Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/13

Rh nests in their hair; or who perform other ridiculous feats, in order to pose as "holy men" before the ignorant multitude, and, incidentally, to be fed by the ignorant classes who consider that they are earning a future reward by the act. These people are either rank frauds, or self-deluded fanatics, and as a class are on a par with a certain class of beggars in American and European large cities who exhibit their self-inflicted wounds, and bogus deformities, in order to wring pennies from the passer-by, who turns his head and drops the coppers in order to get the thing out of his sight.

The people whom we have just mentioned are regarded with pity by the real Yogis who regard Hatha Yoga as an important branch of their philosophy, because it gives man a healthy body—a good instrument with which to work—a fitting temple for the Spirit.

In this little book, we have endeavoured to give in a plain, simple form, the underlying principles of Hatha Yoga—giving the Yogi plan of physical life. And we have tried to give you the reason for each plan. We have found it necessary to first explain to you in the terms of Western physiology the various functions of the body, and then to indicate Nature's plans and methods, which one should adhere to as far as possible. It is not a "doctor book," and contains nothing about medicine, and practically nothing about the cure of diseases, except where we indicate what one should do in order to get back to a natural state. Its keynote is the Healthy Man—its main purpose to help people to conform to the standard of the normal man. But we believe