Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/69

Rh process above alluded to, and they experience to the full the enjoyment attendant upon the extraction of Prana. You may get an idea of this by taking into the mouth some particle of food (when you have plenty of time for the experiment), and then slowly masticating it, allowing it to gradually melt away in the mouth, as you would a lump of sugar. You will be surprised to find how thoroughly this work of involuntary swallowing is performed—the food gradually yields up its food-prana and then melts slowly away and reaches the stomach. Take a crust of bread, for example, and masticate it thoroughly, with the idea of seeing how long it will last without being "swallowed." You will find that it will never be "swallowed" in the usual way, but will gradually disappear in the manner we have just mentioned, after being reduced to a pasty, creamy mass by degrees. And that little mouthful of bread will have yielded you about twice as much nourishment as a piece of equal size, eaten in the ordinary way, and about three times the amount of food-prana.

Another interesting example is had in the case of milk. Milk is a fluid and, of course, needs no "breaking-up," as does solid food. Yet the fact remains (and is well established by careful experiments) that a quart of milk simply allowed to flow down the throat yields not over half the nourishment or food-prana that is derived from the same quantity of milk sipped slowly, and allowed to remain in the mouth a moment until it "melts away," the tongue being moved through it. The babe drawing the milk from the nipple of either the breast or the bottle, of course, does so by a sucking motion, which moves the