Downward Facing Blog

Namaste Greetings!
Allow me to introduce this month’s hot yoga goddess; mother KALI:

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Sonic Yoga

DJ Fallout and Vinyasa FLOW guided by Adrian Cox
Coming to elements on Wednesday nights in July

It’s perfectly reasonable if you think I’m nuts when you read this. I don’t really care. It’s also perfectly reasonable if you get done reading this and get jealous… almost everyone does when I tell them the story of my last trip visiting aliens. As some derive from my writing already- I’m somewhat skeptical of these things already. If you know me at all- I don’t elaborate weird stories out of nowhere… but this my friends, was true.

Ok truth be told, I don’t have any idea if my upcoming trip to meet the ET’s will actually pan out or not, but it’s worth the try.

The other night I woke up from an extremely vivid dream because my wife was stroking my face. I guess she was consoling me as I was shouting and yelling… naturally, as I was pretty freaked out in my dream. Normally my dreams aren’t too clear- but this one was the lucid kind where you’re immersed in a whole world…

My friend Marisa and I were picked up in a craft and whizzing along a green terrain with a lake underneath. I didn’t know what the aliens wanted from us and it was uncomfortable.

Today I went to go plan the trip with the trip leader… a Thai healer of some good repute. He handed me the directions to the place and the photo on the page showed what I saw in the dream! He gave us the instructions to eat vegetarian until the trip and meditate a lot. He also handed us Kwan Yin amulets to put on our third eyes to beam the aliens love energy. I just love saying that…

So in case I disappear from this week on, I might have been abducted… frankly, I’m kinda into the idea :-p

The other morning around 6AM I got a call from my brother Ian telling me that my Dad had an accident in the Taiwan airport- he fell suddenly on a set of stairs, cut his head , arm, and shoulder on the sharp edge of the stairs. He was knocked unconscious and couldn’t remember anything.  The Eva air staff told us we must meet him and take him to the hospital when he arrived.

That’s the kind of call that wakes you up immediately.

In the past year I’ve watched my Dad age exponentially, losing a lot of vitality along the way. Although  I’ve never dealt directly with death yet, little else in my life has so far really driven home the point of my own mortality as watching my Dad approach the end of his own life. 

While we waited for him to be wheeled out of customs at Suvaranabhumi airport, my brother told me that of the dream he had just ten minutes before the EVA air staff phoned him…

In his dream, he was walking along with a family member and suddenly a guy comes out of nowhere with a stun-gun zapping the family member to the ground. Ian wakes up suddenly, heart racing, and then a few minutes later the call…

Have you had dreams like this yourself? I find dream-premonition fascinating. From where do these messages come from? Why do they communicate in symbols?

There are many models of the mind, from Freud’s concept of the un-sub-and super conscious mind to yoga’s view which is that what we operate from as our ego is really hovering atop a vast network of omniscience and creativity. If only we slow our ego operations of the mind down a touch then we can draw solutions and knowledge from the sea of consciousness within.

From this model we assume that everyone has the basic  resources within to be self-actualized, happy, and healthy. Yoga extends that further and suggests that we are innately blissful- but since I don’t really know what that actually means- in terms of daily life- I’m currently just calling it happiness.

The point here is that a lot of solutions reside within your unconscious mind. The key is trancing-out enough to access them. Meditation is a wonderful way of touching this sea of consciousness- stepping out of the way of the ego and touching the limitless self within. Hypnosis, yoga nidra, and deep relaxation also serve the same function. 

A technique to access your intuition

The other day I was sitting with an acquaintance propose a business deal to me and it was necessary for me to  assess her level of honesty, since under the deal I would be parting with my own money! I use this technique to let my unconscious mind speak to me, to get out of the ego.

When observing someone- widen your eyes so that you register the peripheral  vision while staying attuned to what the person says. Notice how your mind goes into an altered state immediately. In this state, you will be able to pick up more details that your conscious mind wouldn’t register. You will get more intuition, and more harmony with the deeper levels of being.

I’ll have to verify later if my intuition about that woman was accurate… It would be fantastic if it’s as accurate as my brother’s dream- even when they herald bad news!

