How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions - S. S. Curry (free children's ebooks online .TXT) 📗
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Negative emotions, such as fear, despondency, or antagonism, cause contraction and tend to constrict the vital organs.
It can, of course, be seen at once that expansion is due to the activity of the extensor muscles. The stretch is, in the main, an expansion. At any rate, it is always associated, co-ordinated, when properly performed, with expansion.
Moreover, if we observe the action of animals and all true spontaneous actions in a human being, we observe that the activity of expansion begins in the centre of the body. It is at this point that we should initiate our expression. The actions in the middle of the body are more conditional than those in the feet, hands, or limbs, but the awakening of conditions should precede modulation. A certain activity of expansion and diffusion is the very basis of all conditions.
All exercises should naturally begin with expansion. A true exercise means an increase of activity. Moreover, not only does life expand, but all positive emotions, such as joy, love, courage, cause activity of the extensor muscles. These emotions, as is universally known, improve health.
If we observe the structure of the torso, we find that the chest has no prop from below; that the ribs are placed at an angle with the spine, sloping downwards as low as forty-five degrees, while at times they may be lifted seventy-five or eighty degrees or more. The expansion of the chest lifts the ribs.
If we study a skeleton, we see that it must be suspended, that it cannot be propped up.
Man, accordingly, stands and walks primarily on account of the active expansion of his whole chest. He is the one animal that has levitation, as will be shown later.
We find that under the ribs in the torso are all the vital organs. The lungs, the heart, the stomach, all these depend for their normal position, their normal action upon the expansion of the chest.
When a man stands, the tendency for the chest is to sag. There are no bones to elevate it. Man has levitation as well as gravitation, and the expansion and elevation of the chest lie at the basis of all good position in standing, sitting and also walking.
There are certain co-ordinate curves, beautiful, spiral, rhythmic, in a normal and healthy human being. These curves depend upon this expansion of the chest.
All the best gymnastic exercises centre in the development of activity in the muscles concerned in keeping the chest elevated and harmoniously expanded.
When we study the expression of this part, we find that it reveals energy and courage and all the noble, positive emotions of a human being.
A passive chest expresses indifference, inactivity, fear, discouragement, a sense of weakness, unwillingness to awake and rise up to meet emergencies. A sunken chest, accordingly, is an indication of a tendency to disease, simply because it expresses a negative mental state or one favorable to the reception of abnormal conditions.
The expansion of the chest, on the contrary, reveals that happy acceptance of life, that active, energetic determination to control abnormal conditions which will ward off all disease and eliminate all failure.
This expansion of the chest, as we can see, is one of the most elemental actions of expansion of the human being. We shall observe later that this activity is directly concerned with erect posture. All actions in a normal condition co-operate or co-ordinate. This expansion frees the respiratory muscles and all the vital organs, gives man command of the elemental action of his body as a whole; that is, his erectness expresses higher emotions and experiences.
An exercise implies co-ordination.
An organism exists only by virtue of certain co-ordination of parts. Training improves and extends this co-ordination.
Co-ordination is the simultaneous union of many different elements or actions in different parts of the body.
An exercise is rhythmic.
When exercises are performed in obedience to the law of rhythm, better results will follow. Rhythm is a law of man's being. Action and reaction imply a human being doing his little part and then accepting the greater work out of the heart of the universe. Action and reaction, activity and passivity, the giving and the receiving, everything natural is rhythmic. Absence of rhythm is death.
An exercise is simple.
The best exercise is the simplest in its movements. It is not the spectacular actions of an exercise that make it the best. As every exercise is a struggle upward it must necessarily be an emphasis of something elemental and normal.
Any movement is normal when it is part of the discharge of an elemental or distinctive action of any agent or part.
The difference between accidental and elemental needs more discussion. Working upon accidentals secures weak results, perverts and interferes with free function. Working upon elementals brings freedom, power.
IV PROGRAM OF EXERCISESAs all training is a reaching upward towards an ideal so an exercise is a single step and the first exercise should be the most primary action. The primary condition of all growth is a certain joyous awakening, an expansive enjoyment of life.
Take a joyous thought and express it in active laughter.
No matter how dull or weary you feel when you first awake, joyously accept the new day. Use the following exercises and actions as you would a cold wet towel on your face or hands. Look on the sunny side at once and laugh. We can possess a feeling only by expressing it; we enter into possession of the day only by using it.
It is easy to look at the light, easy to breathe, easy to stretch, to expand, easy to remember something joyous, easy to smile and easy to laugh.
