shortening. Accordingly the
so-called extensor muscles of the body need frequent action.

The effect of these stretches is to harmonize the vital forces. When a
man lies upon his bed, as has been said, he breathes less, the
circulation is more or less impeded; hence, the dull feeling and
unwillingness to rise.

The stretch also equalizes the circulation. It affects the veins where
the pressure of blood is weakest, where there is a more immediate
indication of congestion, so that the bad blood flows away, and the good
blood from the arteries where the pressure of blood is strong, flows in,
and the processes of life go on with more decision.

There is still another explanation why the stretch is so important. It
is primarily activity of the extensor muscles and is vitally connected
with all true expansion. The flexor muscles on account of the position
in sitting and because of a lack of expansive activity, often become too
short. They can be extended only by activity of the extensor muscles.
The stretch is the special and instinctive action of the extensor
muscles in response to a distinctive demand for freedom of the organs,
or harmony of the whole myological mechanism. It is also, as has been
said, closely connected with the circulation, and the activity of the
vital organs.

There is no more important exercise than stretching. Its neglect is one
of the strange things in training. One who wishes to be stronger, to
have the normal possession of all his faculties, powers and organs, can
be initiated and secure the result most rapidly, by the use of this
simple and elemental exercise.

An exercise is an act of expansion.

The action of man's body consists of expansion, contraction and
modulation, the latter being the union of the other two.

True energy expresses itself primarily by expansion. Life expands and
any increase of new life and all positive emotions cause an increase of
expansive activity in the body.

The study of expansion reveals to us the fact that expansion and
contraction furnish the many elements of all human action, but that
expansion is first, that expansion expresses joy, exhilaration,
animation in life, and that contraction, aside from its co-ordination
with expansion in causing control in intensity, expresses antagonism,
hate, anger, pain. Accordingly this book assigns certain fundamental
expansions, which everyone should practice and does practice if he obey
his own deep instincts.

Nega