Downward Facing Blog

Do you have collapsed arches? Adrian Cox tells you what to do about it.

(Bangkok Post article)

Rumor has it that the first thing yoga celebrity Richard Freeman noticed about his wife was her wonderfully spread open toes. One of my own teachers enjoyed referring to this story, “Go on, spread your toes, it might bring you love!” -apparently addressing the tight toed, single students. Leonardo da Vinci called the foot “a work of art and a masterpiece of engineering”, and Greek philosopher Socrates observed accurately that “we hurt all over when our feet hurt”.

Some say that there are chakras (energy centers) in your feet, and that enlightened beings transmit energy out of their feet. Many Nepalese and Indian temples have carvings in stone which represent the lotus footprints of Vishnu, or the Buddha. In yoga practice, we begin with a Sanskrit chant that begins declaring; “I bow to the lotus feet of the guru” –a voluntary turning of the mind towards the antiquity and lineage of this practice.

Even for the unenlightened, the foot is indeed a masterpiece of engineering, containing 26 small bones, and more than 150 ligaments. Your feet are complex structures, and usually ignored. How little we pay attention to our feet shows in how it’s almost impossible for most people to feel and articulate the third and fourth toes. Can you?

What I observe clearly though are that a majority of people walk around with painful, collapsed arches.

Weak arches may result in lower back pain, sagging energy, and postural problems that move all the way up the body. As Ida Rolf, the founder of the body work method of ‘Rolfing’ observed; “If one foot is consistently everted (a collapsed arch), the ankle, the knee, or perhaps more likely, the entire pelvic basin is rotated” There can also be high arches, and flat feet, but these are in the minority. The common, unnecessary, sagging inner arch is due to a weak (and trainable) tibialis anterior muscle. This muscle starts on the outside of your shin and moves across the shin near your feet and connects near the big toe. In other words, it’s the muscle that pulls up the arch in your foot like a saddle.

The solution is to build good posture from the feet up; widen the feet and toes, and press down the weight in three places, like a pyramid. Press into the mound under the small toe, the mound under the big toe, and at the front of your heel. When your anterior tibialis muscle gets strong, you can keep the middle three toes lifted as well. This in turn affects a subtle channel of energy up the legs into the pelvic floor. I teach this in lift of the middle toes and weigh balancing in all the standing postures, including simply standing up.

You might have trouble lifting the arch and toes directly at first. It’s likely you have been torturing your feet, compressing them inside tight shoes or high heels for many years already. A good way to start is to head for a foot massage to build up foot-consciousness. Or, use these simple yoga postures:

Virasana with tucked toes

This provides an uncomplicated and valuable stretch for the toes and connective tissues across the sole of your foot.

Virasana

This helps to stretch the ankles and top of the foot, and helps to establish the arch in the foot

If you practice yoga, good foot alignment will likely take care of a majority of the other alignment issues in your legs. Nearly all yoga postures are created from the feet up, and these principles can be applied in each and every posture. Notice these two postures with the right way of doing the posture and the incorrect (usual) way.

Downward dog correct version

Observe how the line of the ankle is in a straight line with the heel

Downward dog incorrect version

See the collapsed ankles here. If your feet look like this, bend and roll the knees outward while taking the weight to the outside edges of the feet. Align the heels straight and only straighten the legs to the point that the arches do not collapse. If the arches flatten when you push the legs straight, then the peroneal muscles on the outside of your shin are complaining out of tightness. The solution is more stretching, more yoga.

If you have lower back pain, or postural problems, consider your feet first. You may want to ditch the tight shoes or high heels for a while. Train your body to have an arch on the inside of the foot; it will be worth the effort in how tall you walk, and with how much energy. And who knows, your newly spread toes may even attract your future lover!

A yoga perspective on one wonderful little neck bone

(Bangkok Post article)

I had been teaching yoga for years before I found out about it. None of my earlier teachers had even said the word. After I discovered my own hyoid bone, it was like a light turned on inside me. It’s a gem of an anatomical discovery, one small revelation that proceeded to change the way I did any posture, yoga or otherwise.

The hyoid is a U-shaped bone in your neck, which holds the distinction of floating – that is, it is the only bone in your body which does not directly articulate with other bones. Instead, it is held in place by ten muscles one of which is the tongue. By connecting to the tongue, it helps you to swallow, and gives you the ability to produce complex tones. This gives rise to another, odd hyoid fact; this bone is only present in modern humans. The Neanderthals apparently had one, but it was less developed. Perhaps they did more grunting than speaking, but who knows, it’s hard to remember.

