The Practice and Theory of Coex

Touching the mind through the body and finding healing and wholeness.

The Practice and Theory of Coex

Tony Crisp

Coex is a way of relating to oneself that allows spontaneous self-expression. This has in it a number of possibilities. Firstly, it has the possibility of healing muscular pains and psychosomatic illnesses. Secondly, considering how simple the practice is, it is one of the most easily used means of releasing muscular tension and internal stress. Thirdly, it is a unique way of experiencing a form of exercise that arises from an internal source while allowing external discipline. And fourth, it brings about a widening awareness of oneself, as with the best forms of meditation. So coex is a doorway to a wider experience of yourself, and an opening to the huge potential you hold within.

If you have never experienced coex, the things that have been said will still not have communicated a clear picture as to precisely what the practice is. I will try to clarify by considering a question of what coex is based on. We need to look at this question because it is not well understood how it is possible to consciously use some of the most fundamental and usually unconscious processes of our being, and how to work with them in a healing and meditative way.

A natural process in you is allowed to unfold

For instance, coex arises from three fundamental functions of the human body and mind. The first of these is the process called self-regulation or homeostasis which acts to regulate all the systems of our being. Most of us know about self-regulation from our own experience, even though we may never have given it the name of homeostasis. When we exercise or run to the point when we perspire, the perspiration is a process of homeostasis. The word itself means the maintenance of equilibrium within an animal. The body heat produced by exercise would destroy the cells unless discharged, so our body regulates its temperature by losing heat in the evaporation of perspiration. Without such a process of self-regulation, we would very soon die or become seriously ill, so self-regulation is basic to our well-being.

The process is most easily observed in the body. It also works as actively in our mind and emotions. Most of us have at some time eaten something which has disagreed with us. We have consequently been sick. Such vomiting is one of the processes which our body regulates its system by and discharges things which might otherwise create illness or carnage within us. Similarly, our self-regulatory process also functions psychologically. Just as our body attempts to get rid of difficult or dangerous foodstuffs, so our mental and emotional self attempts to discharge difficult or dangerous feelings and ideas.

Why do some people come through a crisis such as bereavement or ill health better than others, asks Dr. Peter Knapp, Professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine. His reply was:

‘I believe that the ones who stay healthy actively grieve. They allow themselves to feel and express their emotions.’ If you lock feelings away, it seems your body mourns for you by becoming sick. Very often we unconsciously work against these processes in our own being whether they are physical or psychological. We attempt to block the self-regulatory activity that is trying to get rid of dangerous things we have taken into ourselves.

Your urge to heal and grow is expressed

This begins to clarify what coex is, to work with our inner processes, to allow our being to express its own internal need to exercise, to release tension and emotion and to allow usually unconscious, self-regulatory activities into awareness. From this you can begin to see how self-regulation plays a part in coex. This becomes clearer when we look at the next of the fundamental processes involved in the experience of coex, which is dreaming.

When we consider that the self-regulatory process in regard to perspiring or vomiting is a spontaneous movement or function from within ourselves, one can see that our personality is all the time immersed in processes which it has not willed into action. Coex is a way of relating constructively to these activities in you. These self-regulatory activities and your relationship with them are seen very clearly in the dream process.

Freud said that dreams are ego alien. By that he meant that when we sleep, our waking personality is involved in a drama that it has not created. One simply witnesses or experiences the dream, often unwillingly. Sometimes we wish to escape from the dream the dream is a spontaneous and unexpected experience. It occurs in sleep when our conscious self is relaxed and in a condition in which it allows the unexpected to happen, and the unexpected in the case of dreams means allowing a drama to unfold, allowing strong emotions, physical movements, sexual feelings and speech.

From the point of view of coex, it is important to remember that these very purposeful activities occur while our personality relaxes its hold on the body and our mental, emotional life.

If you have observed a cat, a dog, or a human being while they sleep, their limbs can often be seen to twitch or move. Perhaps you can see their eyes moving and they may even make sounds and or with a person they may speak. If you could see the images of the dream they are experiencing, then you would see the movements and speech as expressions of the dream. All this happens when their conscious self is relaxed in sleep. Perhaps the dog or person are completely unaware of the powerful sounds or movements being made, so that if asked about them on waking, they would have no memory. Some people move to the extent of sleepwalking without later memory.

