Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/142

142 replace our finger nails—about four weeks to replace our skin. Every part of our bodies is being worn out and renewed and repaired constantly. And these little workmen—the cells—are the agency performing this wonderful task. Millions of these little workers are ever moving along or working in a fixed position in all parts of our bodies, renewing the worn-out tissues and replacing them with new material and throwing out of the system the worn-out and injurious particles of matter.

In the lower animals Nature allows the Instinctive Mind a fuller scope and a larger field, and as life ascends in the scale, developing the reasoning faculties, the Instinctive Mind seems to narrow its field. For instance, crabs and members of the spider family are able to grow new feeders, legs, claws, etc. Snails are able to grow even parts of the head, including eyes which have been destroyed; some fishes are able to regrow tails. Salamanders and lizards are able to grow new tails, including bones, muscle and parts of the spinal column. The very lowest forms of animal life have practically an unlimited power of restoring lost parts and can practically make themselves entirely over, provided there is left the smallest part of them to build upon. The higher form of animals have lost much of this recuperative power and man has lost more than any of them owing to his mode of living. Some of the more advanced of the Hatha Yogis, however, have performed some wonderful results along these lines, and any one, with patient practice, may obtain such control of the Instinctive Mind and the cells under its control that he may obtain wonderful recuperative