How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its SatisfactionsCurry, S. S. (Samuel Silas)
Science
How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions
Curry, S. S. (Samuel Silas)
Hygiene; Physical education and training
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 EXTENSION
On 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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