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1. What is Yoga - Yoga at last is coming into its own in the Western world. After many years of being dismissed as a bizarre cult attractive only to eccentrics, it is today recognized as a fundamental art and skill. More than that, many of its most bitter opponents, people who were among the first to cry down Yogic culture, have now embraced it as a way of life.

2. Relaxation - No one, I think, would disagree with me when I say that the pace of modern life, especially in the big cities, is destructive. Why, but why is everyone intent on doing something all the time? Do they imagine they are missing something if they go to bed with a book, or sit and think, or just sit? Some people cannot tolerate being alone.

3. E motional Stress - You are not alone, you who are tense, nervous, worried, unable to relax even in bed. You seem to be tied up in knots and you sometimes feel at your screaming wits' end. And you take relaxation pills, pep pills, tranquillizers, anything to give you a 'lift' and then wonder at the resulting unpleasant side effects. Can Yoga help? But of course it can.

4. Insomnia - In the previous chapter 1 discussed emotional stress ailments. In this one we are considering the physical results of stress, worry, and constant fatigue. Perhaps the most common complaint of this modern age, together with constipation, which is discussed in the following chapter, is insomnia. It is the cause of more widespread misery than one could possibly imagine.

5. Constipation - Those who are masters of the science of Yoga refer to constipation as 'the mother of all diseases', and so many of the most important Yoga asanas aim at improving elimination and the digestive processes and, consequently, the health of the entire organism.

Among these exercises the ABDOMINAL LIFT is considered one of the most essential, not only for its physical values, but also for the way it influences our spiritual development by ridding the body, and therefore the mind, of impurities.

6. Backache - Have we not often admired the graceful and dignified carriage of the average Indian man and woman, the coltish grace of their brown-limbed children? There is no magical secret to this natural grace, it is simply that in the East there are two natural sitting positions, which are adopted from early childhood. One of these is cross-legged, whether in the so-called tailor fashion or with the soles upturned, in the classical Lotus Posture.

7. Lumbago - IN the previous chapter I discussed backache and aching legs due to bad posture and long hours of standing. The antidote was based on limbering up the spine and keeping it supple, bending it this way and that to relieve tired muscles, and putting the feet up above the head to combat the pull and downward drag of gravity. The antidote in this chapter is based on toning up the sciatic nerve and the muscles of the lower back to relieve the pain of sciatica and lumbago.

8. Asthma - INVARIABLY the first question I am asked about Yoga is, 'Do you stand on your head every morning?' To the uninitiated this standing on the head represents the sum total of Yoga, and it is thereupon dismissed as a foible of cranks and crackpots. Not one person in a hundred asks me why I stand on my head. In fact it does not cross the mind of the average person that it could possibly have any therapeutic value or indeed any value at all except to establish one as an eccentric.

9. Arthritis - One of Yoga's answers to the problems with which this chapter is concerned reads a little like black magic. Still it adds a touch of the bizarre and the exotic to this exacting science of discipline and, as with all Yoga practices, there is sound good sense behind its methods. The Indians claim that people who are afflicted with arthritis or allied complaints should keep a raw, unpeeled, winter-crop potato—yes, I did say a potato!—close to their skin day and night until the condition is relieved.

10. Obesity - This chapter, 1 have no doubt, is the one to which the majority of women will turn first. Knowing as you do that Yoga can give you a perfect figure you have made this your main reason for pursuing the subject. I assure you this is no worse a reason for beginning the study of Yoga than any other. There cannot really be a bad reason for wanting to do something good, and though Yoga offers much in the way of a peaceful and healthy existence your main concern, at this stage anyway, is how to get that pad of fat off your hips and reduce that bulging tummy.

11. Diet - The body needs food for two purposes, as fuel to supply our energy, and to repair body tissues. Four elements are needed for the building of the body and for its repair, namely (1) protein or nitrogenous food, (2) carbo-hydrates, (3) fats or hydrocarbons, and (4) minerals, these four elements being found in greater proportions in vegetables than in flesh foods.

12. Disorders - If half the female Yoga enthusiasts 1 know began their study of Hatha Yoga for the sake of improving their figures, it can be safely said that the other half did so because of menstrual pains and other female disorders. Many females find that drugs do little to alleviate the dragging down pains they have to endure every month, and so year after year they suffer in silence.

13. Headaches - Perhaps it has not occurred to you that nervous tension may be the cause of weak eyesight and eyestrain. When first considered, these two factors may not seem to be related, but it is an established fact that anxiety and nervousness stimulate excessive eye muscle activity which in turn gives rise to symptoms of eyestrain.

14. Stomach - Of all the gems in the rich collection of Yoga asanas there shines forth one, which, in sheer beauty, symmetry and grace, outshines all others except, perhaps, the serene Lotus, that impenetrable fortress of repose. 1 refer to Ardha-Matsendrasana, called in English the SPINAL TWIST, not a very poetic name for what you will see is a Yogic poem of graceful movement. It has the fathomless mystery of Yoga itself, but, also like Yoga it has a bearing and a meaning within our everyday lives.

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