water up your nose, or to wash out your stomach and bowels."
   From the yogi's point of view, smoking cigarettes; eating junk food made by a total stranger or a machine; late nights of mind numbingly bad television; fast paced cities with all their noise, exhaust fumes and visual pollution; getting stuck in traffic jams; eating in a rush whilst driving or walking along the street; living or working 100 metres off the ground in a tower apartment or office block; sitting in chairs staring at computers all day under artificial lighting with recycled ventilation; wearing tight clothes which restrict the natural movement of the body's joints and organs; that's all pretty unnatural stuff. One's definition of natural and unnatural all depends on where you are at. Yoga says, that like medicine which may at first seem to be a bit distasteful, when your body is not functioning well, certain unusual things may be necessary to help the body heal itself. To be quite honest, I believe that what is considered the present norm is in fact far more unnatural than the cleansing practices which yoga advocates, and that it is this everyday unnaturalness which makes many people sick. The yoga cleansing methods are just simple, non-medicinal ways of preventing and overcoming illness and helping the body towards a truly natural state where good health is the norm. If you really think about it, the yogic methods are really the most natural ways to assist healing. All you need is some water, some salt and some simple exercises! No expensive gadgets, pharmaceuticals, herbs or highly skilled medicos.

(ii) "Nature made our bodies to cleanse automatically, so why should these things be necessary?"
   It is true that nature made our bodies to cleanse automatically, but think about how many millions of years the human body took to evolve to its current form and then consider how quickly the (Western) human diet has changed in just a few decades. In a pure and ideal world, with no pollution, chemical farming or mass processed foods full of unnatural additives, the body would be able to maintain itself as designed, but it is obvious that mankind's health is now being over-taxed by our bad eating habits and environmental degradation. Yogic cleansing is not going against the body's design, but is actually assisting its cleansing mechanisms by helping the organs of purification and elimination to work more efficiently. These techniques are merely assisting to restore equilibrium.
   We do service our motor cars. We get them cleaned out when they are clogged up. We do it to the kitchen cupboards, when they get a build up of dirt inside. What's the difference with our bodies? Even more important than our cars and 

cupboards, are the vehicles we spend our whole day in - our human bodies. And as well, what about that vehicle of thought and feeling - the mind. To me it seems perfectly natural and even kind to the body, to do such regular cleansing for personal maintenance. It may seem weird and funny to some people, but I think this is only because, generally in our culture, anything inside the body is considered odd and distasteful. These days, when it comes to medical repairs after years of personal neglect, many prefer to shirk that responsibility and have someone else do the "dirty work".

(iii) "They sound dangerous."
   There are no intrinsic dangers in these techniques at all. With a few exceptions, anyone is capable of doing them, at home, unassisted, but only once they have been competently instructed. Firstly, they are time tested, over 6000 years of successful in-the-field research! They are not forceful methods but are quite gentle. They have no health risks nor side effects if learned and performed correctly. Secondly, many of these methods are only self administered ways of doing exactly what may well be done to you in a surgical situation when deemed necessary. Nasal, abdominal and intestinal saline irrigation are common medical procedures. The many doctors who have researched these methods have found no reasons to conclude they are dangerous and have in fact concluded they are highly beneficial.

Introduction to Yoga Asanas
   In the classical yoga texts, the word "asana" means "steady comfortable position" and this was traditionally referring to the fixed pose used for meditation practice. In some texts, the Lotus Pose (Padmasana) and the Adept's Pose (Siddhasana, Siddha Yoni Asana) were said to be the best and only postures to be used for sitting, but in other texts, any pose at all was deemed suitable so long as it was rock steady and allowed transcendence of bodily sensations so that deep meditation could be achieved.
   Over the years, an even broader interpreta-tion of the term asana has come to include all the strange and wonderful postures that are most popularly accepted as "doing yoga" these days. Most yoga teachers today consider the yoga asanas as part of the Hatha Yoga branch which is defined as union brought about by the balance and integration of the polar opposites (left / right,male / female, yin / yang, solar / lunar etc). Things have now developed to