Reader, meet your hyoid bone.
Wrap your fingers around your throat right under your chin and take a swallow. The hyoid is the one that does a little jump. Didn’t even know it was there, did you? What you are about to read will make you happy that the two of you just met, especially if you like to stretch.

Knowing how to use your hyoid will easily give you superior backbends, added energy, and improved posture.

The first step is to pull the hyoid back and upwards for good postural alignment. I like visualizing a giant puppeteer standing above and behind me, holding strings which attach to either side of the U-shape bone. When the master pulls back and up on your reigns, observe how your neck lifts, and the chest expands slightly. For me, it also gives a liberating sense of openness in the back of my mouth.

In yoga, the use of the hyoid is even more important, without which, sloppy teaching and practicing often leads to lower back and neck injury. Most average people coming to yoga as a beginner have poor body IQ. Some may have trouble articulating the difference between the lower, middle, and upper spine. So a simple instruction to “move the lower back first then the head” may be difficult for some bodies to understand. What happens is people move the torso as if it was a single block, but really you need to treat each part of your spine differently. A common instruction to bend backwards gets translated to ‘look backwards’, i.e.; crank the neck back and push the belly forward. Because the lower back is relatively flexible, and most abdomens in need of toning, people tend to collapse into their lower backs and then under stretch the upper spine. If you ever hurt your lower back or neck in yoga, it may have been due to not using the hyoid properly. Learning this simple function of hyoid awareness will grant you pain-free backbends which stretch further.

Feel for yourself:

Slouch your body a bit, going soft in the belly and round your shoulders a touch. Lift your chin up as high as possible towards the sky, then, attempt to lift your chest and pull the navel inwards. What you’ll notice is that the belly sags and it is impossible to lift the chest completely.

(Lame cobra)

Notice the general way the energy collapses forwards towards the belly. The same girl, with an equal level of experience could do a much better backbend, if she knows how to use the hyoid. 

The reason why sticking the chin up in a slouch makes it impossible to extend the chest is that connecting the bottom of your hyoid to the sternum is the sterno-hyoid muscle. When contracted, it depresses the hyoid downward. If you raise the chin high before lifting the chest, the hyoid is already moving maximally downward and the sterno-hyoid muscle has no leverage to lift the sternum. The solution is to first lift the sternum while moving the hyoid up and backwards, like the puppeteer standing behind you. You may decide to look downwards towards the floor instead of looking up, and still you will get a deeper backbend.

Try it this way:

Lift your sternum (chest) upwards; expanding the space between each rib so the chest not only lifts, it pulls back inwards a touch. Once the extension is as high as possible, THEN lift your head back. Notice how free your neck feels and how engaged your abdomen feels.

Additionally, pull your hyoid back and up, which creates length in the neck and freedom in the back of the mouth. Be careful to distinguish between the hyoid and the jaw, the jaw stays relatively in the same position and relaxed.

I’m fond of instructing my students to move the head last, always. So as you roll into backward bends like cobra or upward dog, or even standing and dropping into a backbend, look downwards with your hyoid back until you know you have lifted the chest as much as possible first.

-Adrian Cox

How to find your personal balance using the hidden energetics of yoga

(Bangkok Post article March 27 2008)

Behind the scenes in a really good yoga teachers mind is rationale about how to sequence postures and breathing together. How hard to push, how long to hold, even which nostril you breathe out of, all play their role in how you feel leaving the studio.

The effect of yoga practice can be cooling or heating, an effect of the teachers’ sequence, and most importantly, your attitude while you practice.

Cooling postures are done slowly, encouraging a sense of release. This in-turn nurtures the body and nervous system. This is useful if you are overworked and stressed out. Heating on the other hand is reducing, and detoxifying, which can be good if you are not already depleted. The test is to feel into your own nature. There will be times when it is in harmony with your natural rhythm to nurture yourself and go slowly, and then times to push a bit, to break up your stagnation. Heating and cooling extend off the yoga mat and into the way you live your life as well. Simply by becoming aware of these two principles of what heats and what cools, are the keys to finding your balance.

Which one are you?

Career driven, intense and focused people have heat and the principle of fire in abundance. The slackers in life are ‘cool’. Being too hot and focused, or cool and defocused comes with its unique advantages or problems in life. Intense focus brings high levels of achievement, but it also may bring hypertension and heart problems. Being a slacker probably doesn’t do wonders for your bank account, and may lead to a slothful, overweight body. The fiery types often reach personal crisis, realizing that they MUST slow down and the chill ones may struggle to muster up necessary courage and determination.

