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