Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/186

186 bluster and threats? They leave that for those who are weak and wish to be thought strong. The Yogi also has eradicated Worry from his mental condition. He has learned to know that it is a foolish waste of energy, which results in no good and always works harm. He believes in earnest thought when problems have to be solved, obstacles surmounted, but he never descends to Worry. He regards Worry as waste energy and motion, and also as being unworthy of a developed man. He knows his own nature and powers too well to allow himself to worry. He has gradually emancipated himself from its curse and teaches his students that the freeing of oneself from Anger and Worry is the first step in practical Yoga.

While the controlling of the unworthy emotions of the lower nature really form a part of other branches of the Yogi philosophy, it has a direct bearing upon the question of Relaxation, inasmuch as it is a fact that one habitually free from Anger and Worry is correspondingly free from the principal causes of involuntary muscular contraction and nerve-waste. The man possessed by Anger has muscles on the strain from chronic involuntary impulses from the brain. The man who is wrapped in the folds of Worry is constantly in state of nervous strain and muscular contraction. So it will readily be seen that when one cuts himself loose from these weakening emotions he at the same time frees himself from the greater part of the muscular contraction, of which we have spoken. If you would be free from this great source of waste, manage to get rid of the emotions causing it.