Another common cause of fatigue with women is the useless strain in
sewing. "I get so tired in the back of my neck" is a frequent
complaint. "It is because you sew with the back of your neck" is
generally the correct explanation. And it is because you sew with
the muscles of your waist that they feel so strangely fatigued, and
the same with the muscles of your legs or your chest. Wherever the
tired feeling comes it is because of unnatural and officious
tension, which, as soon as the woman becomes sensible of it, can be
stopped entirely by taking two or three minutes now and then to let
go of these wrongly sympathetic muscles and so teach them to mind
their own business, and sew with only the muscles that are needed. A
very simple cause of over-fatigue in sewing is the cramped, strained
position of the lungs; this can be prevented without even stopping
in the work, by taking long, quiet, easy breaths. Here there must be
_no exertion whatever_ in the chest muscles. The lungs must seem to
expand from the pressure of the air alone, as independently as a
rubber ball will expand when external pressure is removed, and they
must be allowed to expel the air with the same independence. In this
way the growth of breathing power will be slow, but it will be sure
and delightfully restful. Frequent, full, quiet breaths might be the
means of relief to many sufferers, if only they would take the
trouble to practise them faithfully,--a very slight effort compared
with the result which will surely ensue. And so it is with the
fatigue from sewing. I fear I do not exaggerate, when I say that in
nine cases out of ten a woman would rather sew with a pain in her
neck than stop for the few moments it would take to relax it and
teach it truer habits, so that in the end the pain might be avoided
entirely. Then, when the inevitable nervous exhaustion follows, and
all the kindred troubles that grow out of it she pities herself and
is pitied by others, and wonders why God thought best to afflict her