It’s fascinating to see how a lot of the world’s characters are divided along these lines. How you practice yoga is reflected in this as well; in terms of your consistency, focus, effort, and detachment. When I have the good fortune of working privately with individuals, I always assess my students along these lines before teaching. One of the first things I do is simply look in your eyes. Do they move around a lot? If so, holding you in a posture longer might be a good idea. Do the eyes look intense and focused? Then we’ll focus on relaxation and an attitude of detachment.

One of my students looks at me with focused, intense eyes, telling me she has specially booked time out of her day to relax NOW. She opens her office at 7AM daily and gets more work done than the all the staff combined. She and I do a lot of cooling down. Another student of mine with eyes like a monkey can’t seem to focus for more than a few seconds. I make him work hard, holding postures longer or even shouting at him to bring his attention back to one point. She gets a lot of stuff done in life, and feels stressed out. He’s an underachiever but mostly relaxed. Two different people, with different life track records, and both of them require different approaches.

Effort and surrender in yoga

Aside from sequencing and obvious dialogue or attitudes, there are two yoga techniques used to create and release heat. For heat, you keep the eyes focused on a single point (drishti). For cooling, you can yogic-ly smile in a special way (shambhavi).

Drishti is done in postures so in a forward bend, you steadily look at the tip of the nose, or when you are in a backward bend you gaze towards the third eye. In the system of yoga I teach there are nine such advised places to look, each posture having its own focal point. With good focus powers comes something palpable in your energy, and you begin to glow in this indescribable way.

Special ‘yogic’ smiling is the antidote to the heat of focusing, which is done simultaneously with the eye focus. Your lips come into a faint smile while releasing the back of the mouth and the roof of your mouth lifts up and feels hollow. It’s just like tasting delicious food and saying, “hmmmm”! Your whole physiology smiles as your mind temporarily goes into a blissful trance. It’s the release on the pressure cooker so your pot doesn’t explode. When practicing yoga, the idea is to use both eye focus and smiling simultaneously. It steadies the mind, prevents injury, and produces a blissful condition of mind.

I am a kind of intense person, and for me to find balance, I practice this yogic smiling throughout the day. It gives me an instant release as my mind pulls inwards for a refreshing shower of awareness. On the yoga mat or off of it, you can use these two techniques at anytime or in any location. Simply observe your own nature and either heat up (focus) or cool down (detach) until you find your perfect balance.

 I got a few requests re: my last post about aliens and the year 2012 and our imminent destruction.

The following is a piece out of a blog post I made on myspace a while back… it is %100 true, and has little or nothing to do with yoga, the normal theme of the blog. Hope you don’t mind as I veer off…

Just a side note, three separate trips were made after this eventful night, and they were all disappointing.  I don’t know what happened. The economy in the area picked up, and the destroyed a lot of the trees and made way for planting of red cabbage everywhere. If you know of another UFO spot, please share with me… I’m ready to be beamed up… not heaven’s gate style though

Meeting extraterrestrials on ET mountain, Thailand

We drive into this remote Karen village of about 40 people, which is situated in the mountain range about five hours outside of Chiang Mai. The area is called the ‘a-manut’, which means, the “non-human region” - an eerie indicator of what we are here to experience! At the top of the mountain is an abandoned stupa and and monks quarters - the original monks apparently left due to this odd phenomenon in this area.

First order of business is to prepare a whole array of offerings for the spirits in the area, among which includes fruit, sweets, and cows blood . As we were told, if we don’t make the proper offerings, the strong spirits in that area might pick a bone with us at night. In particular to watch out for are a race of half-invisible things that live by eating smell!

Since it’s almost dark by the time we arrive, we set up sleeping bags and boiling water for our thermoses… while the villagers tell us stories of the “jan fai” (plates of light) that comes over their heads almost every night.

We set up our chairs on the edge of the mountain like we’re preparing for a movie. We can see a valley down in front of us, which extends as far as the eye can see with nothing… no buildings, one small dirt road, and no other villages. Shortly after the moon starts to rise, a couple red lights appear in the valley but we’re not sure what it could be. They appear then disappear, nothing too dramatic. Could it be a single motorcycle on that one road? But no, there is no road where the lights are appearing. The light show continues like this on both sides of the valley for the next several hours, appearing and disappearing, and changing colors from red to white to orange. Were they cars? No… the lights would move across huge distances very fast and then hover… and in areas where it would only be a mountain. Mind you… it’s completely pitch black.

