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. The muscles are so
well balanced that Nature holds our heads on much more perfectly
than we by any possibility can. So it is with all our muscles; and
to teach them better habits we must lie flat on our backs, and try
to give our whole weight to the floor or the bed. The floor is
better, for that does not yield in the least to us, and the bed
does. Once on the floor, give way to it as far as possible. Every
day you will become more sensitive to tension, and every day you
will be better able to drop it. While you are flat on your backs, if