Word: behanan
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...Behanan says he first practiced posterior stretching. Sitting with his legs stretched out he hooked his forefingers over his big toes and touched his knees with his head. This "brings a rich supply of blood to the pelvic organs and tones up the nerves arising from the lower part of the spine...
Yogins, reports Dr. Behanan, "place a great deal of emphasis on abdominal exercises. . . . Yogins attempt from very early in their practice to gain control of the anal sphincters. The first effort in this direction consists of repeated contraction and relaxation of the sphincters for several minutes in succession." An adept can, by muscular force alone, ventilate and irrigate his colon, or rinse out his stomach. A photograph of one of Swami Kuvalayananda's disciples in the latter act is included in Dr. Behanan's well-illustrated text...
...root of the nose. Expert yogins hold their breath four times as long as it takes them to inhale, and take the equivalent of two inhalation periods to exhale. Thus their breathing ratio is 1:4:2. They inhale once every two minutes. Beginners, advises Dr. Behanan, had better use at 1:2:2 rhythm, to prevent dizziness and anoxemia...
After gathering his yoga experience, Dr. Behanan returned to Yale's Institute of Human Relations where he used occidental psychological and physiological apparatus to analyze the effects of yogic practices, which he continued as much for self as for Science. Before he took up yoga he suffered frequent headaches, lacked vigor. Now: "No work, physical or mental, could tire me so rapidly as it did before. . . . My mental-emotional life is no longer a blind catch-as-catch...
...breathing exercises by which yogins claim to achieve a state of mental sublimity, Dr. Behanan says they merely dulled his wits, possibly due to a lack of oxygen in the brain. Breathing normally, handsome Dr. Behanan, 35, is famed at Yale as a first-class poker player, an ambidextrous ping-pongist hard to beat...