When we study the expression of this part, we find that it reveals
energy and courage and all the noble, positive emotions of a human
being.

A passive chest expresses indifference, inactivity, fear,
discouragement, a sense of weakness, unwillingness to awake and rise up
to meet emergencies. A sunken chest, accordingly, is an indication of a
tendency to disease, simply because it expresses a negative mental state
or one favorable to the reception of abnormal conditions.

The expansion of the chest, on the contrary, reveals that happy
acceptance of life, that active, energetic determination to control
abnormal conditions which will ward off all disease and eliminate all
failure.

This expansion of the chest, as we can see, is one of the most elemental
actions of expansion of the human being. We shall observe later that
this activity is directly concerned with erect posture. All actions in a
normal condition co-operate or co-ordinate. This expansion frees the
respiratory muscles and all the vital organs, gives man command of the
elemental action of his body as a whole; that is, his erectness
expresses higher emotions and experiences.

An exercise implies co-ordination.

An organism exists only by virtue of certain co-ordination of parts.
Training improves and extends this co-ordination.

Co-ordination is the simultaneous union of many different elements or
actions in different parts of the body.

An exercise is rhythmic.

When exercises are performed in obedience to the law of rhythm, better
results will follow. Rhythm is a law of man's being. Action and reaction
imply a human being doing his little part and then accepting the greater
work out of the heart of the universe. Action and reaction, activity
and passivity, the giving and the receiving, everything natural is
rhythmic. Absence of rhythm is death.

An exercise is simple.

The best exercise is the simplest in its movements. It is not the
spectacular actions of an exercise that make it the best. As every
exercise is a struggle upward it must necessarily be an emphasis of
something elemental and normal.

Any movement is normal when it is part of the discharge of an elemental
or distinctive action of any agent or part.

The difference between accidental and elemental needs more discussion.
Working upon accidentals secures weak results, perverts and interferes
with free function. Working upon elementals brings freedom, power.

IV

PROGRAM OF