To Mrs. Annie Payson Call11 and Dr. Emily Noble we owe of late the stress we lay on muscular relaxation and rhythmic breathing, which practised faithfully will now and then bring sleep where drugs are worse than useless. Muscular relaxation can be learned by any who will take the trouble. The Delsarteans are already adepts at it. The letting of the arms drop limp by the side as one sits in an easy chair, the letting of the trunk sink unsupported against the easy chair as though it were sinking into a yielding bank of snow, the letting of the head fall forward or sideways without resistance will furnish even to the slow of wits a visual image which will serve as a sufficient pattern in the relaxation of the whole body.
Dr. Emily Noble, who has seen Oriental soldiers at the end of a long march throw themselves in complete relaxation on their backs, gives in her Rhythmic Breathing plus Olfactory Nerve Influence on Respiration possibly the most practical of all directions for the mature in the important art of relaxation. She bids him lie upon his back on a hard surface, with head turned to one side in order to relieve the tension on the muscles of the neck, with arms extended at right angles, with the palms turned up, with feet turned out and spread for comfort at least a foot apart.
The lungs are then to be cleared of their static air by a few deep inhalations, made through the left nostril because in the average man it seems to furnish a freer channel for the air than the right nostril. Next the insomniast settles down to lighter rhythmic breathing, which is nothing but the consequence of the conscious effort to make each exhalation equal to each inhalation. He should take the “breath in as gently as the fog creeps in from the sea.” He should let it out “as the air goes out of little children’s balloons when it is allowed to escape.”
As with experience all feeling of conscious effort passes, he will have a sense of letting go, the muscles will of their own accord relax, the quiet mind will come, especially if a pleasant thought be held steadily before it, the insomniast will stretch and yawn, take instinctively if he be in bed the sleep position, and pass off into a dreamless sleep which will indeed knit up “the ravell’d sleave of care,” and make him ready for a day of effective thinking and efficient action.
