Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/253

Rh will respond, and seeing the follies it has perpetrated, will endeavor to "let go" and return to nature, doing its own work all the better by reason of having allowed the Instinctive Mind to attend to its own work without meddling.

The whole theory and practice of Hatha Yogi is based upon this idea of return to nature—the belief that the Instinctive Mind of man contains that which will maintain health under normal conditions. And accordingly those who practice its teachings learn first to "let go," and then to live as closely to natural conditions as is possible in this age of artificiality. And this little book has been devoted to pointing out nature's ways and methods, in order that we may return to them. We have not taught a new doctrine, but have merely cried out to you to come with us to the good old way from which we have strayed.

We are not unmindful of the fact that it is much harder for the man and woman of the West to adopt natural methods of living, when all their surroundings impel them the other way, but still each may do a little each day for himself and the race, in this direction, and it is surprising how the old artificial habits will drop from a person—one by one.

In this our concluding chapter, we wish to impress upon you the fact that one may be led by the Spirit in the physical life, as well as in the mental. One may implicitly trust the Spirit to guide him in the right way in the matter of everyday living as well as in the more complicated matters of life. If one will trust in the spirit, he will find that his old appetites will drop away from him—his abnormal tastes will