CHAPTER 5. SUPREME BODY BUILDING METHOD
HEALTH, HARMONY, POWER, SERVICE: That is what a supreme body gives. Do not always be taking care of your health, take care of your body and you will generate health. Thought animates the body with health. This is an age of electrification. We are fed, lighted, heated, and transported by electricity. In the lightning pace we are going, the body is neglected. Give three minutes morning and night to the exercises below and you will straighten, develop, heal, and energize your body. Enter upon these exercises as you would an arena of conquest where you expected to win the great prize of life.
THE BREATH IS LIFE: Take a deep, full, abdominal breath with each body building exercise, inhale through the nose and expel forcefully through the mouth. NEVER HOLD YOUR BREATH.
FIRST EXERCISE: Stand erect, drop hands to the side, clinch your fists tightly, then with muscular tension raise fists and arms slowly high above the head, taking a deep, full, abdominal breath as you raise them, relax and expel the breath forcefully through the mouth. Repeat 5 times.
SECOND EXERCISE: Place the left hand flat in the right, clasp them, resisting with the left, lift with the right, putting full strength into the effort, until the hands are lifted above the head, taking deep breath as in the first exercise. Relax, expel breath. Then repeat with the right hand resisting the left. Repeat exercise 5 times.
THIRD EXERCISE: Grasp the hands firmly above the head, letting them be at rest on top of the head. Then pull hard from right to left slowly, taking the deep, full abdominal breath with each movement, relaxing and expelling as above. This and the above exercise are wonderful in their effect in developing the lungs and rounding out the development of the shoulders and chest. Repeat 5 times.
FOURTH EXERCISE: Grasp hands in front, level with chest, pull from right to left hard, taking deep, full abdominal breath with each movement. Relax and expel breath same as above.
FIFTH EXERCISE: Grasp the hands behind the back, taking deep, full abdominal breath, lift the hands as far up on the back as possible. Relax, expel breath. Always draw in the breath as you move through the exercise, having a full breath when the movement is completed, then expel.
SIXTH EXERCISE: Place right hand over right hip, clench the left fist, raise it slowly, drawing the deep breath, and bending the body to the right as far as possible. Relax, expel breath. Now repeat with the left hand placed over the left hip. Repeat 5 times.
SEVENTH EXERCISE: Grasp hands in front of breast, pulling hard, swing the body as far right and left as possible without moving the feet, take deep breath with each movement. Repeat 5 times.
EIGHTH EXERCISE: Raise hands above the head, take a deep breath and bend the body, try to touch floor with finger, not bending the knees. Repeat 5 times.
You can add other exercises to these, only be sure they have the deep breathing. These will build a vigorous, developed, supple body. Will ward off every form of asthma, catarrh, bronchial or lung trouble. Stop indigestion, increase circulation, renew and make blood.
Do all exercises in well ventilated room, have clothing loose. The best time is on rising and on retiring. If they make you ache at first it is sure evidence of their doing you good. You will soon be too strong to have aches and pains.
Do not exhaust yourself in the exercises, just take them till the body glows and the muscles are well exercised.
Faithfully persist in these exercises and breathings.
Marrying a goose does not assure one of a bed of swans-down.
Never ask a man who gave him his black eye; nobody gave it to him, he probably had to fight hard for it.
When discussing the modern dress, keep in mind that a bare statement is not necessarily the naked truth.
There is a difference between notoriety and merit. A thousand dollars worth of roses will barely fill a room with perfume, but with a dollar's worth of fried onions you can scent up a whole town. The American people lose three million years every twelve months by being sick. The doctor's fees amount to a billion and two hundred and twenty million. Wonder what the Master of Life meant when he said: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."
