Do not work
at it, go so far even as not to care especially whether you do it
right or not, but simply do what is to be done without straining
mind or body by effort. It is quite possible to make so desperate an
effort to relax, that more harm than good is done. Particularly
harmful is the intensity with which an effort to gain physical
freedom is made by so many highly strung natures. The additional
mental excitement is quite out of proportion to the gain that may
come from muscular freedom. For this reason it is never advisable
for one who feels the need of gaining a more natural control of
nervous power to undertake the training without a teacher. If a
teacher is out of the question, ten minutes practice a day is all
that should be tried for several weeks.
XIII.
TRAINING FOR MOTION
"IN every new movement, in every unknown attitude needed in
difficult exercises, the nerve centres have to exercise a kind of
selection of the muscles, bringing into action those which favor the
movement, and suppressing those which oppose it." This very evident
truth Dr. Lagrange gives us in his valuable book on the Physiology
of Exercise. At first, every new movement is unknown; and, owing to
inherited and personal contractions, almost from the earliest
movement in a child's learning to walk to the most complicated
action of our daily lives, the nerve centres exercise a mistaken
selection of muscles,--not only selecting more muscles than are
needed for perfect co-ordination of movement, but throwing more
force than necessary into the muscles selected.
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