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THE PHYSIOLOGY OF YOGAM
not performed for four or five days after death, people have been buried alive, for they have assumed contortionate attitudes in their tombs. How soon after burial they woke up and strugglei for breath and liberty, we have no means of ascertaining.
The question, why the Yogi should prefer to breathe by the skin to using the apparatus which Nature has specialized for that purpose, takes us for the most part outside the pale of physiology, and as this paper is only intendei to deal with the physical aspects of Yogam, I shall not endeavour to answer it. From orie point of view, however, we inay legiti nately consider it. It is said, that by restraining his breath the Yogi anaesthetises his physical senses and gets into a higher state of consciousness undistorbed by their distracting influence. It is an undoubted fact, that restraint of the breath does profoundly modify consciousness. If a doctor tightly closes the nose and mouth of a patient in an hysterical attack, after about a minute the patient quite suddenly returns to her normal consciousness; she is generally quite unaware of the state she has been in and what she has been doing, and naturally abuses the doctor for holding her nose and mouth, Pouring cold water suddenly over the patient acts as well if not better; but it is possible that it acts through the deep and Suiden inspiration of air which it induces. Moreover a patient can be so completely anaesthetised, as to be rendered isnensible to the pain of a surgical operation, by
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