Vitality Supreme

While walking give special attention to my suggestions concerning breathing. Breathe deeply and fully at frequent intervals. Expand the body in the abdominal region. If you like, you can carry your breathing still farther and allow this expansion to extend to the chest walls, though as a rule, this is not necessary. No doubt one of the most valuable suggestions for strength and vitality building while walking is to take at frequent periods several movements which are referred to in the chapter on Thyroid Stimulation, namely, the chin-in-downward- and-backward motion while holding a full breath with abdomen fully expanded. In fact this idea, if carried out until the muscles of the back of the neck are fatigued at the completion of the walk, will energize you mentally and physically. A suggestion that I have often offered in various articles upon this subject is to practice what I may term harmonious or rhythmic breathing, which I regard as of exceptional value. By this I mean taking the same amount of time to draw in the breath as you do to exhale it, keeping time with a certain number of steps. For instance, while taking eight steps, draw in a breath and exhale during the next eight steps. You may make this six, eight, ten or twelve steps if you like. If you have some piece of music in mind that carries with it a rhythm that accommodates itself to your steps while walking, and if each inhalation and exhalation takes up an even number of steps, you will find that you are swinging along with a sense of harmony and pleasure that will make distances pass away and cause you to be unconscious of the length of your walk. This rhythmic or harmonious breathing is an excellent means of cultivating the deep-breathing habit.