KEEPING FIT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 February 1939, Page 6

KEEPING FIT

RHYTHMIC EXERCISES COPYING NATURE. MENTAL AND- PHYSICAL UPLIFT. Through the permission and encouragement of certain education authorities a system of physical education based on Delsarte’s science of the Language of the Body has been practised and expanded in certain schools where the usual gymnastic exercises are also taught, and it has been found to augment them rather than to contradict them. The kind of result that, has been obtained is well expressed in tho following unedited essay of a 15-year-old pupil who has-attended classes for two and a half years and whose physical movement was awkward and uneasy:— “Today the idea is rapidly gaining acceptance that no relief from tension is so perfect as that coming through complete relaxation. At our ‘Speech and Movement' classes, which last for one hour once a week, we begin by doing exercises which alternatively stiffen and loosen the limbs and so induce the body to relax all its parts. In those exercises we imitate the young plants shooting up through the earth in spring and their withering and dying in the autumn: using the shooting up of the plants to depict the stiffening of the body and their withering its relaxation. Through the relaxation of the body comes the relaxation of the mind and this is an essential point—for having learned to relax completely whenever we wish, we are able to rest properly when tired. Many are unable to do this and are subject to nervous breakdowns and overactivity of brain, because their minds have become fevered and cramped and they do not know how to obtain rest when they need it. “In many exercises we aim at copying nature in some of her varied forms of expression—the swift flight of the birds and the clear curved shape of their wings in'motion, for ‘lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping’; the falling leaves and tumbling waves, and the soft swaying of supple trees bending to the breeze, also afford subjects for imitation. In all these imitations we generally (to use a colloquial expression) ‘let ourselves go,’ and soon we get our bodies and minds working in perfect harmony together and then (and not until then!) we get unhampered self-ex-pression. The imaginative side of us begins to wake up and enjoy itself. We become more observant of the world in which we live, of the different types of people around us.and their reactions (sometimes rather amusing!) to the varied situations and aspects of life. “We begin to develop physically as well as mentally, for we endeavour to create beauty in all our movements and exercises as the ancient Greeks did, who in their athletics chose as their champion not him who attained the greatest height in jumping or the greatest speed in running, but him whose movements throughout the whole wore the most beautiful and pleasing to watch. “Each week we come away from our lesson physically tired and yet curiously refreshed and relieved, because all our intenser feeling and ideas, repressed and cramped during the week, have found an outlet in .‘Speech and Movement’- where we find joy and development through self-expression."