Dr. Lyman Beecher said that one should always assume a horizontal
posture in the middle of the day. The heart, he said, had less difficult
work to pump the blood horizontally than vertically.
Henry Ward Beecher attributed his power to do a great deal more work
than ordinary men to this habit of his life of always resting in the
middle of the day.
He justified his habit by quoting from his father, using even his
father's antique pronunciation of "poster."
There is no doubt truth in this. To one very active and who performs a
great deal of work it brings a variety of positions and greater rhythm.
It rests the vital organs. It brings a harmonious repose and relation of
parts.
Even in lying down, we find abnormal conditions. Some men cramp and
constrict themselves. The chest is allowed to collapse and the whole
body tends to be drawn together. Grief or any negative emotion of
feeling or condition destructive to health tends to act in this way.
People, therefore, should lie down properly. They should lie down, as
has been said, sympathetically and expansively long. They should
directly manifest courage rather than shrinking, joy rather than
sadness, with thankful animation rather than in a despairing state of
mind. By the expression of joy and courage and peaceful repose and with
a deep sense of the acceptance and realization of the good of life lying
down will mean more. Express this in the body by normal position, by
expansion, no matter what attitude the body may occupy. Man, whether he
chooses or not, always expresses the state of his mind in the action of
his body. And by cultivating the right mood and expressing the right
feeling and so exercising the parts of his body as to express normally
and more adequately that mood, men will develop not only health,
strength and long life; but will also develop a nobler and stronger
personality and more heroic and courageous endurance.
The exercises, accordingly, should be applied to the simplest movements
of every-day life. They must not be taken as something separate from
life, but as an essential part of it, as necessary to life as a smile is
to the face.