Relaxation and muscle balance are necessary to the practices of concentration and meditation so that (1) the body may not be injured by the mental efforts and (2) the mental work may not be spoiled by bodily discomfort. Third, we have to remember that bodily attitudes are associated with states of feeling, such as lying down with sleep, and kneeling with prayer. That has to be taken into consideration when you are selecting a posture, but there is no objection to your lying down to concentrate or meditate, so long as you find that it does not conduce to sleepiness.

Try to select an attitude for concentration which will be free from disturbing associations. It is generally found advantageous to sit upright with the eyes closed, the hands resting, and the head and neck straight but not stiff.

You will probably find that the body is not as obedient as you would like it to be. It is often restless and impatient or troubled by trifling sensations, even when you have removed any causes of discomfort that there may be. Do not permit this. The body must be your servant. Will you be master? Raise yourself up, and say: "I will". Do not wish, but say: "I will". If the body is not bright and obedient, train it. Tomorrow, and each day for one month set aside some time every day and do the following exercises.

1. Standing still.

2. Nerve exercise.

3. Relaxing.

4. Breathing exercises.

5. Stretching and bending exercises.

Do all these faithfully every day for one month. If you miss one day begin again on the next and then do the exercises for one full month without missing once. This will give you an opportunity of doing something that is at once beneficial to the body and valuable training for the will. Train your body as a fancier would train a prize dog; do not starve it or beat it, but do not indulge it harmfully.


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If you find that under this new regime old dirt comes to the surface, and the body becomes weak and ill -- an effect due to past indulgence, not to present strain -- stop the practice for a few days. Then begin all over again, and thus go on again and again until the body is sound, clean, and strong. Continue until weakness and sluggishness disappear. If necessary, make a change in your diet, in the direction of the "cheerful" foods, avoiding both "heavy" and "exciting" things.

The Five Bodily Exercises

1. The Standing Exercise.

With your watch in sight try to stand perfectly still (except for breathing and blinking) in front of a mirror for three to five minutes. Make no response to any twitching, tickling, itching, creeping, aching, or creaking feelings that may arise. Think "stillness", not "not-movingness".

2. Nerve Exercise.

Sit down with your elbow resting and hand raised, and look intently at the palm and fingers, keeping them quite still. Very soon you may feel creeping sensations in the muscles and a tingling in the fingertips, with a sensation of something flowing off. Something does flow off, and has even been photographed occasionally during the last fifty years; but now observe that you can reverse the flow by an act of will. Send it back up the arm. Let it flow and reverse it several times, keeping the hand quite still.

Afterwards practice this without looking, for both hands and feet, and use the mood of it to reverse the currents at times when you may become excited by unusually "nervous occasion". I call it "nerve-fluid continence". There may be times, however, when you will feel this flow -- perhaps even in floods -- and some intuition will instruct you to let it go, and some other intuition may even tell you where it is going.

3. The Relaxing Exercises.

The first part of this work is to acquire the feel of relaxation, for which I recommend the following. Hold one arm out in front about level with the shoulder, loosely, with the elbow a little bent and the hand drooping from the wrist. With the other hand hold a book, edge upwards under the forearm, and try to find the pivotal point of the horizontal arm, so as to get it well balanced on the book. When you are satisfied that the arm will rest balanced on the book without falling, use your imagination to relax it progressively from the fingertips, thinking the withdrawal of energy slowly into the shoulder. When the arm feels relaxed, suddenly pull away the book. The arm should fall lifeless, if it is relaxed. (You could treat this as a game on some occasions, getting a second person to hold the book and pull it away unexpectedly.) Try this several times, as you may not at first achieve the required mental feeling, on which follows the physical obedience.

Once you have caught the feeling of relaxation practice it lying down. Stretch yourself progressively, beginning with the toes and feet and legs, then up the trunk, fingers and arms also, to the neck -- stretch the neck especially, wriggling it about and entirely loosening it (this is very important) -- chin, lips, cheeks and nose, brow, and scalp. As you proceed, let each part in turn sink back into relaxation, until at the completion of the process you give a sigh of physical pleasure which empties your lungs, which then quite naturally start breathing again in a gentler manner and with a slower tempo than before. Now you should feel a cat-like luxury, with a complete disinclination to rise.

4. Breathing Exercise.

Thin, shallow breathing does not conduce to mental power any more than to bodily health. Strong, slow, quiet, steady breathing is best, and again we need to establish a mood for the concentration-breath, which can be put on and taken off like a garment. For both strength and control, first become diaphragm-conscious. Singers and speakers do this in various ways. One of the best is first to find the diaphragm by placing your hand just below your ribs and above your waist in front and then panting through your mouth like a dog. Pant until your muscles ache. Next, sitting easily erect, neither relaxed nor taut, put your mind on the front of the chest, not in the middle, but towards the sides, and, simply by thinking and will, not by breathing, produce a series of slight feelings of expansion and contraction of the chest, not so much forward as diagonally sideways. After a little practice you can control these muscles by thought.

Now you are equipped to set the mood for concentration-breath. First breathe out as fully as you can. Next draw the breath in slowly and evenly through both nostrils, depressing the diaphragm, then, keeping the diaphragm down, draw in more air by expanding the chest. In other words, drink down and fill up in two successive but continuous motions. Hold the fullness a little while and slowly exhale. Do not overdo this in any way. The intention is not to take in more air than is normal when the lungs are reasonably fully used, that is, properly used, but to counteract habits of shallowness, irregularity, and excitability.

