In a small South of Market studio, yoga is practiced on, shall we say, a higher level.

As if doing child’s pose, or balasana, in a candlelit room with tranquil music wasn’t relaxing enough, Ganja Yoga adds cannabis to the experience as a way to help bring one’s practice to a state of heightened spiritual consciousness that may otherwise not be reached.

On a recent evening, instructor Dee Dussault talked her students through the various poses, encouraging them in a soothing voice how to breathe deeply through the diaphragm and, when the mood strikes them, to take a hit off a joint or vaporizer.

“You can consume cannabis throughout your practice, as much or as little as you’d like,” said Dussault as she walked through the room, gently adjusting her students’ poses. The marijuana, she said, serves to relax her students, allowing them to reach a more spiritual state of mind.

Ganja Yoga invites students to partake together in the first 15 minutes of class provided they have a medical marijuana card. If they don’t, they are welcomed to “do their thing” before class, as sharing or “mooching” during a session is discouraged.

An old combination

It’s tempting to think of cannabis-enhanced yoga in the same faddish vein as aqua yoga, disco yoga, laughing yoga or hip-hop yoga. But some yoga historians say the combination of yoga and marijuana dates back thousands of years, when the ancient yogis consumed bhang, a beverage made from the flowers of the female cannabis plant, as well as charas, or hashish, as part of their daily asanas and meditation rituals.

Several of Dussault’s students said they routinely get high before yoga, so they appreciated having a place to do so openly.

“For some people, it’s just what they would do anyway,” said Isamarie Perez, 27, of San Francisco.

While health experts don’t generally advocate smoking marijuana, many are starting to recognize that the plant’s active components, called cannabinoids, potentially have powerful properties that may be beneficial to health.

The most well-known cannabinoid, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, has been associated with reducing the severity of glaucoma, relieving pain and controlling nausea in cancer patients. Some scientists are studying the use of non-psychotropic chemicals in the plant known as cannabidiols, or CBDs, in slowing the growth of cancerous tumors.

Not supported by all

Health aspects aside, many in the yoga community don’t support the idea of combining ganja — the Sanskrit word for the cannabis flower head — with one’s daily practice. Some say marijuana conflicts with the concept of body purity that yoga encourages, or that it inhibits the ability to experience the true inner self.

“While I’m not personally against weed, I do think that yogis who are serious in their practice should think twice about using it, especially if it’s on a regular basis,” wrote Julie Phillips-Turner, a Maryland yoga instructor in a blog posting entitled “5 Reasons Yogis Shouldn’t Smoke Marijuana.”

Phillips-Turner notes that she expects “bake and bend” classes to become more common as the legalization of marijuana, already approved for use in four states and the District of Columbia, spreads. But her objections are based mainly in her belief that marijuana takes away focus and creates what is known in yoga as “maya” or a veil of illusion, or it confuses numbing with calming.

But Dussault said she sees cannabis simply as a tool to help people get to a place of transcendence. “Cannabis can help get into a more spiritual or meditative mind-set,” she said.

Not a common offering

Marijuana yoga classes are not widely available. Aside from the class in South of Market, a class in Atwater Village in Los Angeles called 420 Remedy Yoga has been held for a couple of years, and pot-friendly yoga classes have popped up in Colorado and other states where the substance is legal.

Dussault, who has been practicing yoga for 20 years and teaching for five, started offering cannabis-enhanced classes in Toronto in 2009 before bringing it to San Francisco in October.

In her Ganja Yoga classes, Dussault teaches what is known as hatha yoga, or a gentle form of yoga that focuses on breathing and involves a series of poses that encourages stretching and relaxation.

“We don’t do postures that would be considered intermediate or advanced because people are in altered state,” she said. “I would not want them to go beyond their body boundaries or fall over.”

Dussault also sees marijuana as a health and wellness aid, even beyond the common applications for glaucoma or nausea. “The stress of modern living can leave people anxious,” she said. “It is a wellness or health aid, especially if people take time to research strains that have applications for their particular health needs.”

She’s arranged with Meadow, an on-demand Bay Area marijuana delivery service, to have specific strains of marijuana delivered to class.

Getting high not the goal

When it comes to consumption, Dussault advocates the “less is more” philosophy. “I tend to tell people to consume less than they would if they were just hanging out and eating pizza,” she said. “You don’t want to get so baked that your yoga is impaired.”

Her students, some of whom are new to yoga while others have been practicing for years, said they found the classes relaxing and that marijuana added a different element to the experience.

“It definitely puts you in a relaxed state, and I think that’s really important for yoga,” said Praveen Sinha, 37, a software engineer. “It’s a little slower, and you tend to hold the poses for longer.”

Yanika Schneider, 30, a chemist, said she not only enjoys the class but is interested in how the cocktail of chemicals in marijuana bind to cannabinoid receptors in the brain. “There’s a lot of interesting scientific challenges to analyzing what weed is,” she said.

For Cole Short, 24, an advertising art director who was not a yoga enthusiast before attending Dussault’s classes, the marijuana was the big draw.

“This is the only way you’d get me to do yoga,” he said.

Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @vcolliver

Ganja Yoga

Classes are Wednesday evenings at Merchants of Reality, a studio at 285 Ninth St., San Francisco. Classes are 5:30-6:45 p.m. and 7-8:45 p.m. The experience costs $15. Information: http://deedussault.com/