Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/180

180 means that a constant, though not necessarily strong, current of prana is being poured out to them, and the nerves are constantly in use carrying the prana. We remember hearing the story of the good old woman who was taking a ride on the railroad to a nearby town. So rare was the pleasure to her and so anxious was she to get to her destination that she could not settle herself back into her seat, but, on the contrary, sat on the edge of the seat, with her body well bent forward, during the whole sixteen miles of the journey; she was mentally trying to help the train along by giving it a mental urge in the right direction. This old lady's thoughts were fixed so firmly upon her journey's end that the thought took form in action and caused a muscular contraction in place of the relaxation which she should have indulged in during the trip. Many of us are just as bad; we strain forward anxiously, if we happen to be looking at an object, and in one way or another we tense a number of our muscles all the time. We clench our fists, or frown, or close our lips tight, or bite our lips, or set our jaws together, or something else along the same line of expressing our mental states in physical action. All this is waste. And so are the bad habits of beating the "devil's tattoo" on the table or arms of the chair, twirling the thumbs, wiggling the fingers, tapping on the floor with our toes, chewing gum, whittling sticks, biting lead pencils, and, last but not least, rocking nervously to and fro on a rocking chair. All these things, and many others too numerous to mention, are waste, pure waste.

Now that we understand something about