and best co-operative effort for their mutual benefit. This harmonious adjustment constitutes poise, standing or sitting. This makes possible the most economical movement and use of the body at all times and for all purposes, and it is the poise that is absolutely essential in order that the processes of respiration, circulation, and digestion have an opportunity to proceed in an unrestricted and natural manner.
Many physical ills can be traced back step by step to bad poise as the original cause. To illustrate: A person is suffering from an impoverished condition of the blood; the immediate cause of this is bad nutrition; the reason for this may be inactivity of the liver, which is in turn due to insufficient massage of the diaphragm. This condition may be the effect of a bad poise which makes deep breathing impossible. Unless a woman habitually sits and stands well, she cannot have as good health or as great endurance as is normally hers. One whose poise is not good can be comparatively well, but being well or not suffering from actual illness is very different from that high degree and exuberance of health possible to the sound body and the sound mind.
Considering poise acquired from bad habits in the use of the body in the sitting position, what do we find? First—the habit of resting the body upon the back of the hips or the small of the back instead of on the base of the pelvic bones as Nature intended. This placing of the basis of support so far back necessitates the pulling of the head forward to aid in sustaining the center of gravity.
The points of attachment of the muscles reaching from the head and neck on the one hand, to the lower chest and abdomen on the other, are brought closer together and their intermediate length (or position at rest) in time, becomes shortened. At the same time, the muscles of the spinal region are over-stretched, and after a while yield, so that their intermediate length becomes permanently lengthened. In consequence of this loss of harmony of action between these page five
