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Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene by G. Stanley Hall
page 64 of 425 (15%)
in physical training, who have philosophic minds, command the facts of
modern psychology, and whom the world awaits now as never before.

C. Another yet closely correlated ideal is that of economic postures
and movements. The system of Ling is less orthopedic than orthogenic,
although he sought primarily to correct bad attitudes and perverted
growth. Starting from the respiratory and proceeding to the muscular
system, he and his immediate pupils were content to refer to the
ill-shapen bodies of most men about them. One of their important aims
was to relax the flexor and tone up the extensor muscles and to open
the human form into postures as opposite as possible to those of the
embryo, which it tends so persistently to approximate in sitting, and
in fatigue and collapse attitudes generally. The head must balance on
the cervical vertebra and not call upon the muscles of the neck to
keep it from rolling off; the weight of the shoulders must be thrown
back off the thorax; the spine be erect to allow the abdomen free
action; the joints of the thigh extended; the hand and arm supinated,
etc. Bones must relieve muscles and nerves. Thus an erect,
self-respecting carriage must be given, and the unfortunate
association, so difficult to overcome, between effort and an involuted
posture must be broken up. This means economy and a great saving of
vital energy. Extensor action goes with expansive, flexor with
depressive states of mind; hence courage, buoyancy, hope, are favored
and handicaps removed. All that is done with great effort causes wide
irradiation of tensions to the other half of the body and also
sympathetic activities in those not involved; the law of maximal ease
and minimal expenditure of energy must be always striven for, and the
interests of the viscera never lost sight of. This involves educating
weak and neglected muscles, and like the next ideal, often shades over
by almost imperceptible gradation into the passive movements by the
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