One of the simplest and most effective methods of avoiding
self-poisoning is by maintaining an erect posture. In an erect posture
the abdominal muscles tend to remain taut and to afford proper support
or pressure to the abdomen, including the great splanchnic circulation
of large blood-vessels. In an habitual slouching posture, the blood of
the abdomen tends to stagnate in the liver and the splanchnic
circulation, causing a feeling of despondency and mental confusion,
headache, coldness of the hands and feet, and chronic fatigue or
neurasthenia, and often constipation.

A slouching attitude is often the result of disease or lack of vitality;
but it is also a cause.

[Sidenote: The "Consumptive Stoop"]

There is some reason to believe that "the consumptive stoop" leads to
tuberculosis partly through the lowering of resistance resulting from
the poisoning produced by a chronically relaxed abdomen.

Many persons who have suffered for years from the above-named symptoms
have been relieved of them after a few weeks of correct posture,
sometimes reenforced by the artificial pressure of an abdominal
supporter and by special exercises to strengthen the abdominal muscles.

Lying face downward with a pillow under the abdomen presses the blood
out of the congested splanchnic circulation.

[Sidenote: Breathing and Posture]

Breathing exercises are also very useful for correcting the chronic
evils of bad posture. Exercises taken when lying on the back, by raising
the legs or head, strengthen the abdominal muscles. Slow, deep
breathing, through the nose, while lying on the back, with a weight on
the abdomen, such as a bag of sand--2 to 4 lbs.--is beneficial.

[Sidenote: Standing and Walking]

In walking, the most common error is to slump, with the shoulders
rounded, the stomach thrust out, the head thrust forward, chin up, and
the arms hanging in front of the body. To those who walk or stand in
this fashion, let it be known that this is the "habitus enteroptoticus,"
or asthenic droop. It is characteristic of those with weak muscular and
nervous systems.

To set the shoulders back and square them evenly, to keep the chest high
and well arched forward, the stomach in and the neck perpendicular,
like a column, and the chin in, are simple fundamental measures that
most people know and many people disregard.

One should have a sense of the firmness or tautness of the abdominal
muscles and not of flabby relaxation. When one c