Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/54

54 contrary, he smiles at the folly of such things, and goes to his plain and nourishing meal, knowing that he will obtain there full nourishment without the waste and harmful matter contained in the more elaborate dishes of his brother who is ignorant of the real meaning of food.

A maxim of Hatha Yoga is: "It is not what a man eats, but the amount that he assimilates, that nourishes him." There is a world of wisdom in this old maxim, and it contains that which writers upon health subjects have taken volumes to express.

We will show you, later on, the Yogi method of extracting the maximum amount of nourishment from the minimum amount of food. The Yogi method lies in the middle of the road, the two opposite sides of which road are traveled, respectively, by the two differing Western schools, namely the "food-stuffers" and "starvationists," each of whom loudly proclaim the merits of their own cult and decry the claims of the opposing sect. The simple Yogi may be pardoned for smiling good naturedly at the disputes raging between those who, preaching the necessity of sufficient nutrition, teach that "stuffing" is necessary to obtain it, on the one hand; and at those of the opposing school, who, recognizing the folly of "stuffing" and overeating, have no remedy to offer but a semi-starvation, accompanied with long continued fasts, which, of course, has brought many of its followers down to weakened bodies, impaired vitality, and even death.

To the Yogi, the evils of mal-nutrition, on the one hand, and over-eating on the other, do not exist—these questions have been settled for him centuries