obviated by stopping once in an hour or half hour, stretching the
fingers wide and letting the muscles slowly relax of their own accord.
Repeat this half-a-dozen times, and after each exercise try to hold the
pen or pencil with natural lightness; it will not take many days to
change the habit of tension to one of ease, although if you are a
steady writer the stretching exercise will always be necessary, but
much less often than at first.

In lifting a heavyweight, as in nursing the sick, the relief is
immediate from all straining in the back, by pressing hard with the
feet on the floor and _thinking_ the power of lifting in the legs.
There is true economy of nervous force here, and a sensitive spine is
freed from a burden of strain which might undoubtedly be the origin of
nervous prostration. I have made nurses practise lifting, while
impressing the fact forcibly upon them by repetition before they lift,
and during the process of raising a body and lowering it, that they
must use entirely the muscles of the legs. When once their minds have
full comprehension of the new way, the surprise with which they
discover the comparative ease of lifting is very pleasant. The whole
secret in this and all similar efforts is to use muscular instead of
nervous force. Direct with the directing power; work with the working
power.

VII.

THE DIRECTION OF THE BODY IN LOCOMOTION

LIFTING brings us to the use of the entire body, which is considered
simply in the most common of all its movements,--that of walking.

The rhythm of a perfect walk is not only delightful, but restful; so
that having once gained a natural walk there is no pleasanter way to
rest from brain fatigue than by means of this muscle fatigue. And yet
we are constantly contradicting and interfering with Nature in walking.
Women--perhaps partly owing to their unfortunate style of dress--seem
to hold themselves together as if fearing that having once given their
muscles free play, they would fall to pieces entirely. Rather than move
easily forward, and for fear they might tumble to pieces, they shake
their shoulders and hips from side to side, hold their arms perfectly
rigid from the shoulders down, and instead of the easy, natural swing
that the motion of walking would give the arms, they go forward and
back with no regularity, but are in a chronic state of jerk. The very
force used in holding an arm as stiff as the ordinary woman holds it,
would be enough to