The antidote to a noisy city life!

 Come float and drift your way through this silent, Friday night hip-opening flow class with Adrian Cox.
You will de-stress your body and soothe your senses with chill-out yoga, Tibetan chimes, dream-like ambient music,
candle light, incense, and zero chatter. All levels welcome!

Join Friday nights only in June at 5:45PM

(it’s gotten ridiculous)
Although we cringed when that one American model coined the term yoga butt, it probably did more good than bad in that it probably was good marketing to get people in the door to yoga studios. I’ve heard Bikram yoga aficionados declare similarly when confronted with the facts that it’s a fairly soulless exercise routine: “well, at least it gets people in the door!”

True enough. I’m on a mission myself. An evangelist of sorts even. Like many zealots throughout history I have this notion that the more people do yoga, well, it may just make the world better. Or lead to more divorces? Apparently there is this odd modern trend of women getting into yoga, and finding their husbands lagging behind on the upward evolutionary track and then leaving him in the dust. Or maybe we should all just do ecstasy, peak at the same time, and hug each other? Either way, yoga butt or no yoga butt, the world continues in it’s multicolored variety of complete odd contrasts- and with all the good vibes I’ve sent out, there’s still no shortage of suffering. 

What probably comes to mind first when you think of suffering would be humans, right? It’s true of course, and as Ken Wilbur would agree, in relative importance - we would deem our own race more worthy of saving than others. Naturally. That said however, we could perhaps extend the idea that our animal neighbors are feeling creatures as well. While we could argue the sentience-level birds with low IQ have, I doubt they find living in a chicken house pleasant. In fact, it looks like hell. I know- I actually worked in one on an Israeli kibbutz a lifetime ago. Compound hell X mass scale and you get the particularly gnarly hen houses used to fuel the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) machine:

Looks like a concentration camp doesn’t it?

Reasonably sentient human beings know about the sub humane treatment of animals grown for food. After all, PETA organization among others have done some clever eye catching protests such as this one: ( I feel like looking, don’t you?)

The irony

Today I was fortunate to capture these ridiculous pictures on the Bangkok skytrain. Yup, that’s a guy doing marichasana A, eating a drumstick. The same pose dedicated to one of the Vedic rishis, son of Brahma. Uh. Well I was complaining that ad firms are getting incredibly dull when always using “SEXY” to sell everything- I hadn’t really figured they’d stoop this low. It’s pretty stupid. Does this work on anyone??

“Let’s think- healthy is trendy now- so we have to make people think KFC is healthy… hmmm… how??”

“I know: YOGA!”

Sigh. I’ve been on a mission, like I said, to spread “the real thing” for the past eight years here. It looks like I didn’t quite get my point out. It is good to get the yoga butt and find yourself getting the yoga mind along the way. It isn’t good however to link crap poison food based on cruelty to YOGA.  In any case, I’ve come around to the “whatever gets them in the door” policy. My door would be nice, but I’m also generally altruistic… I want you ALL to start doing yoga!
(and avoid the chicken)

I have no peace in Bangkok lately. The advertising is getting so in-your-face that it’s becoming impossible not to ignore. Sometimes I’m thankful my Thai language skills are deteriorating , at least I don’t have to fully process all garbage.

Being on the Bangkok skytrain is the worst. I PAY to get on the train and every square inch of space visually is plastered by advertisements. There are two tv monitors installed in each section, playing the same ads over and over and over again, LOUDLY. When I plug in my headphones it’s still too loud for my already loud music to block out.

It’s amazing to watch people, in a total passive trance, uncritically watching these powerful messages. I’m afraid that within a decade of this, any vague sense of art, creativity, or counter culture, hey, even REAL culture is going to be gone… wiped out.

Look into my eyes…

As a clinical hypnotherapist and yogi, I have studied the mind and the brain and know a bit how it works in relation to being open to suggestion. We, you, and I are way more impressionable than we may like to think. The study of hypnosis has in fact, taught me that what we think of as being “free will” is in large part, a myth.

