Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of DiseaseWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Science
Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of Disease
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Mental healing
The use of the superior recti muscles has also a definite effect upon
the disposition. One of the pleasures of walking in a well-kept forest
where the trees meet high overhead, is that the eyes are inevitably
attracted upward to range among them, and there is a corresponding
elevation of feeling. Bernard Shaw once said that it was impossible to
enter a Gothic church without an elevation of the spirit, because the
eyes were surely attracted upward by the height of the nave, and a
corresponding uplift of feeling ensued. During a period of glumness it
is apparently impossible to keep the eyes raised. People who are
depressed and "cast down," as the expression is, invariably keep their
eyes downward, and just as soon as a man "looks up and not down" there
is a lifting of the depression. Even such apparently trivial muscular
actions as this may influence the mind, and thus react upon the
physical system generally.
_Wrinkles_.--Many influences of the body on the mind group themselves
in the muscles of expression around the eyes. Wrinkles, for instance,
are originally a habit of mind, and then the emphasis of this, in the
muscles of the face, is reflected back to deepen still further the
dejection or nervous unrest that originally causes them. It is
surprising to see what an influence it has on patients who go round
much with wrinkled foreheads, to have them give over the practice and
discipline themselves to appear with uncorrugated superciliary
muscles. St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and one of
{103} the wisest managers of men that ever lived, has emphasized in
one of his rules that "wrinkles on the forehead and still more on the
nose" are a sign of interior disquiet and must not be seen. He
realized that the interior feelings could be influenced by suggestion
at least, by having those who indulged in wrinkles keep their
foreheads and noses smooth. Most of the expression of the face is
concerned with the eyebrows and neighboring regions, and people should
occasionally be asked to look at themselves in the glass, so as to rid
themselves of habits of expression indicative of a disturbed mind, for
this will do much to help to relieve the mental disturbance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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