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Chapter XXIII: Rules for Relaxation.1913
A variation of stretching may be effected by “shaking” yourself around
lose and limp, employing as many parts of your body as you can. The
Newfoundland dog, shaking the water from his skin when he emerges from
the water, will give you a general idea of what we mean.
All of these plans of relaxing, if properly entered into and carried out,
will leave the one practicing them with a sense of renewed energy and an
inclination to again resume work, the same feeling as one experiences after
arising from a healthy sleep and a subsequent good rubdown in the bath.
Mental Relaxation Exercise.
Perhaps it will be as well for us to give an exercise in Mental Relaxation
before we conclude this chapter. Of course, physical relaxation reacts on
the mind and rests it. But Mental Relaxation also reacts upon the body and
rests it. So this exercise may reach the needs of some who have not found
just what they required in the preceding pages of this chapter.
Sit quietly in a relaxed and easy position and withdraw the mind as far
as possible from outside objects and from thoughts which require active
mental effort. Let your thought reach inward and dwell upon the real self.
Think of yourself as independent of the body and as able to leave it without
impairing the individuality. You will gradually experience a feeling of blissful
rest and calm and content. The attention must be withdrawn entirely from the
physical body and centered entirely upon the higher “I,” which is really “you.”
Think of the vast worlds around us, the millions of suns, each surrounded
with its group of planets like our earth, only in many cases much larger. Get
an idea of the immensity of space and of time; consider the extent of Life
in all its forms in all these worlds and then realize the position of the earth
and of yourself a mere insect upon a speck of dirt. Then rise upward in your
thought and realize that, though you be but an atom of the mighty whole,
you are still a bit of Life itself, a particle of the Spirit; that you are immortal,
eternal and indestructible; a necessary part of the Whole, a part which the
Whole cannot get along without, a piece needed to fit into the structure of