How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions Part 11

1. Practice with your whole nature.

Do not regard the performance of movements as a mere matter of will.

Expression requires a unity of the whole life of our being.

Regard an exercise as a means of bringing all your powers into life and unity. Let practice be a means of demonstrating your own abilities, spontaneous and deliberative activities to yourself.

2. Practice with an ideal in mind.

The accomplishment of an endeavor implies the reaching or attainment of an ideal. Practicing with no end in view accomplishes nothing. The goal must be an ideal.

There is a universal intuition in an ideal man. There is an intuition deep in ourselves of our higher possibilities. The feeling that better things are possible inspires all human endeavor. Movement merely for the sake of movement, mere haphazard practice, without an ideal, accomplishes but little. We want not only an instinctive ideal but we want one which is the result of thought and study.

3. Practice hopefully and joyfully.

That is to say, there should not only be thought and imagination in practice, there should be feeling,--a normal and ideal emotion. The realization of the possibility of attaining an ideal brings joy, hope, courage and confidence.

4. In every exercise feel a sympathetic expansion of the torso.

It is not only necessary to feel joy, we must express it, and the primary expression of joy is expansion.

Expansion is needed not only as one of the exercises; it is more than this. It is a conditional element of all exercise. From first to last, in every movement, feel also a certain expansion of the chest.

5. In every exercise feel exhilaration of the breathing.

Increase of the activity of breathing in direct co-ordination with expansion is a part of the expression, not only of joy but courage, resolution, endeavor and all normal emotions.

Taking a full breath is given as one of the exercises, but here again we have a condition for all exercises. This is the reason why we should give attention to exalted emotion. It will diffuse through the whole body causing expansion and also quickening all the vital functions.

Respiration is the central function of the body. All the vital operations depend upon it. Perfunctory exercises which do not stimulate breathing are useless and injurious.

6. Accentuate the extension of the muscles of the body in all exercises possible.

The kneading of the face helps the parts as well as being important in itself. If we rub the muscles while whining we tend to confirm the condition in the parts at the time. Thus we may develop whines and frowns. It is very important, therefore, that there should be a cheery smile on the face during the manipulation, if the looks are to be improved by the exercise.

In kneading the stomach and the diaphragm if we have a full chest, as in laughter, the manipulation will produce a far better effect upon the diaphragm than if we have little breath.

In practicing an exercise, therefore, it is not only necessary to study which part most needs development or which muscle is weak, but it is just as necessary to notice which muscles need extension.

7. Practice harmoniously.

We should exercise all parts of the body in a similar way. If we exercise, for example, the action of the feet it is well also to practice rotary action of the arms, or at any rate, of the head.

We should see to it that when we practice one part of the body the corresponding part of the body should be equally exercised. We should not give more exercise to one side or part, except when there are congested conditions. We should not give much more to the arms than to the legs unless we have to walk a great deal.

8. Practice in such a way that every movement affects the central parts of the body.

Hence the program takes first the expansion of the chest and breathing and chuckling, also the transverse action of the torso. We should be cautious about performing violent exercises with the arms, or even with the feet, without simultaneous expansion of the torso because this is a central action which is conditional to all proper action of the limbs.

Contraction of the torso while working upon the limbs may draw vitality from the vital organs.

Gymnasts, as a cla.s.s, die early because they are always performing feats. Other dangers are found in the gymnasium, such as practicing exercises perfunctorily, using quick jerks and too heavy and labored movements which affect only the heavy muscles. The absence of rhythm and co-ordination, the presence of too antagonistic movements, the desire to make a show, too much work upon the superficial muscles are also frequent faults.

Another reason for the beginning of the day's exercise with joy is the fact that the positive emotions affect a man in the centre of his body.

They are all expressed by sympathy and right expansion of the torso.

This is not only central in expression, it is also central in training.

The muscles affecting the more central organs should in every exercise in some sense cause co-ordinate actions in various parts. The expansive action of the chest is one of the chief exercises because it not only frees the vital organs but co-ordinates the normal actions of a man in standing and walking.

Observe that harmony demands that all parts be equally exercised, but unity demands that we begin our exercises at the center. The organic centrality of the whole body is of first importance.

We should not only feel expansion of the chest in all exercises, but we should begin with exercises for the torso rather than with exercises for the limbs. We want to reach the deepest vital organs as a part of all exercises.

Sometimes a man goes into a gymnasium and works for the muscles of the arm, for example, while the muscles of his chest and around his stomach and diaphragm are weak. In this case the central muscles may grow weaker. Exercises, not properly centred, will decrease harmony.

I have found many people with lack of support of the voice and weakness of the diaphragm and the muscles relating to the retention of breath, but I have found very strong muscles in the arms, while the muscles in the center of the body were surprisingly weak.

In following "external measurements" too much attention is often given to the muscles of the limbs that can be measured. It is easy to discover the fact that the lower limbs have more muscular development than the arms, but this is of little consequence compared with the weakness of internal and hidden muscles like the diaphragm.

It cannot be too often emphasized that an organism necessarily is one.

The parts sympathize with each other, and the higher the organism the more is this true. The voice expresses the whole being and body, and it not only calls for great activity of the central muscles, such as the diaphragm, but every part of the body seems to share in voice conditions.

A human being with his legs cut off can never sing or speak as well as he could before he lost them.

9. As far as possible, always feel in all the muscles a sympathetic action with certain opposite parts that support or naturally co-operate with these.

Specific exercises must be directed to central and harmonious effects.

For example, expanding the chest and extending the b.a.l.l.s of the feet downward as far as possible co-ordinates the parts that are used in standing, though in a different way. It gives extension to the parts; and to extend muscles is often the best way to bring activity into them.

Formerly a horse was fed in a high trough in order to make him hold his head high, but no horse carries his head so high or has such a beautiful arch to the neck as the wild horse, that feeds on the ground.

Weak muscles may often be improved by giving them extension. This eliminates constrictions and brings more rhythm or balanced activity in opposition to other muscles or in union with them.

The co-ordination must be felt. When there are co-ordinations there will be a sense of satisfaction in the vital organs. The exercises will not weary. They will not be a strain or tax the strength. They acc.u.mulate vitality rather than waste it.

Co-ordination must especially be studied and used consciously and deliberatively with reference to the chest. In the start of every exercise there should be, as has been said before, something of an increase of activity in the chest and the breath.

10. Practice all exercises as rhythmically as possible.

Rhythm and co-ordination are the deepest lessons of life and are necessary to each other. Activity and pa.s.sivity must alternate in proportion as far as possible in all exercise.

Observe also that the active exertion of an exercise should determine the amount of the reaction. We should go as slowly in the recoil or eccentric contraction as we do in the concentric contraction.

Nature is always rhythmic. Notice the beating of the heart, going on constantly for eighty or a hundred years. It acts and then re-acts.

Observe, too, the rhythm of the peristaltic action of the stomach.

An exercise must obey this universal law of nature.

Jerks should never be permitted; but all be easy and gradual. Even the surrender of a movement should be gradual.

The eccentric action which results is more important in many cases than the concentric. For example, in the diaphragm we make voice by an eccentric action of the inspiratory muscles. We take breath by a concentric action of the diaphragm, we give out breath in making voice by eccentric contraction.