How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions, page 59 by S.S. Curry
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e activities to yourself.
2. Practice with an ideal in mind.
The accomplishment of an endeavor implies the reaching or attainment of an ideal. Practicing with no end in view accomplishes nothing. The goal must be an ideal.
There is a universal intuition in an ideal man. There is an intuition deep in ourselves of our higher possibilities. The feeling that better things are possible inspires all human endeavor. Movement merely for the sake of movement, mere haphazard practice, without an ideal, accomplishes but little. We want not only an instinctive ideal but we want one which is the result of thought and study.
3. Practice hopefully and joyfully.
That is to say, there should not only be thought and imagination in practice, there should be feeling,--a normal and ideal emotion. The realization of the possibility of attaining an ideal brings joy, hope, courage and confidence.
4. In every exercise feel a sympathetic expansion of the torso.
It is not only necessary to feel joy, we must express it, and the primary expression of joy is expansion.
Expansion is needed not only as one of the exercises; it is more than this. It is a conditional element of all exercise. From first to last, in every movement, feel also a certain expansion of the chest.
5. In every exercise feel exhilaration of the breathing.
Increase of the activity of breathing in direct co-ordination with expansion is a part of the expression, not only of joy but courage, resolution, endeavor and all normal emotions.
Taking a full breath is given as one of the exercises, but here again we have a condition for all exercises. This is the reason why we should give attention to exalted emotion. It will diffuse through the whole body causing expansion and also quickening all the vital functions.
Respiration is the central function of the body. All the vital operations depend upon it. Perfunctory exercises which do not stimulate breathing are useless and injurious.
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