The dream process is much more than fantasy

If we summarise this information, it can be seen that the dream process can produce a spontaneous drama, perhaps like a play with a beginning, middle and end. It can produce physical movements, it can produce spontaneous vocalisation to the extent that I have frequently been told that a husband or child can hold a conversation or answer questions while asleep.

The dream process also produces strong emotions, unusual states of mind or memory, and sexual pleasure. In fact while we sleep, a process that we often know little or nothing of when awake, is moving us physically, vocally, mentally and emotionally.

During recent research carried out By Adrian Morrison, at the University of Pennsylvania, it was found that not only do mammals dream, but the movements made during our dreams are usually suppressed from being fully expressed by our limbs, that is the movements which flow into our limbs but is suppressed by an area of the brain which stops such full movement. If this area of the brain is injured, what occurs is that the animal fully expresses in body action what it is dreaming. Thus, cats were observed during Morrison’s experiments, to hunt and play while fully asleep. Of course, in humans too this would occur but for the suppression of full movement by the brain during sleep. We too would dance, run and move with our full body just as we were doing in our dream. This fact is one of the key points in regard to what we are aiming at and what is possible in using coex.

Your being is always trying to heal itself

To explain this in more detail, let me quote from Dr. J. A. Hadfield’s book ‘Dreams and Nightmares’. In writing about the homeostatic process as it works psychologically, he says:

There is in psyche, an automatic movement toward readjustment, towards an equilibrium, towards the restoration of the balance of our personality.

This automatic adaptation of the organism is one of the main functions of the dream, as it is indeed our bodily functions and of the personality as a whole. This idea need not cause us much concern. This automatic self-regulating process is a well known phenomenon ill physics and in physiology. The function of the compensation which Jung has exercised, in the dream that is, appears to be one of the means by which this automatic adaptation takes place, for the expression of repressed tendencies has the effect of getting rid of conflict in a personality. For the time being, it is true, the release of insecurity, rage or fear, may make the conflict more acute as a repressed emotion emerges, and we nave a dream from which we wake with a start, but by this means the balance of our personality is restored.

That dreams have as one of their functions the process of self-regulation, is not only Hadfield’s view, but is quite general in psychology. Therefore, through your dreams we can make an adaptation or adjustment to the external experiences or the internal forces within you. Through the dream process you are able to keep your balance in life. The dream process manages this by expressing emotions and drama that you may not often allow otherwise into your waking life.

If we strip away the actual images of the dream and simply look at what is visible to an outside observer, then we have the interesting conclusion that the dream process is able to keep a balance in body and mind by the expression of spontaneous movements, emotions and vocalisations. Through this strange yet observable phenomenon, our health and well-being is preserved. Usually, we are not used to considering that our being makes spontaneous movements of feeling and body except perhaps in regard to our heartbeat, digestive processes, sneezing and so on. Also without the above information we may have found it difficult to believe that our being needs to express powerful and unexpected emotions and speech. If we accept that, then it becomes acceptable too that it is unhealthy to suppress such movements, or such a process. In fact, if we feel ill or in stress, then it would be helpful to seek out such a process and work with it towards a more satisfying state of being. The first step in doing that is to realise that your system is all the time attempting to make such movements and produce spontaneous emotions and drama. Secondly, we need to accept this as natural and healthy, and if such a process begins to emerge in any degree into our waking life, not to suppress it in fear.

Because the jerks and spasms of the dream sometimes, if the need is great, begin to occur while we are awake, I have met a number of people who learned coex, and through its practice dropped a great burden as they realised their irrational or unwilled movements were part of a healing process and not an illness.

This increases the efficiency of your being

An important point is that because the healing or the balancing action of self-regulation does not work perfectly while we sleep, in other words we may repress or run from the action even while we sleep, we frequently need to learn now to allow and work with the process while awake, and that in a nutshell, is coex.

Perhaps we can now give a fuller definition of coex based on the information given so far. From what we have seen of sleep, it is obvious that when we let go of the waking judgements, decisions and attitudes of our personality, the spontaneous movements and drama of dreams occur. Outside of our consciously wished activities, a situation has been created in sleep where aspects of our nature usually unexpressed otherwise can emerge. In this expression our being can use self-regulatory processes, can integrate and compare experience with a total of previous memories, can respond to the questions of the day or the problems we face, in a way that is not usually possible while we are awake.