Next day I check and indeed there are no roads in the area that we saw the lights. This is interesting but not necessarily worth camping out for. Night two rolls around though and is MUCH more interesting.

This time, lights appear clearly on both sides of the valley and we use our huge portable lamps to signal to ‘them’. We tried to use these lamps like morse code flashing them on and off, hoping that we can form some kind of communication. The lights flash brighter, red, then orange in color, then disappear. We wait some time and they reappear, but coming up our side of the valley towards our small camping area. In addition to the numerous lights starting to manifest in the valley, they started to come closer. There was this distinct feeling like the lights are like little eyeballs, peering at us… there was some consciousness there is all I can say.

At one point, we noticed a red light moving towards us, not from the valley but in the trees just about 20 feet away. It couldn’t have been a human, it was in the tree level. It couldn’t have been a plane, there was no sound! It was creepy,  and it was quite close to us.

I’m a fairly sceptical person and did my best to dismiss the phenomenon as a house, a motorcycle, a person with a flashlight… but couldn’t. They moved too fast, changed colors and appeared in places that wouldn’t be possible for something terrestrial as far as I know of.

So we’re sitting there and want more of the lightshow so the monk we are with advises us to psychically call them to us. I beamed a mental request, a telepathic communique to say hello. Frankly, I just thought that would beckon them to come closer in the light vehicles. However a moment later, I feel this intense energy go through my body. It’s like my whole body got placed in a microwave oven. I’ve never felt anything like that before. My hair stands up on end, my face starts to feel a weird pressure and inside my body is this strong heat. I maintain this for a minute not sure if I’m imagining, and ask everyone sitting next to me, “are you feeling this?” There was a resounding “YES!”, the kind of voice timber that says they are scared out of their pants. “They” were moving through our bodies, scanning us and seeing who and what we are. It’s not a good or bad feeling, just intense. My friend sounds like she’s hyperventilating, gasping “oh my god, om namah shivaya, oh jesus…”

Their presence strengthens and diminishes in relation to how much I keep the mental channel open. Eventually it fades and we all go to sleep. Later, around 1AM I wake up, walk outside to go pee and survey once again. The little red and orange lights are still there, but just over the roof of the building is an eerie orange light. So I hoist myself up on top of the parked car so I can get a better view. Whoa! What I see is the far ridge is completely lit up by five huge orange spherical lights that are stacked on top of each other in a worm-like or caterpillar formation inching up from the other side of the mountain. Remember, there is NOTHING in this area, no electricity, one road, a few candle lit villages. What we are looking at looks like the amount of light you would use for an airport, or a sports stadium. These lights are HUGE. They are morphing and pulsing in a way that almost looks organic, like it is alive or conscious. Looking through infared binoculars we cannot distinguish borders of the object, no frame around it or supporting structure… just orange spheres of very bright light.  I scream to wake up my friends. This one, they cannot miss!

If we had to guess it would be the mother ship?  The monk starts chanting, ostensibly to invite them closer. It seems to become conscious of us and starts moving back down the other side of the mountain, like it was shy, taking about twenty minutes to become a faint orange glow on the other side of the ridge.

There were more pulsing lights all over the area, but eventually, we get tired again and go back to sleep. Through the night though, we keep hearing sounds, seeing lights both inside the building we are staying and outside. The pulses of magnetic energy continued as well completely filling my body from head to toe, making my hair stand on end.

 I do feel different, if nothing else because my mind was blown wide open. It’s so strange that something like this exists, I mean, I heard of it all before, but now I know it’s not fiction. For about a week afterwards I was very psychic, that is, until I drank a beer. Something about that energy blast raised my own vibration for awhile.

So there u have it… but it seems to be gone now, that place is no longer what it was from what I know…

Anyways, that event really did open my eyes, we are not alone.  The idea going around in that area is that the borders between this realm (3rd dimension) and the next dimensions were a touch more porous than usual. It seems like the world is losing these mysterious places though.  Mucho magnetic super power psychic love beams, Adrian Cox

Why Buddhists, Mayans, Astronomers, and Yogis agree, NOW is the time for live from the heart

Somewhere in this universe there is a place where New Age meshes with Aliens and UFOS, yoga, crystals, feng shui, tarot cards and witchcraft. Perhaps it’s just the bookstore? For me, I tend to bristle when people carelessly mesh “spiritual” subjects together in a superficial way. I’m a bit more orthodox. Fundamentalist yogi? Something like that anyways.

