Program For Daily Exercise

Every morning, just after arising, take a cup of water, and go through the following deep breathing exercises:

Exercise No. 1

Stand erect, feet about 30 inches apart, extend arms above head, clasping hands and holding elbows rigid, inhale deeply. Bend toward the left and try to touch the floor with the clasped hands as far from the foot and to the rear as possible. Exhale while returning to position. Inhale deeply reversing motion to the right. This movement should be repeated about 24 times.

Exercise No. 2

Reest the body upon tips of toes and the palms of the hands. Move the body up and down as far as possible, bending only at the waist line.

If this position is too strenuous the tension can be reduced by resting on the elbows, knees, or both, while executing the movement. Inhale deeply while taking this exercise, and exhaust the breath suddenly, as if coughing, with the downward motion. This movement should be repeated about 12 times.

Exercise No. 3

Rest the hands on the rim of a bathtub or on two chairs placed about 2 feet apart. Assume position shown by cut. Lower the body until chest touches the knee; rise, bringing the other knee under the chest, repeating the movement. Execute this movement rapidly as if running, rising first on one foot and then on the other, from 50 to 100 times.

If sufficiently strong, this can be taken without support for the hands. This exercise is especially recommended for those suffering from constipation.

Every evening, just before retiring, take a glass of water and go through the following movements and deep breathing exercises:

Exercise No. 3. - Same as in the morning.

Exercise No. 4

Stand erect, feet about 30 inches apart, inhale deeply and strike a blow toward the left with the right fist, passing the left fist behind the back. Alternate this movement, striking toward the right with the left fist, giving the body a swinging and twisting movement.

Exercise No. 5

Stand erect, feet about 30 inches apart, hands clasped over head, elbows rigid, inhale deeply. Bend toward the left, describe a complete circle with the clasped hands. Exhale when erect. Reverse, describing a circle in the opposite direction completes the movement.

Exercise

The child from the time it begins to walk until it is ten or twelve years old, or until the pressing hand of necessity forces upon it the power of restraining duty, will in a great measure obey the play instinct or the natural laws of exercise. However, our complex industrial organism forces most of us into its vortex at the very time we are beginning to change the body from the youth to the adult, and the responsibilities with which we are laden, the struggles we carry on, prevent the majority from giving attention to and maintaining a system of development exercises which is so vitally important, and which would provide a great storehouse of energy to be drawn upon in after years. Inasmuch, therefore, as the conditions under which we exist prevent the free play of our instincts, and the exercise of our natural desire for certain kinds of play or motion, it becomes necessary for us to devise a method of overcoming the repressing influences that crush out the play instinct of civilized man.

Constructive Exercises

Constructive exercises should be taken and practised regularly between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. It is largely during this period that the physical condition of the body for the balance of life is determined.

Many a college youth, endowed by Nature with a sound physical body and a healthy brain, has irreparably injured both by sitting on the end of his spine with his feet higher than his head, poisoning his blood with tobacco narcotics from a stylish pipe, and failing to keep it purified by obeying the laws of motion and of oxidation. Constructive exercises should employ every muscle in the body long enough once in every twenty-four hours to generate sufficient heat to cause perspiration, or at least to force twice the normal quantity of blood to the lungs for purification. Exercise thus taken up to the point of fatigue, and of sufficient duration to use all the nutrition taken in the form of food, will, under favorable conditions, build the body to its highest degree of physical strength, provided we keep Nature supplied with the right kind of material (food) with which to do her work.

Constructive period of life from ages 15 to 25.

Poisoning and purifying the blood.

Exercise For Repair

After the body has reached maturity, or attained its full growth, the only exercise needed is for repair. This it must have or Nature will inflict her inexorable sentence in some form of congestion.

In mature life exercise only for repair.

In various industrial and professional pursuits the legs, neck, and arms are used enough to keep them in a fair state of repair. That part of the body, therefore, that suffers most for want of motion, or exercise, is the trunk. In this part of the anatomy are located the vital organs controlling not only the circulation and the oxidation of blood, but also those organs upon whose normal action depend solely the questions of digestion, assimilation of food, and elimination of waste the food is selected, combined, and proportioned so as to pro-duce chemical harmony in the stomach, and to meet the requirements of age, temperature of environment, and work, the body will be kept sufficiently charged with energy to demand a certain amount of exercise. If the command is obeyed the body can be trained to work automatically, as it were, but where the vocation is sedative, or prevents obedience to these demands, the trunk should be exercised in the open air from thirty to forty minutes daily by flexing, tensing, twisting and bending in every possible way, long enough and rapidly enough to double the normal heart action and inhalations of air.

Why the "trunk" requires exercise.

If properly nourished the body will demand a certain amount of exercise.