front and dropped. To prove its freedom, toss it with the shoulder
muscles from the side into the lap. Watch carefully that the arm
itself has no more tension than if it were a sand-bag hung at the
side, and could only be moved by the shoulder. After practising this
two or three times so that the arms are relaxed enough to make you
more sensitive to tension, one hundred times a day you will find
your arms held rigidly, while you are listening or talking or
walking. Every day you will grow more sensitive to the useless
tension, and every day gain new power to drop it. This is wherein
the real practice comes. An hour or two hours a day of relaxing
exercises will amount to nothing if at the same time we are not
careful to use the freedom gained, and to do everything more
naturally. It is often said, "But I cannot waste time watching all
day to see if I am using too much force." There is no need to watch;
having once started in the right direction, if you drop useless
muscular contraction every time you notice it, that is enough. It
will be as natural to do that as for a musician to correct a discord
which he has inadvertently made on the piano.

There are no motions so quieting, so helpful in the general freeing
of the body, as the motions of the spine. There are no motions more
difficult to describe, or which should be more carefully directed.
The habitual rigidity of the spine, as compared with its possible
freedom, is more noticeable in training, of course, than is that of
any other part of the body. Each vertebra should be so distinctly
independent of every other, as to make the spine as smoothly jointed
as the toy snakes, which, when we hold the tip of the tail in our
fingers, curve in all directions. Most of us have spinal columns
that more or less resemble ramrods. It is a surprise and delight to
find what can be accomplished, when the muscles of the spine and