One of the theories of suggestibility holds that a person is suggestible proportionate to the amount of disaggregation of the psyche. Or to quote Boris Sidis, a Ukrane-born American psychotherapist who formulated the law; “Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness”. What does that mean? Well look at it like this:

When you are conscious, it’s more difficult to be manipulated or influenced, but, when you get confused, shocked, or passive (disaggregated) , it’s more likely an outside message compelling you to think some way or do something will be accepted uncritically.

If you want a perfect example of this watch NLP master Derren Brown at work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

My friend Todd, who is Bangkok’s resident IPhone guru tells how to crack the operating system so it can be used outside it’s originally designated networks in “authorized” countries: “A website with malicious code causes a buffer overrun in the browser. The browser crashes and the new code is written into the computer.” Well the mind is the same way. Distract the conscious mind, and when it’s not looking, slip in the malicious code underneath. We’re all social creatures, susceptible and open to influence. That’s good when the code is benign or positive. Buuuuuut… advertisers aren’t exactly batting high on the scale.

The commercials here use sex to sell everything from dried chicken noodles, to car lubricants. Are the people working in ad firms bored yet? It’s boring for me and I like looking at pretty girls, probably like a lot of people. Eventually this shit must desensitize us, right? Maybe? Like yeah yeah, another pretty girl falling in love with some guy because he was qualified for a low interest home loan. Yawn.

Let’s aim higher

Any psychology 101 class will consider Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a model of psychological development. (which, is not unlike the chakra system.) As a pyramid, it shows that in order to reach higher levels of development, we must have basic needs taken care of. So obviously, we can’t really entertain spiritual development if we’re hungry. Everyone ultimately aims for self-actualization; another way of saying that we are all deeply aimed at finding out who we are, and why we are here.

Why is it that advertisers relentlessly use the bottom rungs of this pyramid? Can we aim higher? What about advertising that appeals to our innate sense of wanting a better life for ourselves and the planet?

The Bangkok Metropolitan Authority is morally bankrupt . They are selling the soul of this country for a profit. Maybe that’s ok, nobody seems to mind? This constant barrage of messages will change society beyond recognition. It makes greed look normal, and most of what is advertised are physically unhealthy products. I’d rather not have the sound and visual aspect, I’d prefer it to be blank so I can get some peace somewhere. That said, if they had to have televisions, why not play educational bits? Like, why not teach the public better geography, mathematics, or environmental ecology?

ok ok, if you know me at all you’d know that I’m really the last person to address yoga for weight loss, buuuuut when my editor at Bangkok Post suggested this title I figured I would make a go at it. After all, it’s a legitimate and worthy goal. This should probably appear in the next week or two (on Thursday’s MyLife supplement.

Oh, and in case you did catch my foot arches article in the post, the pictures are WRONG! I’m embarrassed actually. The photo for what is incorrect is listed as correct and vice versa. Also, that’s not virasana… sigh. I’ll live. What is it they say? Say good or bad, doesn’t matter, just as long as they spell your name right. So where we go, and even if weight loss isn’t your concern, read to the end as there’s some good info about breathing and eating. Mucho love. Adrian Cox

The yoga butt

A question I hear all the time is: “will yoga help me to lose weight?” For certain reasons I hesitate to answer with an immediate yes, although nobody really sees many fat yogis running around. Weight loss sells though, in fact, when pressed for business, studios and gyms make yoga advertisements using hot, sexed up girls to prey upon insecurities. They even promise losing X number of kilos per week or to sculpt you a “yoga butt”; what is now a somewhat infamous quote made years ago by an American fashion model.

Personally, the only weight problem I’ve struggled with was keeping it on, although there does seem to be a growing, mysterious relationship between age and weight persisting longer than it used to. Regardless of age, physical activity, or diets however, there are only two known factors in weight control: how much you move, and how much you eat.

