But will not the discovery of all this superfluous tension make one
self-conscious? Certainly it will for a time, and it must do so. You
must be conscious of a smooch on your face in order to wash it off,
and when the face is clean you think no more of it. So you must see
an evil before you can shun it. All these physical evils you must be
vividly conscious of, and when you are so annoyed as to feel the
necessity of moving from under them self-consciousness decreases in
equal ratio with the success of your efforts.
Whenever the brain alone is used in thinking, or in receiving and
taking note of impressions through either of the senses, new power
comes as we gain freedom from all misdirected force, and with
muscles in repose leave the brain to quietly do its work without
useless strain of any kind. It is of course evident that this
freedom cannot be gained without, first, a consciousness of its
necessity. The perfect freedom, however, when reached, means freedom
from self-consciousness as well as from the strain which made
self-consciousness for a time essential.
VI.
THE BRAIN IN ITS DIRECTION OF THE BODY
WE come now to the brain and its direction of other parts of the
body.
What tremendous and unnecessary force is used in talking,--from the
aimless motion of the hands, the shoulders, the feet, the entire
body, to a certain rigidity of carriage, which tells as powerfully
in the wear and tear of the nervous system as superfluous motion. It
is a curious discovery when we find often how we are holding our
shoulders in place, and in the wrong place. A woman receiving a
visitor not only talks all over herself, but reflects the visitor's
talking all over, and so at the end of the visit is doubly fatigued.
"It tires me so to see people" is heard often, not only from those
who are under the full influence of "Americanitis," but from many
who are simply hovering about its borders. "Of course it tires you
to see people, you see them with, so much superfluous effort," can
almost without exception be a true answer. A very little simple
teaching will free a woman from that unnecessary fatigue. If she is
sensible, once having had her attention brought and made keenly
alive to the fact that she talks all over, she will through
constant correction gain the power of talking as Nature meant she
should, with her vocal apparatus only, and with such easy motions as
may be needed to illustrate her words. In this change, so far from
losing animation, she gains it, and gains true expressive power; for
all unnecessary motion of the body in talking simply raises a dust,
so to speak, and really blurs the true thought of the mind and
feeling of the heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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