In every case it is equilibrium we are working for, and a one-sided
view of physical training is to be deplored and avoided, whether the
balance is lost on the side of the nerves or the muscles.
Take a little child early enough, and watch it carefully through a
course of natural rhythmic exercises, and there will be no need for
the careful training necessary to older people. But help for us who
have gone too far in this tension comes only through patient study.
So far as I can, I will give directions for gaining the true
relaxation. But because written directions are apt to be
misunderstood, and so bring discouragement and failure, I will
purposely omit all but the most simple means of help; but these I am
sure will bring very pleasant effects if followed exactly and with
the utmost patience.
The first care should be to realize how far you are from the ability
to let go of your muscles when they are not needed; how far you are
from the natural state of a cat when she is quiet, or better still
from the perfect freedom of a sleeping baby; consequently how
impossible it is for you ever to rest thoroughly. Almost all of us
are constantly exerting ourselves to hold our own heads on. This is
easily proved by our inability to let go of them.
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