Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/178

178 We have spoken so far only of the actual movements of the body, resulting from muscular contraction, proceeding from the current of prana directed to the muscle. There is another form of the using up of prana and the consequent wear and tear upon the muscles, which is not so familiar to the minds of most of us. Those of our students who live in the cities will recognize our meaning when we compare the waste of prana to the waste of water occasioned by the failure to turn off the faucet in the washbowl and the resulting trickling away of the water hour after hour. Well, this is just what many of us are doing all the time—we are allowing our prana to trickle away in a constant stream, with a consequent wear and tear upon our muscles, and, indeed, upon the whole system, from the brain down.

Our students are doubtless familiar with the axiom of psychology, "Thought takes form in action." Our first impulse when we wish to do a thing is to make the muscular movement necessary to the accomplishment of the action proceeding from the thought. But we may be restrained from making the movement by another thought, which shows us the desirability of repressing the action. We may be inflamed with anger and may experience a desire to strike the person causing the anger. The thought is scarcely formed in our mind before the first steps toward striking are taken. But before the muscle fairly moves our better judgment causes us to send a repressing impulse (all this in the fraction of a second), and the opposite set of muscles holds back the action of the first set. The double action, ordering and countermanding, is performed so