Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/14

14 that that which keeps a healthy man healthy will make an unhealthy man healthy, if he follows it Hatha Yoga preaches a sane, natural, normal manner of living and life, which, if followed will benefit any one. It keeps close to nature and advocates a return to natural methods in preference to those which have grown up around us in our artificial habits of living.

This book is simple—very simple—so simple, in fact, that many will most likely throw it aside because it contains nothing new or startling. They have probably hoped for some wonderful recital of the far famed freak tricks of the mendicant Yogis (?) and plans whereby these feats could be duplicated by those who would read it. We must tell such people that this book is not that kind of book. We do not tell you how to assume seventy-four kinds of postures, nor how to draw linen through the intestines for the purpose of cleaning them out (contrast this with nature's plans) or how to stop the heart's beating, or to perform tricks with your internal apparatus. Not a bit of such teaching will you find here. We do tell you how to command a rebellious organ to again function properly, and several other things about the control over an involuntary part which has gone on a strike, but we have mentioned these things only in the line of making man a healthy being—not to make a "freak" of him.

We have not said much about disease. We have preferred to hold up to your gaze the Healthy Man and Woman, asking you to look well at them and see what makes them healthy and keeps them healthy. Then we call your attention to what they do and how