Before I launch into the mechanics of weight loss through yoga, you should know that the aim and benefits of yoga are much more profound than simply a sexy, fit body. Yoga can give you a new perspective in life, and a sense of wellbeing, happiness, and self-actualization. Ultimately, to attain yoga is a radical shifting of awareness in which we identify with what is transcendent, beautiful, and unlimited and free ourselves in the process. To that end, many yogic paths have developed, only one of which involves bodily contortion. The postures which people now associate as “yoga” itself are really a small aspect of the whole practice. Nonetheless, an excellent entry point into higher states of consciousness is through the body. Yoga is a mind body discipline which aims at unity, harmony, and balance, the objective of yoga is never simply to loose weight. It’s to balance your weight. If you have big bones, no matter what you do, you’ll never look like Kate Moss. You do however stand privy to a whole litany of positive side effects, maybe even becoming unreasonably happy.

How you can balance your weight

To reach your higher potential, and slimmer figure , you obviously must manage both your expression and also your intake. That means, how much you do yoga, and what you eat- both in terms of food, and impressions.

When we are breaking up the sloth of inactivity, getting moving is the hard part. Just how bad do you want to change? As I like to say, the hardest yoga pose is the “getting on the mat posture”. Simply do that four times a week, and in a month you will not only be more fit, firm, you’ll feel amazing inside and out. You might also get addicted to yoga and in the process, find that you’ve generated new, positive habits. An amazing side effect of conscious yoga practice is that with time, you will find yourself craving healthier foods. Addictions may drop away, I’ve even experienced this myself. An explanation I use for this phenomenon is that in yoga you will cultivate more awareness for the sensations inside your body. This in turn results in your ability to hear the body’s own language and what it actually needs for food.

 In the science of yogic medicine- Ayurveda;  excess weight is a problem of excess water and earth elements. There are five elements: space, air, fire, water, and earth. To get earth and water to reduce, we must move up the scale to increase fire and air. Foods also move along this scale, sweets for example are considered to be composed of the elements of water and earth, whereas raw vegetables and fruits have more of the air element. Yoga too is conceived of as a kind of fire which heats the mind  through sacrifice or penance. Simply put, just get yourself to the yoga mat!

In class you will practice standing postures such as triangle, reversed triangle, and side stretch which reduce the earth element,  and in turn help with weight loss. However it’s the attitude that you take inside the yoga which makes the most difference. If you carry around a few extra, simply think of putting stronger effort in to the practice– increasing the element of fire. Fire transforms one thing into another, and through the mental fire, you too can transform yourself into a new shape, and even a new life.

A secret to eating less

A secret to how you practice, is the way you breathe when you do yoga. Contrary to the way most yoga is taught, the breathing should be slow, and minimized as much as possible. Here’s a tip, if you finish practice and you feel very tired and hungry, then it’s highly likely you were gasping in lots of air. What is going on here? When you take a lot of oxygen into the body, it turns the blood alkaline, which manifests as a craving for acids, ie; FOOD. However, if breathing is minimized, the blood stays more acid, and the result is a light body, less need for rest, and less appetite. Minimized breathing is not the same as holding the breath however, conscious breathing is the central aspect to all practices of yoga, just slow, and minimized.

For me, yoga is the most significant work we can do in our lives. Physically, no matter how much yoga we do, we will still get old and die. Mentally and spiritually however, a regular practice of yoga and meditation can create such radical wellbeing that when we do finally achieve the illustrious yoga butt, we ultimately look less in the mirror and more inside ourselves, where the real happiness is.

Hello again, sorry for the long absence… was in Europe teaching yoga for a month! I think I forgot how to write in the absence

In case you’re around, I am doing a meditation on Sundays at 1PM, material I have not taught previously.Since the Sunday afternoon mantra meditations are only thirty minutes, and there is so much background material to discuss, I want to fill in the blanks about this.

Firstly, a student just came to me and said she was hesitating to come because she doesn’t know how to manage a block inside her energy body, that something feels stuck around the heart.

This terminology may be familiar to those who do pranayama and meditation, with the goal of pulling energy up the spine. I too used to feel a block along the central channel that I couldn’t seem to resolve through any amount of meditation or mantras. Finally one significant  day in my life about two years ago, when I got to heal a relationship with my mother, I felt the energy start to flow upwards with ease. So, the chakras and the energy body also hold obstructions in them which mirror those in the mind.

I also believe that the opportunity to meet my Mom and go through that process may have only come about through the work I had made on myself in the years prior. So, in other words, meditating in this way may have elevated me to the point that my psyche was ready to have the experience.