If your body feels weak and sluggish, and you have great indifference to movement there is all the more reason for promptness. If you will joyously extend your arms, expand, breathe deeply and laugh, you welcome life and joy and give them a chance to take possession of your being and body and you will soon feel courageous instead of gloomy, strong instead of weak, rested instead of weary.
None of these exercises require a great expenditure of vitality. Performed, as many of them are, lying down, however energetically you may do them they will bring little or no weariness. Though the exercises do not require much vitality they should be practiced vigorously to accomplish the best results.
1. PRIMARY EXPANSION AND EXTENSIONOn waking, take a courageous, joyous attitude of mind. Chuckling deeply, actively expand the whole body, take a deep breath and co-ordinate harmoniously as many parts as can be brought into sympathetic activity. Stretch the arms upward and the feet downward as far as possible, and repeat at least twenty times.
An old writer gave dilatation as one of the primary characteristics of life. A certain distention of all parts of the body is the beginning of the renewal of energy and a primary manifestation of life. We must give room to the life forces, feel the diffusion of energy into every part. The sense of constriction, due to lying in a cramped position, can be easily removed by this primary exercise.
The chief elements in this primary distention of the body are found in the stretch and expansion of the torso, in deeper, fuller breathing, in the sense of diffusion of life, in greater satisfaction and in laughter. These elements should be practiced on waking up.
The stretch should be in the nature of an indulgence, an instinctive longing on first awaking, a longing in common with all animals. It ought to be enjoyable and a help to sustain the laughter.
Count one for the active movement, or stretch, two for the staying of the active conditions, three for the gradual release of activity, and four for complete relaxation.
The exercise, as most of the others, should be repeated twenty to twenty-five times, counting four for each of the preceding movements. This will require eighty to one hundred counts. Each of the four actions of the muscles should be carefully distinguished and accentuated.
Counting four in this way for an exercise and for each of the first steps obeys the law of rhythm, accentuates all the elemental actions of the muscles and establishes primary conditions of healthful activity in all the vital organs.
The simultaneous elements or actions in this first exercise are of such importance that it is well to practice each one separately, either before or after the general exercise.
This distinct practice prevents the slighting of any of these elemental conditions, restores harmony and stimulates normal functioning of all organs. In fact, all these actions are really necessary conditions and should be present as elements of all exercises.
The following exercises (2-5) are important, individual accentuations of the essential actions of this general exercise, and the conditions of all exercises.
The student should carefully study his tendencies to omit or slight any one of these elements and accentuate carefully not only every step separately, but observe with especial care the one most needed.
2. INITIATORY EXHILARATIONSustaining the extension and full breath, laugh heartily, with little or no noise, chuckle to yourself persistently for several minutes. Centre the laughter in the breathing and the torso.
Joy and laughter must be considered the first condition of all exercise. The reasons have been explained. If you are still sceptical, observe and experiment. Everything that is truly scientific can be proved or in some way demonstrated. As this is one of the basic principles of this book and its companion volume, "The Smile," and as joy and laughter are met as the first exercise of our program, it may be well to summarize some of the arguments:
Exercise in laughter sets free the vital organs and brings all parts into harmonious, normal activity, stimulates the circulation, quickens the metabolism of the cells and causes elimination. Each of these topics might receive many pages of discussion.
You will be tempted to omit the practice of the chuckle, but it should be especially emphasized.
It expresses and accentuates the permanent possession of the joyous thought. No other exercise can so stimulate a right attitude toward life, as well as restore the normal condition of the vital organs.
It has also, as have all of these exercises, a beneficial effect upon the voice. In fact, all good exercises tend to improve the voice. This is one of the most important tests of an exercise,—does it affect easily, naturally and normally the vocal organs?
3. HARMONIC EXPANSIONSustaining laughter and extension, sympathetically and joyously elevate and expand the chest as far as possible.
Feel the breast bone separate farther from the spine, easily and naturally as in the expression of joyous courage.
Expand slowly, sustain the expansion, gradually release, then rest, that is to say, perform the exercise in the same quadruple rhythm of the harmonic extension.
In this exercise you should feel a deepening of the chest chamber.
It is well at first, until you get the exercises correctly, to place one hand at the back, the other on the chest, and in expanding to feel the two hands separate.
This expansion should be sustained for several seconds. The release should follow gradually. There should be a repetition of the expansion; you should feel a sympathetic activity all through the chest and torso.
Sudden collapses should at all times be avoided, and they should especially be avoided in exercises of the chest and of the central organs.
The free, expansive facility of the whole chest is the measure of the health, strength, grace and normal actions of a human being. It is of primary importance.
4. RESPIRATORY ACCENTUATIONKeeping the body extended, the chest well
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