Can you therefore imagine a situation in which while you are still awake, you allow a state of mind and body in which active decisions, judgements and purposive aims are dropped for a while? This is the necessary step you take in approaching the experience of coex. You take on a quiet, accepting attitude, then the sleep/dream process can begin to function even though you are wide awake. The process doesn’t need you to be asleep, only to stop interfering, judging, deciding what you ought or should be doing. If you can stop forever interfering with your process, and for a time at least, listen and allow, then the self-regulatory action, the creative response from full experience and the other functions usually only found in dreams, can emerge into waking consciousness.

There is a very definite advantage to this. As Freud noted, even while asleep, we tend to repress feelings and activities we feel guilty about or afraid of. We thus interfere with the way our self-regulatory process would keep the balance in our system. When working with the process consciously, it becomes obvious to us when we interfere, so the healing function can work more efficiently. Also, your conscious personality enlarges its area of experience by meeting feelings, insights and creative processes of being which were out of reach while left to the period of sleep. Your waking personality then begins to be more in touch with the processes of life active within you.

It has been used in all ages and cultures

This way of allowing your conscious self to relate more fully to the creative and regulating processes of your deepest being is not new. It would be unusual indeed if such an important yet simple and natural process had not already been used. In fact, in almost every age and in every culture, an approach to the self-regulatory functions has been made in some way. To mention just a few, in India a practice called Shaktipat allows and works with spontaneous movements and emotions while the practitioner drops their conscious aims. Shaktipat is a very old practice. In Japan there is a similar practice called Seitai. It is used alone or in group form, and the practitioners use three formal movements, then allow free body movements. Although Shaktipat is considered by its practitioners to be a holy meditation, Seitai is used in a similar way to which a modern European would approach healthy exercise.

Another way of approaching the inner process began in Indonesia, and is called Subud. Like the others, it is practised alone or in group form. Its practitioners consider it a religious exercise, and during its practice the full range of phenomena associated with dreams, such as intuitive insight and wider awareness, integration of the conscious and unconscious self, healing of body and mind takes place.

Within the history of our own culture, various types of coex have existed. One of the most interesting was that used by the early Christians in what we know as Pentecostal Christianity. Prior to the present ritualised service, the early Christians created an environment in which they relaxed or surrendered their conscious self and allowed spontaneous movement, vocalisation known as glossolalia, and feelings. Thus, to some who witnessed such action, they appeared drunk. Also, like most early forms occurring prior to recent psychological findings regarding the unconscious and dream process, the experience was considered a holy one and directed by the Holy Spirit. In our own times we would simply say that the beneficent forces of the unconscious were being allowed spontaneous expression.

Nearer to our own times, Franz Anton Mesmer found that when people relaxed in a way that allowed movement, they experienced a rapid healing of physical and sometimes psychological illness. Certainly there was a rapid healing of what today we call psychosomatic conditions. Like the other forms, these early therapeutic groups were helped to let go of their conscious volition.

What then did these people do to find health and happiness?

In our own century the Swiss psychiatrist Jung, in helping some people to release nervous tension and allow their self-regulatory process, taught them to start by allowing spontaneous movement of their hands. Talking about people who managed to grow beyond the difficulties in their life, he said:

What then, did these people do in order to achieve the progress that freed them? As far as I could see they did nothing but let things happen, for as Master Lu Tzu teaches in our text, the light circulates according to its own law if one does not give up ones accustomed calling. The key is this. We must be able to let things happen in the psyche. For us, this becomes a real art, which few people know anything about. Consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting and negating and never leaving the simple growth of the psychic processes in peace. It would be a simple enough thing to do, if only simplicity were not the most difficult of all things. It consists solely in watching objectively the Development of any fragment of fantasy. Nothing could be simpler than this, and yet right here the difficulties begin.

For many people it is easiest to write them, other visualise them and others again, draw and paint them with or without visualisation. In cases of a high degree of inflexibility in the conscious, often the hands alone can fantasy. They model or draw figures that are quite foreign to the conscious.

