Early sailors in the midst of dangerous voyages into the unknown, surviving on little food and always in close contact with a crew of strangers, managing stress by meticulously carving intricate patterns on whalebone and wood.
Your great-grandmother, keeping a family and household together, soothing her worries by wisely saving and patiently stitching together loose scraps of cloth into a family heirloom treasured for generations.
Your housemate doing needlepoint while listening to Spotify; your cousin spending every weekend under the hood of a car; your uncle painstakingly tying tiny flies with filament and feather for the next fishing expedition.
And meanwhile there’s you, departing to a quiet corner in your favorite room, breaking out a rolling tray and laying out grinder and flower on the flat surface, whipping out a package of rolling papers, then starting your own deeply meditative, analog-only manual ritual: rolling your own legal cannabis.
What does everyone have in common? Only everything. Such hands-on practices are used by people everywhere to unlock relief from physical toils and receive metaphysical healing in the same way.
The Magic of Ritual
Rituals—be they the superstitious antics of an athlete ahead of a big moment, the rigid order of the military, the mystical motions and incantations of a religious ceremony, or even the morning routine in the rushed seconds before school or commute—are everywhere in the human condition for a reason: Rituals can ease uncertainty, stress and anxiety in daily life as humans have believed for eons and as modern research has proven.
The wider world disappears in the moment as you focus on the task at hand. Demands on your mental resources—your “cognitive load,” as psychologists call it—are relieved. Distractions melt away, focus narrows. Everything is easier and simpler, because all that matters in that moment is an easy and simple task accomplished with one’s hands. Control is exerted. You’re in charge. And as anticipation builds during the task of preparation, enjoyment is extended.
The Value of Legal Cannabis
As cannabis becomes more widely socially acceptable and better understood as a wellness tool—and continues to demonstrate its value as a key component of stress relief, as much-increased consumption rates during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated—the method by which legal cannabis is prepared and consumed becomes an indispensable part of the wellness routine, and an opportunity to capture and enhance every possible benefit.
For all these reasons, mindfully preparing for the cannabis experience by taking the time to roll your own legal cannabis belongs in the pantheon of meditative rituals.
And instead of glorifying consumption or encouraging rushed or furtive use, Republic Brands’ OCB line of natural rolling papers exemplifies mindful escape—while also demonstrating responsible labor practices, production methods and environmentally sound sourcing.
The Relaxation of Rolling Your Own
Legalization means the chance to enjoy marijuana’s benefits in a guilt and stress-free environment. That’s a mindful choice. How the cannabis is consumed is another choice.
It may feel centuries removed, but the practice of rolling your own legal marijuana fulfills the same human need satisfied by the scrimshaw carver, the quilter, the tinkerer and the maker—and taps into the same hands-on tradition.
But since this is a 21st-century wellness ritual that also delivers quantifiable relief—from inflammation, from insomnia, from chronic pain—along with the mental intangibles, cannabis consumers enjoy some additional advantages. The progress of the future has to count for something! And the success and longevity of Republic’s OCB brand, which deliberately embraces this do-it-yourself ethos, suggests the power of something immutable and inscrutable at play.
Like the preparations for making morning coffee or the pre-bedtime mental wind down, and the many manual craft hobbies people devote their time to, rolling your own legal marijuana is a valuable meditative ritual. The prohibition-era generations would have done it if they could.
Get details on the OCB lines of natural rolling papers, bamboo and sustainably sourced cones, and useful rolling tools