About a year ago, it was with a skeptics mind that I agreed to go on a strange camping trip to a distant mountain outside of Chiang Mai. This remote location known only among a small group of friends and the local Karen hilltribe has regular UFO phenomenon. I’ll never forget what the hilltribe there called their area; “a-manut”. This means, the “non-human area”. They also had a number of stories about big plates of light floating over their heads at different times. To them, the lights were just angels. It was true, in what was the weirdest night of my life, I too saw and had contact with alien entities.

The daytime conversation that flowed around our small group of humans who I was camping with centered a lot on the coming collapse of the third dimension in the year 2012. There have been a number of predictions from all over the world and from different times that earth is about to go through a major shift. Soon. Specifically floods, fires and famine will spread across the earth and the earth will become like a hell.

The predictions coincide time wise with the end of the Mayan calendar set at December 20, 2012. According to many, this date spells the demise of the third dimension and the opening of fourth dimensional consciousness. If you are spiritually ready for your consciousness to transcend upwards, as I was told, amidst the fires, screaming, and mayhem you would be able to perceive the gateway between this dimension and the next alternate level and take a nice step into an alternate reality. In dimension 3.5, which overlaps this one, we apparently live longer, communicate telepathically and live at a higher vibration… whatever that means.

Who gets to go to 3.5 and who gets to suffer? Apparently its based on your own spiritual development. If you live ethically and act from a place of love then your personal vibration makes a match with the higher frequency and you can become a part of it.

Is it true? Is it hype? At age 35 I have already lived through a few things people said would be the “end of the world” or a major cosmic shift on XDATE.

Remember the 1997 Hale-Bopp “heaven’s gate” cult? From Wikipedia:

“In preparing to kill themselves, members of the group drank citrus juices to ritually cleanse their bodies of impurities. The suicide was accomplished by ingestion of phenobarbital mixed with vodka, along with plastic bags secured around their heads to induce asphyxiation. They were found lying neatly in their own bunk beds, with their faces and torsos covered by a square, purple cloth. Each member carried five dollars in quarters in their pockets. All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike tennis shoes, and armband patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team.” The suicides were conducted in shifts, and the remaining members of the group cleaned up after each prior group’s death”

All because they were getting ready for the end of the world! I confess, I love it. Talk about dedication! So really anything can happen, maybe nothing will. Still however, doing more living from the heart and serving humanity is a good idea. More yoga!

Check this guy out, this is one of four videos on youtube: David Wilcock

His website suggests that global warming is not due to our abuse of the environment, that it is rather due to a general coninciding of events in preparation for this global shift. Read this:

From his website at www.divinecosmos.com:

“SUN: The Sun’s magnetic field is over 230 percent stronger now than it was at the beginning of the 1900s, and its overall energetic activity has sizably increased, creating a frenzy of activity that continues to embarrass NASA’s official predictions.

VENUS: Venus is now glowing in the dark, as is Jupiter’s moon Io.

EARTH: In the last 30 years, Earth’s icecaps have thinned out by as much as 40 percent. Quite inexplicably, just since 1997 the structure of the Earth has shifted from being slightly more egg-shaped, or elongated at the poles, to more pumpkin-shaped, or flattened at the poles. No one at NASA has even bothered to try to explain this yet. Link to full article at NASA.

MARS: The icecaps of Mars noticeably melted just within one year, causing 50-percent changes in surface features. Atmospheric density had risen by 200 percent above previous observations as of 1997.

JUPITER: Jupiter has become so highly energized that it is now surrounded by a visibly glowing donut tube of energy in the path of the moon Io. The size of Jupiter’s magnetic field has more than doubled since 1992.

SATURN: Saturn’s polar regions have been noticeably brightening, and its magnetic field strength increasing.

URANUS: According to NASA’s Voyager II space probe, Uranus and Neptune both appear to have had recent magnetic pole shifts – 60 degrees for Uranus and 50 for Neptune.

NEPTUNE: Neptune has become 40 percent brighter in infrared since 1996, and is fully 100-percent brighter in certain areas. Also, Neptune’s moon Triton has had a “very large percentage increase” in atmospheric pressure and temperature, comparable to a 22-degree Fahrenheit increase on Earth.