He goes on to say that these exercises must be continued until the cramp in the conscious is released, or in other words, until one can let things happen, which was the immediate goal of the exercise. In this way a new attitude is created, an attitude which accepts the irrational and the unbelievable simply because it is what is happening.

Moving from Jung to Dr. Wilhelm Reich, he found that when he enabled patients relax muscular tensions, they often began spontaneous body movements, into which arose feelings and dreamlike fantasies. If the movements and imaging faculty was allowed to continue, the patient gradually became aware of what was causing their inner tension or conflict, and the tension was thereby released.

Even a limited study of these various approaches shows they have enormous areas in common. All of them necessitate the surrender or letting go of conscious volition during the practise. All of them release a spontaneous series of experiences such as physical exercises, singing, dancing, internal shift of feeling and profound and practical insights into oneself and one’s relationship with the process of life. Where they differ is in how they explain the cause of these experiences, i.e. it may be explained by one group as due to the intervention of God, by another group as due to the power of the guru, by yet another as the power of the unconscious, and so on.

A way to healing - to personal growth - and to the abundant life

Of course, my present explanation in regard to its connection with the dream process is one which uses the best of present day knowledge, but no doubt it will be explained differently in the future. What is perhaps more important is the question of what are its possibilities for us now, and how call we begin to use it? If we consider the first, what can be immediately gathered from the various approaches is that it has been used for three main objectives.

For the healing of physical and psychosomatic conditions. My personal observations of this are confirmatory, although not in the way of the sort of miraculous events that one sometimes hears from the older traditions. The movements that arise are an amazing way of exercising and toning up the body and mind. It is as if the process behind what arises aims at mobilising and making alive, all the limbs and functions of being. Life in the form of sexuality, breathing or working, is movement, and the exercises not only move our physical form, but also enliven and release the energetic flow of feeling behind the functions. The process of coming alive gradually deals with the blockages to these, which had previously been experienced as physical and psychosomatic illness.
Coex has often been used as an approach to the divine. Only some of the forms of coex see this as a main objective though. From a study of the different approaches, it seems that you can choose which doors of your being you will allow to open in your meeting with yourself. Some forms of coex, such as Seitai, allow only physical movements with very little sounds or feelings. Where there is a very open approach however, there seems to be a much wider experience of the possibilities of your whole being. The unconscious has the faculty of taking an overview of our total life experience and gathered impressions of the outer and inner world. This is rather like standing back and viewing our whole life at once instead of being involved in just today and our present attitudes, cares and loves. Therefore, quite a different view of our experience can arise from this wider view. From it one quite often sees a relationship with the rest of humanity and with the cosmos that may not be apparent in the limited view of day-to-day affairs. It is out of this wider view that a personal sense of the holy comes. It does not seem limited to any one cultural religion, but seems to be a blend of them all. At the same time it appears to cut away surface beliefs and touches what is the real foundation of them in your own experience.
In coex there is often the drive to experience it for the sake of exploring of who you are, and what your possibilities are. Some people have a deep drive to explore, whether that is an outer landscape or their own inner world. Coex has, in its many forms, always been one of the main ways people have gone through the doorway to the world within themselves, and explored it. From my study and experience there does not seem to be any observable boundaries to this inner world. It is as extensive and as varied as our outer world, though with different laws by which it functions. Basically we are exploring what was previously unknown to us. For this reason it is often called the unconscious.

In any practise of coex, whether the practise releases a series of stimulating exercises to our open and listening awareness, or whether what arises is a previously unknown memory or feeling which had been etched into us at childhood, and has influenced our conscious decisions ever since, each section is an exploration into oneself.

This leads me to the name itself, ‘coex’. Because the overall result of the practise of relating to your hidden inner life is one of widening awareness of yourself, I have put together the first part of the two words consciousness and expansion to form the word coex.

Recently, someone using the practise asked me whether coex means comrades in exploration. That too is true.

The Way of Practising Coex

Coex is something to experience, not something we are taught. The simplest way of describing Coex is to say it is a process of allowing parts of yourself to express that in everyday life may never have had opportunity to declare themselves before.

