Willow Groskreutz
Jul 6, 2021
The Divine Smoke: Cannabis and Intuition with Ganja Clergy, Nydia Zamorano-Torres
Getting healthy and healing from our pasts is hard. From my experience with depression, I know that it often requires a complete makeover of many different aspects of our lives – beyond what we eat, how we cope, or what we smoke.
It requires something deeper, and I never fully grasped that until I met Nydia Zamorano-Torres.
Meet Nydia: A Natural Healer and Cannabis Connoisseur
Nydia lives in Detroit, Michigan, and is the owner of UR Wellness, where she coaches people on how they can use cannabis to improve their overall wellness.
Nydia started UR Wellness after she was diagnosed with a hyperactive thyroid. She quit her profession as a physical therapist and dedicated herself to learning everything she could about the endocannabinoid system. As a result, she treated herself naturally and now channels her knowledge into her business to help others.
Nydia's program is simple. After helping her clients define their challenges and goals, Nydia lets them know it's okay to make mistakes. Then, to minimize the chances of not through, she creates small, customized action steps designed to transform habits week by week.
Her goal with UR Wellness is to have everyone experience their 'aha' moment where they realize they haven't seen the world as clearly as they could have been.
That 'Aha' Moment of Clarity
Nydia describes that moment like the scene in Snow White where the sun is shining, and the birds are singing as Snow frolics through the forest. It can be achieved by incorporating different cannabinoids to encourage the entourage effect and other action steps like taking cold showers, fasting, and breathing techniques.
True holistic wellness, or that 'aha' moment, embodies emotional, mental, and physical health, and achieving it demands honesty with oneself.
Nydia doesn't force her clients to go any deeper than they are comfortable with or ready for. But since my goal was to clear the emotional baggage and blockage leftover from my depression, Nydia has shown me how cultivating a spiritual connection holds all aspects of my wellness together like glue and how it can be achieved through cannabis.
The Link Between Cannabis and Spirituality
For Nydia, her spiritual journey runs parallel to her cannabis journey.
Although she didn't realize it at the time, Nydia was self-medicating a chemical imbalance in her brain when she found cannabis at age 14. Doctors had tried to treat it with SSRI drugs, all unsuccessfully. Spiritually, Nydia was raised in a Christian and Catholic Latino community where the patriarchy was strong. However, her mother, an anthropologist, challenged it and taught Nydia to question everything.
"I've realized that spirituality is just like the endocannabinoid system," Nydia said. "It is a balance, and it means something different for everybody. So my spirituality and the disciplines, rituals, and mantras I hold for myself can be completely different than what you hold for yourself."
While nonjudgement and respect define her coaching technique, the most essential aspect of spirituality to Nydia is making it one's own and not following back on someone else's thought-processes or perspective. "If someone wants to pray to God or Muhammad and put that label on it, that's fine," she said. "If that's what you need to do to get you to the next level, do it. Embrace it and love it."
The same goes for cannabis consumption. Everyone's Endocannabinoid balance is as unique as their thumbprint, so whether they are a concentrate or isolate user or an ally to the plant without knowing how to use it, Nydia can work with them to achieve their balance.
Read the original article here.