Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/12

12 trouble necessary for its accomplishment), thereby acquiring the ability to perform certain abnormal "tricks" which they exhibit to amuse and entertain (or disgust) Western travellers. Some of their feats are quite wonderful, when regarded from the standpoint of curiosity, and the performers would be worthy applicants for paying positions in the "dime museums" of America, indeed their feats being very similar to some performed by some of the Western "freaks." We hear of these people exhibiting with pride such tricks and acquired habits as, for instance, the ability to reverse the peristaltic action of the bowels and intestines, and the swallowing movements of the gullet, so as to give a disgusting exhibition of a complete reversal of the normal processes of those parts of the body, so that articles introduced into the colon may be carried upwards and ejected from the gullet, by this reverse movement of the involuntary muscles, etc. This, from a physician's point of view is most interesting, but to the layman is a most disgusting thing, and one utterly unworthy of a man. Other feats of these so-called Hatha Yogis are about on a par with the instance which we have reluctantly given, and we know of nothing that they perform which is of the slightest interest or benefit to the man or woman seeking to maintain a healthy, normal, natural body. These mendicants are akin to the class of fanatics in India who assume the title "Yogi," and who refuse to wash the body for religious reasons; or who sit with uplifted arm until it is withered; or who allow their finger nails to grow until they pierce their hands; or who sit so still that the birds build