Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/231

Rh lowered. No wonder you feel cross, stupid, quarrelsome, and generally "grouchy" after a night in this kind of a pest house.

Did you ever think just why you sleep at all? It is to give nature a chance to repair the waste that has been going on during the day. You cease using up her energies in work, and give her a chance to repair and build up your system so that you will be all right on the morrow. And in order to do this work right, she requires at least normal conditions. She expects to be supplied with air containing the proper proportion of oxygen—air that has been exposed to the sunlight of the preceding day and which has thereby been freshly charged with Prana. Instead of this you give her nothing but a limited amount of air, half-poisoned with the refuse of your body. No wonder she gives you nothing but a patch-work job sometimes.

Any room that smells of that peculiar fetid odor that you have all noticed in a poorly ventilated bedroom, is no place for you to sleep in until it has been ventilated and kept supplied with fresh air. The air in a bedroom should be as nearly as possible kept as pure as the outside air. Don't be afraid of catching cold. Remember that the most approved modern method of treating consumption calls for the patient to be kept in the fresh air, at night, no matter how cold it is. Put on plenty of bed covering, and you will not mind the cold after you get a little used to it. Get back to nature! Fresh air does not mean sleeping in a draught, remember.

And what is true of sleeping rooms is also true of living rooms, offices, etc. Of course, in winter one