Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/55

Rh ago by the old Yogi fathers, whose very names have been almost forgotten by their followers of to-day.

Remember, now, please, once and for all, that Hatha Yoga does not advocate the plan of starving oneself, but, on the contrary, knows and teaches that no human body can be strong and healthy unless it is properly nourished by sufficient food eaten and assimilated. Many delicate, weak and nervous people owe their impaired vitality and diseased condition to the fact that they do not obtain sufficient nourishment.

Remember, also, that Hatha Yoga rejects as ridiculous the theory that Nourishment is obtained from "stuffing," gorging, or over-eating, and views with wonder and pity these attributes of the glutton, and sees nothing in these practices but the manifestation of the attributes of the unclean swine, utterly unworthy of the developed man.

To the Yogi understanding Man should eat to live—not live to eat.

The Yogi is an epicure, rather than a gourmand, for while eating the plainest food he has cultivated and encouraged his natural and normal taste so that his hunger imparts to these simple viands a relish sought after, but not obtained, by those who hunt after rich and expensive triumphs of the ''chef. ''While eating for Nourishment as his main object, he manages to make his food yield him a pleasure unknown to his brother who scorns the simple fare.

In our next chapter we will take up the subject of Hunger and Appetite—two entirely different attributes of the physical body, although to most persons the two appear to mean almost the same thing.