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His own neck is forward. Contrast the general good carriage of the military men

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STANDING AND WALKING ERECT

EFFECT OF GOOD CARRIAGE UPON GOOD HEALTH

BY

DR. LUTHER H. GULICK

EN with thick, straight, strong necks are as a rule good fighters. They may not be quick, but they are usually tenacious. They do not know when they

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UNTRAINED GOOD CARRIAGE

Retained even in advanced age

Even when carrying weight

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carriage during the successive expression of many and divergent emotional states.

Many city business men in middle life have bodies that disgrace them. Everywhere you see fat, clumsy, unsightly bodies; stooped, flabby, feeble bodies; each and every degree of dilapidation and inefficiency. These bodies are not capable servants of their owners. They cannot do half the work they ought to do. They cannot give joy and pride, and they do

not promote a man's self-respect.

One reason for this is their carriage. Most of the men you pass on a city street carry themselves in a slovenly manner. Observe this the next time you are out. Perhaps the first man you notice will be slipping along with his chest flat, abdomen protuberant, head forward. The next will be fat and remind you of an inverted wedge, slim in the chest, but gradually spreading out below. With every step he takes he has to make a special effort. His weight is a costly drain upon his energy. The third man may be tall and thin, with a difference of about two inches in the height of his shoulders. He is a bookkeeper. Through his habit

URGENT APPEAL

Nevertheless the strength of the body and its unyielding attitude are maintained

of always carrying something on his left arm and of bending over his desk with his weight on his right shoulder, he has gradually stretched the muscles out of shape. Not only has the position of the shoulders been altered, but there is even a slight curvature of the spine itself.

Copyright 1902, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. BENDING FORWARD

You will meet with all the variations on these three principal types of bad carriage. Not one man out of ten carries himself so as to look his best. He does not even give and maintains an erect spine. a true indication of his real self. He possesses more courage, more personality, than he shows.

A strong man bends from his hips
A

weak man bends his back

The way

But looks are not the main thing. a man stands and walks has a bearing upon. his health and upon his efficiency. If he stand always with his chest flat and his head forward, his breathing is shallow and he never makes his diaphragm do its full work. By itself, the effects of this are enough to help rob him of vigor. In the case of the man whose abdomen is so overlaid with fat that he walks clumsily, it is also true that he has an impaired blood circulation and defective respiration.

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One reason for the bad carriage you see in people is that they do not know what is good car

Copyright 1902, Underwood & Underwood, N. f,

EARNEST ARGUMENT Pleading a case, but still maintaining the position of strength and power

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riage, nor how to acquire it. The commonest direction is, "Hold up your head." That does not hit at the real difficulty at all. A man can take any amount of pains with his head and chin, and still keep in an abominable position. Changing the angle of the head does not improve things. "Throw your shoulders back," is another familiar piece of advice, and one which comes no nearer the point than

AN ADVERSE PROPOSITION the first. The posi

Ready for prompt, incisive action.
Neck tense, shoulders squared, weight

on the rear foot

tion of the shoulders has hardly any effect upon the position of the body. The shoulders hang upon the outside of the body like blinds on a house. Shift their place as much as you like; you do not change the shape of the chest-cavity.

There is only one way of doing that-by getting the back and neck where they belong, by keeping the spine erect. This proposition is easier to talk about than to carry out. It cannot be carried out unless a man is willing to make a determined effort. Attention is what counts. Students in military schools acquire good habits of standing and walking during the first six or eight weeks of their course. They acquire them so thoroughly that the matter needs practically no further care during later years.

Copyright 1902, Underwood & Underwood, N, Y. ADMINISTERING REPROOF The attitude gives emphasis to the spoken words

Constant attention is the explanation. At a military school a new student is kept watch of during all his waking hours. He is not allowed to stand, to sit, to walk, in any position except the best. Thus, the whole organism gets gradually trained into the new habit.

Copyright 1002, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. IN A MERRY MOOD Appreciating a joke and still keeping a self-respecting spine, from sheer force of habit

The military student is also put through special exercise for arms and back; but exercise is not the main factor in the process. People have the notion that exercise will make the muscles of a man's back so strong that they will pull him up. straight without any thought on his part. This is contrary to facts. The back of the coal-shoveller is bent, even though it be covered with coils of muscle. The truth is that a man's back tends to keep the same position in rest which it had during exercise. The coalheaver does his work with a bent back, and during rest it stays bent. Standing straight is primarily a matter of habit, not of muscle. It depends upon a man's nervous control. The nerve centers need to be trained; and this can be accomplished only by constant and persistent attention. A useful way to acquire the feeling of good carriage is to stand just as straight as possible. In some cases the feeling may be aided by holding the arms straight above the head, as

Copyright 1902, Underwood & Underwood, N.Y. LAYING DOWN THE LAW Another example of the position of superb power