By meeting weekly, a group practising Coex creates a supportive environment in which the members of the group can feel safe enough to permit spontaneous body movement, sound and emotion. In most social settings we usually restrain everything except what may be acceptable to others, expedient in the situation, or judged as correct. This means that we may not give ourselves the freedom elsewhere to - allow our own creative imagination - our body to discharge tension through movement - experience our intuitive process - and our full range of feeling responses. In this way we gradually diminish ourselves, blocking out much of ourselves that is not of immediate use in everyday affairs. We may in fact diminish our relationship with life itself.

Honouring simple movement is important in Coex because all the processes and expressions of life in us show as the swing between movement and relaxation. The heartbeat, breathing and the movement of the intestines are examples of this. Most emotions, such as crying or laughing, also involve strong physical movements. If we block expression of our basic living drives and feelings, we not only build up internal tension, but we also interfere with the delicate ways our being balances, heals and expresses itself. The wonderful freedom in the practice of Coex reintroduces us to the ability of our being to heal, balance and reach for its own psychological growth.

Each group practice lasts for about one hour. The group starts by sitting in a circle for about a minute. It is useful during this period to consciously let go of everyday life and hold in mind that you have an hour before you during which you can spend time with your own innermost life process. Some people like to imagine they are coming to the Core of their being asking it to guide them into and through whatever is most important for them to experience for their personal healing and growth. Each member of the group then stands and finds a space in the room, and with eyes closed allows the spontaneous experience of Coex to begin. If you are new to Coex a member of the group will start you in the practice by suggesting arm movements following which the spontaneous movements can be allowed.

Leave yourself open to your own bigness

During the hour leave yourself open to allow into movement, sound or feeling, or whatever impulses are felt. For instance, we constantly experience the urge to move our chest to breathe. Unless we hold our breath this is a gentle impulse. If we remain open in body and mind during Coex, any similar urges to move and express - motivations that would normally be overlooked or suppressed - can be allowed. It might be there is no urge to move, but you are overcome by tiredness. If so follow the urge and rest or even sleep. Or an urge to yawn might arise. So allow it without judgement and see what it leads to. It is important to allow even what may seem silly or meaningless without stopping it. Whether active or quiet, remain open and free to respond during the hour. After an hour a member of the group will call an end to the session and the members will sit quietly for a few minutes.

It is helpful to remember, especially if what occurred for you in the session was a deeply felt experience, and that it only occurred because you made an agreement with yourself to allow it. Therefore, although it was spontaneous and unexpected, it was still an expression of your own will to allow. To stop the process you simply reverse your decision, thinking to yourself something like - During this session it was appropriate to allow myself freedom of movement fantasy and sound, but now I will again assume my usual social behaviour. This is my choice.

After the period of quietness it will be asked of the group members if they have anything they would like to say or ask about their experience. There is no need whatsoever to speak at all. But if you do want to say what your experience was, or want to ask other members general questions about the practice, this is the time to do so. We may thus find support or insight from each other.

The practice of Coex and the format of the group is based on several simple principles. For instance no attempt is made to teach members in the Coex group. This is because experience has shown that each of us have a great wealth of wisdom, self healing and problem solving abilities. Such personal and interior abilities may be unconscious, but become apparent in the experiences met in Coex, and are enhanced by honouring them by not attempting to instruct people. This also lies behind the absence of any attempt to act as therapist in regard to peoples psychological or physical health. Although the need for experts such as doctors and psychotherapists is not denied, nevertheless, our enormous internal powers of healing and growth are so often subtly denied, even by people apparently attempting to stimulate their functioning, that in Coex we take a radical stand in self help and self trust.

You are the expert on your own growth and health

Therefore, during the group practice, we do not support each other by means of any physical contact or verbal interaction. There is no expert in the group suggesting what to do. There is no teacher apart from our own internal unconscious wisdom. There are however, people in the group, or involved in supporting the group, who have many years experience of the action of Coex. These women and men can be looked to for guidance and support.

Coex is not a new practice. It has existed in its present form since 1972. It has its roots in traditional approaches that have existed in various cultures for thousands of years. Some of these practices still exist today, but Coex attempts to approach the experience of meeting our most interior self in a way generally acceptable in today's world. The extraordinary depth of experience met by some people in Coex, is thought to connect with the process in each of us which produces dreams, linking it with one of our most fundamental and natural of healing and creative activities.

Further information may be found in the book Mind and Movement by Tony Crisp, published by C.W. Daniel.

Tony's in print Books in the UK or USA

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