One thus teaches the body what good breathing feels like, removes the old built-in wrong feeling and replaces it by the new right feeling, which will soon be ignorable, when it sinks into the subconscious, becoming a habit. Do not push the chest out and hollow the back, but rather draw the muscles of the abdomen well in -- which straightens and flattens the back -- and keep them in while practicing any breathing exercises.

Indeed, it is a good thing now and then during the day whether standing, sitting, or lying down, to move these muscles up and down a number of times, and finish the exercise with them up, not voluntarily consenting to their dropping at any time. They can in this way become obedient and strong, so that in connection with breathing well one naturally avoids the error of pushing the chest out, and performs the correct action of drawing the abdominal muscles in. One does not then confuse these muscles with the diaphragm. Do not hold the breath so long that you have to exhale rapidly or explosively. Everyone must find for himself the measure for healthy breathing. Slow breathing is conducive to placidity and long life. I think we are all likely to know by the feel of it when to let it go and when to stop it, but have to watch carefully not to mix it with our personal emotions.

Some say you should count, or tell beads -- so many units of time for inbreathing, so many for holding the air in the lungs, so many for letting it out. Many old teachers advised a 1, 4 and 2 unit rhythm, but this was for special purposes; probably the average modern person will find about 4,4, and 4 convenient, with a unit of about 1 second. Quite a good policy is to practice as you feel it easy and pleasant. For the practice of concentration unusual forms of breathing, such as very slow or long breathing and the practice of breathing up one nostril and down the other, are not required; abnormalities and extremes are to be avoided as dangerous. And never cork the breath in at the throat, under the erroneous assumption that you are "holding the breath".

5. Stretching and Bending Exercises.

After you have done the preceding four exercises, you may do these to put the body in trim for ordinary activities of life. It is well to do them also after any prolonged period of sitting.

Stand with the heels together; raise the hands reaching high above the head; bend forward to touch the toes without bending the knees; return to the upright position, reaching as high as possible, standing on the toes.

Stand as before; let the hands and arms rest straight down the sides, with the backs of the hands turned outwards from the knees; slowly raise the unbent arms outwards and upwards, until the backs of the hands touch above the head; stretch, rising on the toes and looking upward; slowly return.

Stand once more with the hands at the sides, palms inward; lean over slowly to one side until the hand sinks below the knee, while the other hand is curled up under the armpit; slowly swing back to the opposite side, stretching the body all the time.

Perform all the exercises with an even movement and concentrated thought, for at least one minute each. Finally stand, raise one foot from the floor by bending the knee; now raise the other and lower the first, and thus run for about a minute, without moving along. In this exercise the two feet do not both touch the ground at the same time. In all these or any other exercises do nothing to strain the heart.

Extras.

There are certain exercises for the eyes and neck which can be performed in oddments of time which would otherwise be wasted. Both these organs need a training in balanced musculature. I seem to remember that someone once said: "You are as young as your neck." Perhaps I only thought it. In any case, it is true. For balanced musculature you need development, loosening, and relaxation. First stretch your neck to loosen it and let it sink back into place.

Then there are six exercises; (1) Rolling the head slowly round and round, both ways; (2) Slowly nodding the head far forward and backward; (3) Lolling the head over from one side to the other; (4) Twisting the head to right and left; (5) Jutting the chin out horizontally and bringing it far back without altering the level; (6) Carrying the head a little to the right and left without altering its vertical position. Finally again stretch your neck and loosen it back into place.

Another good exercise for the neck is to sit with your hands on your knees and slowly roll the upper part of the torso round and round, while having the neck completely relaxed, so that the head also rolls round, but only by gravity. Begin this exercise by leaning forward and letting the head loll forward, pulling upon the back of the neck by its weight only, causing a feeling of stretch. Then move the torso round slowly. As the right shoulder goes down, the head, being relaxed, will roll over on that side, and so on right round. This should be done several times, both ways. A good finale, while the head is forward, is to shake the whole relaxed face -- not too forcibly -- with jaw, lips, nose, temples, and all loosely wobbling in their state of relaxedness. Unpleasant as this may appear to any spectator, you will find the effect very pleasing when you restore yourself to your usual equilibrium.

For the eyes, while you sit comfortably without moving your head, let your gaze very slowly and steadily follow the outline of the opposite wall or some large object, first in one direction, then in another. At every decided change of direction close the eyes tightly for a moment. Go up and down, across and diagonally, as well as round and round both ways. As a variant of this exercise, look at a near object and then to something beyond it. In other words, look from near to far and back again, not jerkily, but with slow motion. In general, for eye health, don't sit in a room where you cannot see something twenty feet away, at which you can look whenever you pause for thought, or, if you must be in a small room, learn to "look through the wall". Sometimes children look at the ceiling when the teacher asks a question. Sometimes there then comes an ignorant rebuke: "Look at me, not at the ceiling; you will not find the answer there" -- making it more difficult for the child to think, and perhaps even harming his eyes.

All the foregoing exercises can be practiced at any odd spare moments. They will always prove time well spent. So precious are they all that I would say to anyone who feels miserable and depressed: "Just do some of them, and especially the neck exercises, and then see how you feel!"


This article is excerpted from the book:

Concentration: An Approach to Meditation
by Ernest Wood.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher, The Theosophical Publishing House, www.theosophical.org

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Ernest Wood

About the Author

Ernest Wood is well known as both a writer and a lecturer on religious and educational matters. His work is always careful and thoughtful. His convictions as to the possibilities which we may attain in the near or remote future by internal self-culture are in accordance with the practical mysticism of both East and West.

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