While exercise is necessary for the preservation of youth and health, still Nature did not intend that man should work continuously. In the great scheme of physical construction, rest and sleep play just as important a part as work. However, it was designed that we must work, or we could not enjoy the benefits of sleep. There is an art of relaxation, rest and sleep as well as an art of work. Too many people think that this world was made to work in and that all rest is to be reserved for a future existence. He has a mistaken view of life, who thinks that this existence must be one of incessant labor and weariness and the future existence one of perpetual rest. Rest and work are both inevitable features of a normal life. To continually follow one without the other means sure destruction. One by wearing and breaking down the physical structure, the other by stagnation and disease.

Relaxation is one of life's great secrets. Those who master it secure as their reward strength, endurance, grace and expressiveness. Relaxation makes work and exercise a pleasure. It is also an indispensable factor to health, peace of mind and personal beauty, for it makes recuperation and renewal possible. All muscular tension expends vital energy and tears down the cells of the brain and body. Muscular relaxation gives Nature an opportunity to rebuild and repair the destruction made by muscular tension. Muscular relaxation is that condition of the muscular system in which the nervous (vital) force is to a large extent withdrawn from the muscles. This secret of relaxation is enjoyed by animals and healthy children; but by few grown people. The few adults who understand perfect relaxation and use it, are always remarkable for their endurance, graceful bearing, attractiveness and power of expression. Their endurance results from muscular economy. In other words, they do not uselessly expend unnecessary vital force. They adjust the force put forth exactly to the resistance to be overcome. Hence, there is no waste of energy. The majority of people use up in their every day movements from five to twenty times the force necessary. Watch the average person sign his name, sharpen a pencil or do any other commonplace act. Note the excess of force wasted and you will gain an idea of the vast economy that must result from the proper adjustment of the muscular effort to the task.

My desire is to instruct you how to economize your forces so as to have at all times a reserve capable of meeting any unusual demand. There is no reason why you should live up to the limit of your strength and vitality every day. You need to keep a reserve. What would happen to a bank if it loaned out all the money it took in and several depositors should suddenly need to draw out an unusual amount of money? It would have to suspend business because it was unable to meet the demands. That is just what would occur to you, if you spent all your energy each day and was then placed; under an unusual demand.

There are two methods of acquiring the power of perfect relaxation; both are necessary. One is mental, the other physical. You must first form such habits of thought control as are conducive to calmness and contentment. You will readily understand that the man or woman who is possessed of a calm, well balanced, amiable and controlled mind is not as liable to waste vitality as the person who is excitable, emotional, erratic and irritable, whose mind is constantly filled with conflicting impulses.

Next in importance to the mental attitude is the formation of habits of muscular economy. By this I mean the habit of performing all movements with the least possible outlay of energy. In lifting an article weighing six ounces, use just force enough to move six ounces and not enough to lift as many pounds. With a little thought and care, you can soon acquire this habit and do away with your extravagance of vital force.

One of the principal reasons why people suffer with their nerves, nervous exhaustion and prostration is because they have not learned the secret of rest. Plenty of natural sleep is, of course, the first requisite, but you must not conclude that the number of hours spent in bed or even in sleep indicate the amount of rest obtained. There are many people who retire at an early hour and remain in bed from eight to ten hours and yet never completely rest the body. They awake in the morning with a feeling of weariness and exhaustion.

The craving of the body for sleep is as imperative as the cry for food. This blessed loss of consciousness is one of the best medicines known. There is no substitute or rival for it. Sleep is the off-duty period of consciousness. It is during this time when the entire system is in a quiescent state, that the final process of assimilation takes place and that the body is really nourished.

The assimilation goes on more thoroughly and rapidly before midnight than afterwards, because of the more thorough circulation of the blood, which carries the new material and removes the waste. Oxygen is also consumed in greater quantities before midnight than after it, and oxygen is necessary to the nutritive process. The heart decreases in force from midnight until after the sun rises next day; hence, relapses and death occur more frequently after this hour. Another good reason why we should get our sleep early in the night is because the cells of the brain and other nerve cells can recuperate more quickly before being taxed to a point of strain or exhaustion, than they can afterwards do.

It should also be remembered that the nutrition of the body goes on very slowly unless plenty of oxygen is consumed at the same time. As the consumption of oxygen is less during sleep than in waking hours, there is the greatest need for plenty of pure air in the sleeping room.

Sleep is a life-giver as well as a life-saver. It has a most important influence on the vitality. Most people think that the longer they sleep, the more rested they are. This, however, is not so. Refreshment and renewal from sleep depends not so much upon the quantity as upon the quality of the sleep. There is a kind of sleep that is actually hard work - for the muscles and nerves. I refer to a sleep in which the muscles are kept tense, thus not only causing an exhaustion through sheer physical work but harassing the brain with cease less messages from the muscular system. The man who awakens in the morning unrefreshed after eight hours of sleep does not know how to sleep. He has allowed his muscles to become, and remain contracted, and all night he has been working as hard as though lifting heavy weights. What he needs is not more sleep but better sleep. Sleep is restful not so much because it is unconsciousness as because it gives normal muscular relaxation.