Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/78



of the cardinal principles of the Hatha Yoga Philosophy of Health is the intelligent use of Nature's great gift to living things—Water. It should not be necessary to even call the attention of men to the fact that Water is one of the great means of maintaining normal health, but man has become so much a slave to artificial environments, habits, customs, etc., that he has forgotten Nature's laws. His only hope is to return to Nature. The little child knows, instinctively, the use of water, and insists upon being furnished with it, but as it grows older it gets away from the natural habit, and falls into the erroneous practices of the older people around it. This is particularly true of those living in large cities, where they find unpalatable the warm water drawn from faucets, and so gradually become weaned away from the normal use of fluids. Such persons gradually form new habits of drinking (or not drinking), and, putting off Nature's demands, they at last are not conscious of them. We often hear people say, "But why should we drink water—we do not get thirsty?" But had they continued in Nature's paths they would get thirsty, and the only reason why they do not hear Nature's calls is because they have so long turned a deaf ear to her that she has become discouraged and cries less