PLUTO: As of September 2002, Pluto has experienced a 300-percent increase in its atmospheric pressure in the last 14 years, while also becoming noticeably darker in color. “

There are Vedic predictions as well, but I’ll save that for another post. In the meantime, it’s time for more realness, more karma yoga!
Love, Adrian Cox

A weekend of dynamic vinyasa yoga, breathing, and philosophy with Adrian Phillip Cox

Lotus Center, Czech Republic

April 12-13 2008

Adrian teaches dynamic Vinyasa yoga using foundations in Ashtanga, and Ayurveda while incorporating esoteric techniques of mantra, visualization, and energy work. Originally certified to teach yoga under Cyndi Lee of Om Yoga in New York City and the Bihar School of Yoga in Munger, India, Adrian has spent ten years in Asia teaching Sanskrit, meditation, Hatha yoga, and Ayurveda. He is the founder of Yoga Elements Studio in Bangkok which was ranked Asia’s top school of yoga by Travel and Leisure magazine in 2007

Agni Yoga - explore the relationship between inner fire, and the cosmic fire through mantra, solar breathing, dynamic vinyasa sequencing, and postures- all of which will expand your inner brightness and levels of concentration. Important philosophical dialogue while practicing will guide you to new levels of internal concentration and targeted seated meditation will integrate what you experience into pure stillness. 2 hours, intermediate and advanced students. No food in stomach minimum two hours before class and maximum of 20 students only.

Awaken the Spine- Going beyond standard backbends; this two hour workshop will guide you to develop spinal intelligence from the inside out. If backbends has either hurt in the past, or are ready for a new level of backbend freedom, come explore new ways of integrating all postures and movement through the spine. You will learn spinal anatomy, the mechanics of breathing in relation to backbends, and alternative, delightful, and pain-free ways of forming a circle backwards. Includes twisting postures. 2 hours, intermediate and advanced students

Vyana-Samana Bliss- Vyana is the expanding, radiant aspect of the cosmic ‘Prana’ and Samana is the contracting, inward moving aspect. Experience deeper, more internalized yoga and meditation and better powers of digestion through mastery of Samana, and greater self confidence and influence on people through the mastery of Vyana. Employing specific ways of doing yoga postures, dynamic Vinyasa sequencing, internal locks, breathing, and visualization, will give you the direct experience of your own internal flow of energy and a new understanding of it’s use in yoga. 2 hours, all levels welcome!

Prana, pranayama, and pranayama kriyas - The Yoga Upanishads state that as the mind moves, energy moves. This has implications in how you live your life, and your personal ability to create the life you desire. Through an exploration of the five patterns of energy in the cosmos, visualization techniques, internal locks, and the traditional system of pranayama of Mysore, you will come to experience why the practice of pranayama is extolled as the means by which the “veil covering reality is removed”. Students typically leave this class high and blissed-out and the after glow of continued application of techniques taught in this course are indescribably positive and life-shifting. This will not be a very physical class, although you must be comfortable with sitting on the floor. 2 hours , all levels welcome!

Win a new car from Lord Shiva! 

So my night of Shiva ended at approximately 11pm, AND with a serving of chocolate almond ice cream in my belly. I rank among the non-pious who ate past six pm and did not stay up all night with mantra in my mind. I really did set out with the best of intentions, but throughout the evening I got turned off and disappointed with the atmosphere at the local uma/shiva temple down the street.

Shane and I started the evening having dinner at a local restaurant.  The proprietor is a spiritual medium for Vishnu on the side and likes to decorate the place with endless statues of naga snakes, jatukam, yantras, ganeshas, and whatever else that stacks on power to the mix. We were chatting a while and as usual, yoga came up in conversation.

Considering his stated spiritual wardrobe, I suggested he does some yoga, because doing yoga accelerates spiritual development.  As he elaborated, it came clear that he really had no idea what yoga is, aside from a little simple stretching from side to side. Instead he works out at California Fitness. California Fitness is like cheap fast food and heartburn-  pumping out ac and lame house music on to the sidewalk. They have endless numbers of hard-sale agents outside the club with these confusing pricing models and BLOWOUT SALES that of course, expire tomorrow… or tomorrow…. it’s the LAST TWO DAYS! etc.

When I explained yoga a tiny bit, he said that he can clear his mind better than most people and really doesn’t need it (he was smoking cigarettes, drinking a cocktail, and eating meat). Given his proclivities, his lack of curiosity and knowledge in actual spiritual technique (as opposed to pretty pictures on the wall and cool jewlery) is, to me, incongruous.

“oooh… it’s POWERFUL!”

So we go to the Uma temple and it’s kind of that attitude magnified over several hundred people, most of whom are dressed exactly for the part of a really really good, devotee. That is, lots of eye makeup, white clothes, the cool jewelry, a giant jatukam amulet, and garlands of flowers. It looks like they are doing their best to look like a pretty Hindu picture. They touch the right column in the temple at the right moment, with a look of fear and awe in their faces. Reminds me of that old folk song, “oh lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”

To make matters worse, there are two men stationed in the temple with megaphones shouting at people to buy the plates of offerings for 200 baht. I thought I would meditate. You try.

