What we seldom realise is that, no less than we can move our biceps,
we can move our muscles that regulate our Expression. If people can
spend 15 minutes daily over a dull--and often almost useless, if
not actually stiffening and harmful--grinding series of spring-grip
dumb-bell exercises, why will they not spend a few moments at some one
time daily, or many (otherwise wasted or misused) moments at frequent
intervals throughout the day, in exercising the muscles that regulate
their Expression--in lifting up their heart (and chest and head) and in
laughing or smiling, so as to keep happy?
Besides the Expression, as an easy avenue to Happiness, there is
another--rather less easy--avenue in the improvement of the state
of the Health in general, and the state of the Blood in particular,
through more sensible Foods and Feeding, Drinks, Water-treatments, and
Exercise and Exercises--especially Breathing.
Various Avenues to Better Health
Some principles and details will be found in various books.[B] There is
no space here for more than a few suggestions.
Better Foods and Drinks
Years ago, the late Dr. Forbes Ross told me that, when he was medical
superintendent of a certain Asylum, he found that the patients were
very violent on Thursday afternoons. On Thursdays, at the mid-day
meal, they had Beef-Extract. He forbade this, and at once the Thursday
afternoon violence ceased. In my own case, the depression of years
ceased when I gave up flesh-foods and meat-extracts more than 23 years
ago.
This does not mean that such foods are a cause of non-happiness in all
cases. Still less does it mean that they are the sole cause, or even
the main cause, in all cases. Many haphazard “vegetarians” have been
miserable.
It rather means that some better Diet may be an important factor in
Happiness.
The general idea of Diet, for producing or increasing mental and
physical Well-Being, which includes Happiness, would surely be to get
first such a régime as shall clear out the clogging and depressing or
irritating toxins and waste-matters, and shall not add to them, but
shall re-build a clean and healthy body and mind by a better _Balance_
of the various Food Elements.
The Drinks, in order to increase the Well-Being and the subsequent
Happiness, should be cleansing, and should include the minimum of
undesirable elements (whether overstimulating, or narcotic).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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