refore in all these motions for gaining freedom and a
better physical equilibrium in nerve and muscle, the warning cannot be
given too often to take every exercise easily. Do not work at it, go so
far even as not to care especially whether you do it right or not, but
simply do what is to be done without straining mind or body by effort.
It is quite possible to make so desperate an effort to relax, that more
harm than good is done. Particularly harmful is the intensity with
which an effort to gain physical freedom is made by so many highly
strung natures. The additional mental excitement is quite out of
proportion to the gain that may come from muscular freedom. For this
reason it is never advisable for one who feels the need of gaining a
more natural control of nervous power to undertake the training without
a teacher. If a teacher is out of the question, ten minutes practice a
day is all that should be tried for several weeks.

XIII.

TRAINING FOR MOTION

"IN every new movement, in every unknown attitude needed in difficult
exercises, the nerve centres have to exercise a kind of selection of
the muscles, bringing into action those which favor the movement, and
suppressing those which oppose it." This very evident truth Dr.
Lagrange gives us in his valuable book on the Physiology of Exercise.
At first, every new movement is unknown; and, owing to inherited and
personal contractions, almost from the earliest movement in a child's
learning to walk to the most complicated action of our daily lives, the
nerve centres exercise a mistaken selection of muscles,--not only
selecting more muscles than are needed for perfect co-ordination of
movement, but throwing more force than necessary into the muscles
selected. To a gradually increasing extent, the contracting force,
instead of being withdrawn when the muscle is inactive, remains; and,
as we have already seen, an arm or leg that should be passive is
lifted, and the muscles are found to be contracted as if for severe
action. To the surprise of the owner the contraction cannot be at once
removed. Help for this habitual contraction is given in the preceding
chapter. Further on Dr. Lagrange tells us that "Besides the
apprenticeship of movements which are unknown, there is the improvement
of already known movements." When the work of mistaken selection of
muscles has gone on for years, the "improvement of already known
movements," from the simplest domestic action to th