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Hatha Yoga: The Yogi Philosophy of Physical Well-Being1790
assimilates it, reaches the heart, which sends it out on its errand of nourishing
the body.
The blood starts on its journey through the arteries, which are a series
of elastic canals, having divisions and subdivisions, beginning with the
main canals which feed the smaller ones, which in turn feed still smaller
ones until the capillaries are reached. The capillaries are very small blood
vessels measuring about one three-thousandth of an inch in diameter. They
resemble very fine hairs, which resemblance gives them their name. The
capillaries penetrate the tissues in meshes of network, bringing the blood in
close contact with all the parts. Their walls are very thin and the nutritious
ingredients of the blood exude through their walls and are taken up by the
tissues. The capillaries not only exude the nourishment from the blood, but
they also take up the blood on its return journey (as we will see presently)
and generally fetch and carry for the system, including the absorption of
the nourishment of the food from the intestinal villi, as described in our last
chapter.
Well, to get back to the arteries. They carry the rich, red, pure blood from
the heart, laden with health-giving nutrition and life, distributing it through
large canal into smaller, from smaller into still smaller, until finally the tiny
hair-like capillaries are reached and the tissues take up the nourishment and
use it for building purposes, the wonderful little cells of the body doing
this work most intelligently. (We shall have something to say regarding the
work of these cells, bye-and-bye.) The blood having given up a supply of
nourishment, begins its return journey to heart, taking with it the waste
products, dead cells, broken-down tissue and other refuse of the system.
It starts with the capillaries, but this return journey is not made through
the arteries, but by a switch-off arrangement it is directed into the smaller
veinlets of the venous system (or system of “veins”), from whence it passes
to the larger veins and on to the heart. Before it reaches the arteries again,
on a new trip, however, something happens to it. It goes to the crematory of