Nerves and Common Sense | Page 8

to come if the practice is repeated regularly for a long enough time, and
eventually we would no more miss it than we would go without our
dinner.
We must be careful after each deep, long breath to rest quietly and let
our lungs do as they please. Be careful to begin the breaths delicately
and gently, to inhale with the same gentleness with which we begin,
and to make the change from inhaling to exhaling with the greatest
delicacy possible--keeping the body loose.
For the shorter breaths we can count three, or five, or ten to inhale, and
the same number to exhale, until we have the rhythm established, and
then go on breathing without counting, as if we were sound asleep.
Always aim for gentleness and delicacy. If we have not half an hour to
spare to lie quietly and breathe we can practice the breathing while we
walk. It is wonderful how we detect strain and resistance in our breath,
and the restfulness which comes when we breathe so gently that the
breath seems to come and go without our volition brings new life with
it.
We must expect to gain slowly and be patient; we must remember that
nerves always get well by ups and downs, and use our wills to make
every down lead to a higher up. If we want the lasting benefit, or any
real benefit at all when we get the brain impression of quiet freedom
from these breathing exercises, we must insist upon recalling that
impression every time a test comes, and face the circumstances, or the
person, or the duty with a voluntary insistence upon a quiet, open brain,
rather than a tense, resistant one.
It will come hard at first, but we are sure to get there if we keep steadily

at it, for it is really the Law of the Lord God Almighty that we are
learning to obey, and this process of learning gives us steadily an
enlarged appreciation of what trust in the Lord really is. There is no
trust without obedience, and an intelligent obedience begets trust. The
nerves touch the soul on one side and the body on the other, and we
must work for freedom of soul and body in response to spiritual and
physical law if we want to get sick nerves well. If we do not remember
always a childlike attitude toward the Lord the best nerve training is
only an easy way of being selfish.
To sum it all up--if you want to learn to help yourself out of "nerves"
learn to rest when you rest and to work without strain when you work;
learn to loosen out of the muscular contractions which the nerves cause;
learn to drop the mental resistances which cause the "nerves," and
which take the form of anger, resentment, worry, anxiety, impatience,
annoyance, or self-pity; eat only nourishing food, eat it slowly, and
chew it well; breathe the freshest air you can, and breathe it deeply,
gently, and rhythmically; take what healthy, vigorous exercise you find
possible; do your daily work to the best of your ability; give your
attention so entirely to the process of gaining health for the sake of
your work and other people that you have no mind left with which to
complain of being ill, and see that all this effort aims toward a more
intelligent obedience to and trustfulness in the Power that gives us life.
Wholesome, sustained concentration is in the very essence of healthy
nerves.


CHAPTER III
_"You Have no Idea how I am Rushed"_

A WOMAN can feel rushed when she is sitting perfectly still and has
really nothing whatever to do. A woman can feel at leisure when she is
working diligently at something, with a hundred other things waiting to
be done when the time comes. It is not all we have to do that gives us

the rushed feeling; it is the way we do what is before us. It is the
attitude we take toward our work.
Now this rushed feeling in the brain and nerves is intensely oppressive.
Many women, and men too, suffer from it keenly, and they suffer the
more because they do not recognize that that feeling of rush is really
entirely distinct from what they have to do; in truth it has nothing
whatever to do with it.
I have seen a woman suffer painfully with the sense of being pushed for
time when she had only two things to do in the whole day, and those
two things at most need not take more than an hour each. This same
woman was always crying for rest. I never knew, before I saw her, that
women could get just as abnormal in their efforts to rest