Zero vibe. The temple feels about as spiritual as a shopping mall.

It is good to have visual representations of the divine, as the conscious mind needs something to relate to. The problem is when we stop at the representation as if it’s real.

It seems, many Thai Buddhists have forgotten the liberating teachings of Buddhism, which is basically a system of YOGA. Instead they devote themselves to magickal thinking over amulets, pictures and rituals that they have no understanding of.

The thing I love about yoga is that it turns your body into the temple itself. Any puja or offering you want to make to the divine can be an offering of your thoughts, breath, actions, food, or whatever to the internal consciousness. There is no OUT THERE out there… God is inside, the karma is inside, the solution is inside. 

Tonight and tomorrow your thoughts are magnified 1000X 

According to the hindu calendar, once a year on the new moon in the month of “Maagha” (similar sound to the name for Ma-ka-ra for the Thai name for this month of March) occurs “the night of Shiva” or what is called “MahaShivaratri”

The tradition is to fast from grains or fast completely from food, stay up all night and chant OM NAMAH SHIVAYA. Some people also drink Bhang Lassis which is basically low-quality ganja mixed into a yogurt drink. I think it may be difficult to chant with concentration while stoned so I will skip that, but it’s said that it’s Shiva’s favorite drink/pastime.

If you’re in Bangkok, Wat Kaek goes off with Puja every 3 hours all night long. Basically you and a group of people follow the brahmin priests while they chant longer mantras (usually from the Shiva Rudram) and pour milk, ghee, honey, and flowers atop the Shiva Lingam and yoni which represents the male aspect of consciousness (lingam) and the feminine aspect of power (yoni)

Shiva is the representation of pure witness consciousness within. At the highest level, parashiva is the merging of Shakti (energy/feminine) and Shiva (consciousness).

The way I see it is, OM NAMAH SHIVAYA - Give respect, in the name of (namah) consciousness (Shivaya). Simply pull back within, offer your thoughts and actions, and food of all kinds as offerings to your own divine nature, your own consciousness within.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stay up all night, I’m kind of into waking up early.. but I will be chanting in my mind all day long. Or at the minimum, think positive thoughts that you wish to carry forth into the universe. Perhaps you wish to manifest some change in your life… focus strongly today, especially tonight. Or perhaps you just want to offer your thoughts as yogic tapas, offering to the agni- the flame of consciousness.

Lovies, Adrian Cox

You know about the three bandhas already, here’s one you might not know of.

Yesterday I took a class with Paddy McGrath who is, predictably, humorous. Her instructions employ the use of varying styles of grunts and ‘hmmms’ to indicate desirable states of the body and collapsed ones.

I begged her if I could just pull her aside for a half hour and jot down four or five main principles of practice in clear English but she refused. She insists that we must understand asana from your body’s own intelligence, not intellectual mind.

So she comes about twice a year and in the interim period I teach my understanding of what I’ve learned only to discover the rationale behind my technique is way more sophisticated than I had realized.

There are endless numbers of yoga teachers who just imitate and parrot what their teacher had told them. Paddy may be the only teacher I know that really “gets it” from her own experience. She seems to have extremely high physical intelligence. It’s from that perspective that she discourages note taking  to gel these techniques into a “style”. So while it can be frustrating for the analytical side of me, it remains a continually fresh and dynamic teaching.Physical intelligence does wake up with practice and it is indeed something that goes beyond words.

We work with many of these points again and again already; uddiyana bandha, dropping the chin forward to the chest as long as possible when coming into a backbend, using the outside of the hands and feet…  but knowing asana as rehearsed instruction versus understanding from inside your body makes all the difference.

This round Paddy had a new teaching that took us all by surprise. It was named on the fly even, my own alternative label to Paddy’s mysterious “pull in here, hmm… uhh, yes!”  kind of instructions.

The Secret Bandha

 -Pull in the breast bone on your way to a back bend-

Pull the chin in, gaze downwards towards your nipples while lifting the arms, engage the abdomen to pull up and inwards to separate the torso from the pelvis… to encourage the upper spine to take more of the bend as opposed to the more flexible lower spine. All of us in the room are advanced students, and we practiced this instruction by really lifting and expanding the chest… going UP then dropping back.

Yesterday however, it was using all these points AND pulling the breast bone in, like a secret fourth bandha. What was amazing is, it shot up energy up the back of my spine and created an upward lift that you don’t get from just expanding the upper back.

