaway that I got was California had some super cool stuff about it, but it was SOOO different from Georgia. I would tell people who never lived there that The Bay is like another country – the only thing we had in common with them was that we both used USD$.

While I lived in Cali, I wanted to be a real Californian. So, I tried the most California thing in the world – Yoga.

Full disclosure: I was a meathead gym rat. I played a lot of ‘real’ sports. I rolled my eyes at Yoga and considered it something that sissies did instead of sports.

A couple I met owned a yoga studio and let me come for free to show me that Yoga wasn’t as soft as I thought it was. I like trying new things and figured I would go show off in front of some bendy Cali girls. At first, I thought they were being generous, but after my first ‘advanced’ class, I realized they were sadists, and it was trap.

I was a little concerned because I’m not super flexible and never have been. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do a split or touch my chin to my tailbone, but I figured that brute strength would be enough to do everything that didn’t require cheerleader flexibility. I got to the studio to do my 1st one-hour yoga class.

Everything started great. Because of years of weight training, core training, and basketball, I was able to keep up. Well, I was able to keep up until I couldn’t. I didn’t know ish about yoga and didn’t realize that you’re supposed to hold those positions for unreasonable amounts of time. I knew I was in trouble when my muscles started shaking and burning and I started sweating. The teacher counted down to and told us to lay back down. That was a close call because I only had about 3 more seconds until my body decided to lay down.

After our generous 1-minute break, we went to the next, more difficult position. At this point, I knew I was in trouble because I wanted to go home and there was still like 40 minutes of yoga school left. We started doing the next pose and I was sweating bad – like clothes soaked and the sweat was pooling up on my mat and the wood floor. I’m not sure if it was every muscle in my body cramping or the oil slick of sweat on a smooth floor, but I was done. I just had to lay there and wallow in my sweat and shame. The instructor asked if I was okay and I responded with something along the lines of “Yeah. I’m cool. I just wanna go home.” I don’t remember clearly because I think I was kinda blacked out. I remember everyone laughing.

I went home, took a shower, ate, and went to bed around 9pm. I woke up the next day sorer than I have ever been. My scalp was sore. I didn’t even know my scalp had a muscle. I hobbled around the kitchen making breakfast and thought to myself, CBD is supposed to help with inflammation, and I feel inflamed, so I used strong full-spectrum oil to cook some eggs. I ate them and about an hour later, my muscle soreness was much better, and I could walk around like there was nothing wrong with me.

This was when I knew I needed to make a pain relief cream using CBD. I called my contacts at the pharmaceutical supply company and told him I needed a liposome base designed for lipophilic molecules. He sent be several samples, I did some chemistry and VIOLA! I came up with a great product…after about 20 tries.

Believe it or not, I went back to do yoga again. However, this time I did the beginner class. It was still humbling, but not humiliating. It still made me crazy sore, but now I had a defense. I would eat CBD about an hour before class and use CBD cream for the places that hurt extra.

I learned a lot when I lived in California. One of the lessons I learned was to respect yoga because it’s one of the most difficult physical activities I have ever done. Yoga dominated me like Georgia did Auburn last week.

Yoga – 1: Daniel – 0

By Daniel Macris

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