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shown in (1) on this page, pushing the head as high as possible. This will necessitate pulling in the abdomen. An untrained person will attempt to put his hands straight above his head, and as high as possible, as shown in (2). He does it not by straightening the upper part of his back, but by making a moderate curve in the lower part. Notice the flat, bad chest. He has gotten his arms straight by bending the small of his back, not by straightening the upper part. In (3) the upper part of the chest is in the same position as it is in (2), but a large part of the hollow in the lower third of the back has been taken out. No. (4) No. (4) is over-straightening the upper two-thirds of his back. Notice the contraction of the stomach, the pulling on the cords of the neck, and the straining of the muscles in the back part of the shoulders. If a man would rigidly hold his body in good position for two months, he would probably keep on doing so always. He would have formed habits of muscle and of nerve that would look out for the matter themselves. But there must be no "times off," no let-up in the forming of a habit.

(1)

Now there is a simple direction that fits most cases: Keep the neck pressed back against the collar. That will do the work.

The ribs are attached to the spine in such a way that when the spine is right, they are held in the best possible position. This increases the chest cavity, the lungs have free room to expand, the heart action is vigorous and unimpeded, the diaphragm gets a good purchase on the chest walls. The effect on the organs

lower down is equally important. The stomach, on the left side, and the liver, on the right side, fit up close against the concave diaphragm muscle. The circulation tends to be poorer in the liver than anywhere else in the body. This is because the blood cannot flow through it directly and freely, but must be squeezed through a double net-work of small veins and capillaries. This is one reason why sedentary people are so likely to be bilious. The liver is something like a sponge, and the diaphragm is like a hand that rests over it. When the diaphragm contracts vigorously, it exerts a certain pressure on the liver. Then it relaxes. This alternate pressure and relaxation is one of the main factors in keeping the liver working well. I have known many people who were slightly bilious to remedy their trouble completely by simply taking deep breathing exercises three or four times a day.

It is clear enough that a stooping posture must decrease the efficiency of the heart and the lungs, and injure the work of the liver. But its bad effects do not stop there. When the abdomen. is habitually relaxed and allowed to sag forward as usually happens when people stand badly-all the important organs inside slip downward a little; they lie lower than they ought to. I have often known the lower border of the stomach to have dropped two or three inches from this single cause. Just why this condition should result as it does, I am still uncertain. Perhaps it is due to a stretching of the nerves or blood vessels; but, at all events, the tone of the whole system is sure to be lowered; the organs grow flabby and do their work sluggishly.

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(2)

Time and again I have succeeded in curing troubles which I was assured were organic and serious just by getting the patient to stand up straight, to walk correctly, and breathe deeply.

Now it is a sad fact that simply knowing how to stand up straight will not remedy the difficulty. What counts is not the number of remedies we may have on our tongue's end, but the use we make of the remedies. Directions have been supplied. How is a man going to carry them out? This is the most practical question of all.

him

In the first place, he must depend upon self. There are many braces sold that pretend to accomplish the desired results. They claim to hold the shoulders back, to hold the head up, to set the faulty position of the trunk right. But the truth is that the longer a man uses braces, the less able he will be to stand up straight. If the braces be strong enough to make a real pull on the shoulders, they are doing the work that belongs to the muscles; and that means that the muscles are getting less and less capable every day of doing it for themselves. It is the old law of use and disuse. In any case, as we have already seen, it is not the shoulders that are really at the root of the trouble. Round shoulders are the result of bad carriage, not the cause of it.

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its of body carriage. During all exercises the body should be held in the finest position possible.

Then, finally, there are one or two simple exercises that have a special value for this very difficulty:

(1) Inhale slowly and as strongly as possible. At the same time, press the neck back firmly against the collar. Now hold it there hard. There is no harm in doing this in an exaggerated way. The object is to straighten out that part of the back which is directly between the shoulders. This deepens the chest.

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(4)

(2) For men who are fat, this exercise is suggested: Keep a good standing position. Draw in the abdomen vigorously as far as possible. Hold it there a moment and let it out again. Repeat this ten times the first day, and increase until it can be done fifty times both morning and night. Every time you think of it during the day, withdraw the abdomen vigorously. This will strengthen the muscles that hold it in place. These muscles will recover their tone and will hold the abdominal wall in better position.

Queer as it may seem on first thought, there are times when it is a good thing to drop, or "slump," as it is commonly called. When one becomes exceedingly fatigued, the blood pressure of the body is lowered. The blood tends to accumulate in the abdomen under such conditions. When the back bends forward and the chest gets flat, the ribs press upon the abdominal contents. The result is that more blood is pressed into the general circulation. Thus blood pressure is raised.

The attitude of action is that of standing firmly. The attitude of contemplation and

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