Try this the next time you drop back from standing.

 Happy twisting, Adrian Cox

Yoga classes and workshops in Bangkok, Thailand: March 2008 newsletter for Yoga Elements Studio!

Greetings!

Hello and welcome to the slightly belated March newsletter- I just returned from teaching yoga workshops in the outlaw state of Johor Baru, Malaysia. I call it “outlaw” because apparently the crime rate of car jackings, muggings, and purse snatchings there is quite high. I didn’t notice anything aside from a fat bank security guy loading his shotgun and eyeing me suspiciously. Gulp. I have this world-view that the more yoga I do, I eliminate the likelihood of being randomly mugged or shot. Naïve? Perhaps. There is scriptural reference for that notion however; supreme teacher Patanjali says that when you master the first social rule of nonviolence, peace will manifest spontaneously around you. Shane and I were just invited to teach yoga in Afghanistan so I’m hoping for a very wide circumference of peace.

While I don’t get in bar-fights or openly curse people, I do kill mosquitoes and still get annoyed with random stupid things. I do think the yoga is helping though, without it, I might just be a soccer hooligan or punk gangster in some inner city gang. Or maybe not.

As far as learning how to wipe out your own past-life karmas, tune into a few of my blog posts about samadhi, mental impressions, and meditation. Yoga firmly suggests that you can liberate yourself from your past-life baggage AND become Self-realized in this life-time. To become “self-realized” is to become aware of yourself as the undying, bliss-consciousness that illuminates ALL living beings; you, me, your dog, and yes, even the mosquitoes.

I’m busy designing some new focus workshops, as I will soon be giving workshops in Switzerland, Czech Republic, the Singapore SUN festival, and the upcoming Moscow Yoga Journal conference. For me, I derive much inspiration from Paddy McGrath and Dr. David Frawley, and Cyndi Lee. Speaking of which, take a listen to my latest podcast interview with Cyndi Lee here. Next month I will be releasing an interview with Dr. David Frawley!

Sincerely,

Adrian Cox

Upcoming events:

Paddy McGrath

March 3-9 -do I need to say more? You may want to hurry though, she wants no more than 20 people in the room.

Sarah Avant Stover

March 21-23 -Sarah just wrote me from Rishikesh India last night. First impression: illuminated. Join this poupular teacher and yoga journal writer for a weekend of Anusara-Inspired yoga.

Ashtanga Intensive with Clayton Horton

April 21-27 - This intensive is suitable for beginning and intermediate students and will be like a mini-teacher training. Clayton has prepared an extensive manual and is covering the essentials of bandha, prana, philosophy, and much much more. Highly recommended!

Anusara Yoga with Kristoffer Nelson

April 25-27 - Kristoffer is one of the world’s few fully certified Anusara teachers. Come join him for a series of workshops he calls “The Life Divine”

It’s not until June, but I’m going to tell you this early: consecutive teacher trainings with:Nicky Knoff and Andrey Lappa. If you are intelligent, have time, and have money, you will most certainly avail yourself of these. Andrey Lappa blew my mind when I studied with him last year at Evolution in Hong Kong. Both of these two are world-class. Now finally a plug for two friends with related business:

Maha Shivaratri Yagya -6 march 2008
A Vedic pundit I know outside of Rishikesh, India is offering his services for Vedic ritual. On auspicious days he conducts Vedic fire sacrifices on the benefit of those who request them. We have them once a year at elements to clear the energetic patterns and atone for negative karma. These beautiful rituals are performed by trained Vedic priests, who chant mantras and offer ghee, flowers, herbs, and special woods into a sacrificial fire. The upcoming date of Shivaratri (the night of Shiva) is a particularly auspicious date, as it is said that due to the planetary alignment, your thoughts and mantras are magnified 1000X on that 24 hours.

A category - 10 hours, 11 pundits, +puja materials - 301 USD

B category - 8 hours, 11 pundits +puja materials - 251 USD

C category -5 hours, 11 pundits +puja materials - 161 USD

please contact: OmNath Sharma at omnath5@rediffmail.com

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) course - 29 March 2008

I personally took this course last year and have since come to apply the principles in just about every dimension of my life, but in particular into my teaching, business, and even relationships. NLP is way of perfecting the way you communicate and shares modalities from therapy, hypnosis and language. Highly recommended! For more information, call Kurt Peter Gottwald, certified NLP-trainer: 089-779-1515 or kapege@web.de

Newsletter-only promotion: 3 months unlimited pass only 12,595 baht. PLUS one month extra FREE! only in March Call us: 02 655 5671