So when that student complained of a block in the energy body, I just told her to come, and chant, as this process itself shakes up the held patterns of energy and reshapes them to their higher possibility.

Each of the seven chakras locations, and their basic attributes of color, element, and psychological  associations should be memorized by every yoga practitioner. There are a lot of books on that subject so I won’t go into that here.

The chakras are visualized and struck with the sound of the bija mantra in order from the base of the tailbone upwards to the top of the head.

1. Root chakra - mantra “KREEM” - this mantra is the sound which creates electricity and transformation. It is the seed sound for the goddess Kal

i, who is the personification of Kundalini, hence placing this mantra at the tailbone stimulates this higher, transformative prana to activate. Kali is TIME and rules over the dissolution of matter back to energy (death) as well as the destruction of illusion. When chanted at the root chakra, this mantra also helps us to understand what true security is- inside the Self!
OM KREEM KALIKAYE NAMAHA!

2. Sex chakra - mantra “KLEEM” - this mantra is sticky, in that it holds things in it’s place, and attracts to itself.  It is the energy of attraction, beauty, creativity, and love. Connected with the Goddess Tripura Sundari who, symbolizing a pacified crown chakra grants us the experience of beauty and truth from within. It can also be used for Lord Krishna, and any deity or thing we wish to pull towards us. As the sex chakra is concerned with creativity and love, awakening the higher side of this chakra with this mantra, we become a source of love and creativity, without the need to manipulate others to satisfy us. OM KLEEM SUNDARYE NAMAHA!

3. Navel chakra - mantra “HOOM” or “DOOM” as you can hear, these two mantras both employ the long U sound, which has a similar effect of protection. Chant HOOM, with a short U sound, emphasizing the exhale and you will feel the navel contract, this is where the navel chakra is. HOOM is specific for Agni, or FIRE. DOOM is specific for the goddess Durga who is sought for protection. These mantras increase intensity and heat, which is a good thing especially for the digestive strength. The higher notion of this chakras meaning of power is the expression of a quiet power that does not need violence to attain it’s ends. Instead, true power is when all things are given freely to us without request or struggle.
OM HOOM AGNIYE SWAHA!

4. Heart chakra - mantra “HREEM” - This mantra is like OM but for the Goddess, and connects you magically at a heart level  to the Supreme, or, any other deity or thing we wish to get closer to. This is one of the most important mantras and has positive effects upon the physical heart as well as the energetic heart. The higher aspect of the heart chakra is to let the expression of love become unconditional and the direct perception of the air element.

OM HREEM MAHADEVYE NAMAHA!

5.  Throat chakra - mantra “AYM” (like AIIIIM) - chant this mantra for wisdom, higher learning, teaching ability, and the gift of convincing speech. Connected with the Goddess Saraswati, this mantra is the most important mantra after OM.

OM AYM SARASWATYE  NAMAHA!

6. Third eye - mantra “SHREEM” - I never tire lately of talking about SOMA, and the soma chakra at the back of the head. The mantra SHREEM brings about beauty, devotion, abundance, softness, and can be used to take refuge in whatever deity we choose. SHREEM is connected to the goddess Lakshmi, who’s two lower arms dispense tangible wealth, and who’s two upper arms hold lotuses, the abundance in spirit, the SOMA we yogis are seeking. 
OM SHREEM MAHALAKSHMIYE NAMAHA!

7. Crown chakra - mantra “OM” - liberation, going beyond all form. When you chant OM, bring your mind to stillness after the sound has finished, which takes your mind to the pure stillness within.

Chant each of these in order, drawing your mind to each chakra, striking the chakra with the mantra:

KREEM
KLEEM
HUM
HREEM
AYM
SHREEM
OM!

As your concentration gets better, think of each goddess at each chakra and dissolve the chakras into each other until they dissolve at the crown. So, you can dissolve earth into water (root chakra to sex chakra), water into fire, fire into air, air into space, space into mind, and mind into the cosmic.

I love this meditation, and find it very powerful. Come join me to practice each Sunday in May at 1PM!

Much love, Adrian