How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions Part 5

An exercise is a means of turning an impulse in a higher direction. It implies also the curbing of abnormal impulses.

Exercise implies stimulation of normal functioning. It is an endeavor, but one in accordance with principle.

Thus, an exercise is an expression of an aspiration. Exercise implies many things. It implies that a man may be low down but that he can rise; it implies that if he begin early and work patiently enough he can control, soon or late, his nature. He can control the expression of his being and every manifestation of life if he will only come close enough to the fountain-head of thinking and feeling. He must be willing to demonstrate on an humble plane, and, while striving for the highest ideal, take the simplest exercise as the first step of the ladder.

An exercise localizes function. Every part of the body, even every muscle has certain functions to discharge. Awkward men use the wrong part to perform a certain action; part interferes with part. A true exercise will train each part to discharge its own function and bring it into harmonious co-ordination with other parts. It will stimulate both growth and development but make growth precede development.

While aspiration is universal it becomes conscious in a human being. We have definite ideals and not only instincts for their attainment, but we can adopt rational methods for their realization. We have not only an instinctive consciousness of what is normal but a deep intuition that we can improve every power of our being, every agent of our body and every tone of the voice.

A simple, a most commonplace action, when done with aspiration becomes an exercise. In fact, everything that man does is part of the training.

A true list of exercises must reflect the spirit of all life.

A normal man can distinguish between a wrong and a right exercise, between that which will lift him upward and that which will cause degeneracy. When men give up to their lower appet.i.tes they strengthen the downward impulses, but the mind can be awakened and every little step will become a demonstration of higher possibilities. An exercise is a demonstration to a man of his possibilities.

Sometime the science of sciences will be that of training and education.

All over the organic world we find tendencies toward degeneracy or downward; and we find everywhere aspirations or activities upward.

Every bird, every rose, every blade of gra.s.s is trying to reach an ideal. This universal upward tendency or process we call by some big words which confuse our minds and obscure the facts.

An exercise is not only mental but emotional, not only expressive of thought but of normal emotion.

The wise doctor looks at his patient. He does this not only to recognize the patient's condition but to see how much courage he has, how much joy, how gladly he accepts life.

An exercise demands accentuation of extension.

Muscles should have a certain normal length and the power of relaxation to take a certain length. On account of abnormal positions, such as obtain during sleep, certain muscles become unduly elongated and others too short. To restore the balance of proper proportions those shortened need extension and the elongated need shortening. Accordingly the so-called extensor muscles of the body need frequent action.

The effect of these stretches is to harmonize the vital forces. When a man lies upon his bed, as has been said, he breathes less, the circulation is more or less impeded; hence, the dull feeling and unwillingness to rise.

The stretch also equalizes the circulation. It affects the veins where the pressure of blood is weakest, where there is a more immediate indication of congestion, so that the bad blood flows away, and the good blood from the arteries where the pressure of blood is strong, flows in, and the processes of life go on with more decision.

There is still another explanation why the stretch is so important. It is primarily activity of the extensor muscles and is vitally connected with all true expansion. The flexor muscles on account of the position in sitting and because of a lack of expansive activity, often become too short. They can be extended only by activity of the extensor muscles.

The stretch is the special and instinctive action of the extensor muscles in response to a distinctive demand for freedom of the organs, or harmony of the whole myological mechanism. It is also, as has been said, closely connected with the circulation, and the activity of the vital organs.

There is no more important exercise than stretching. Its neglect is one of the strange things in training. One who wishes to be stronger, to have the normal possession of all his faculties, powers and organs, can be initiated and secure the result most rapidly, by the use of this simple and elemental exercise.

An exercise is an act of expansion.

The action of man's body consists of expansion, contraction and modulation, the latter being the union of the other two.

True energy expresses itself primarily by expansion. Life expands and any increase of new life and all positive emotions cause an increase of expansive activity in the body.

The study of expansion reveals to us the fact that expansion and contraction furnish the many elements of all human action, but that expansion is first, that expansion expresses joy, exhilaration, animation in life, and that contraction, aside from its co-ordination with expansion in causing control in intensity, expresses antagonism, hate, anger, pain. Accordingly this book a.s.signs certain fundamental expansions, which everyone should practice and does practice if he obey his own deep instincts.

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 a.s.sociated, 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 n.o.ble, positive emotions of a human being.

A pa.s.sive 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 pa.s.sivity, 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