Whatever the different systems for muscular and health development may
be, the value of developing those vital inner organs--the heart, the
lungs and the digestive organs, is easily understood. A large arm, or
a wonderful leg development cannot help these inner organs, if they
are naturally weak, or if they have been weakened. The point is--what
_will_ give health to these organs the fundamental or motor power to
all health.
Special exercises for the lungs, that is, conscious deep breathing
exercises for a specific period of time, will give results which
few realize. It is all so simple that most of us cannot believe it,
like all truths. The maximum oxygenation of the blood through taking
in large quantities of air--thereby feeding the organs with purer
blood--the _improved circulation_, the exhilarated heartbeat, the
drawing away of drowsiness from the brain, _the improved digestion
through the unconscious massage of the lower organs_, all these will
show what results are obtainable. If the children in our schools
were taught conscious, deep, slow breathing at that period of their
lives when body and mind are flexible, the habit would be easily
formed for life. This habit would surely wipe out consumption within
two generations. Millions of human beings die yearly from this, the
greatest human menace. Why not, therefore, have schools for breathing.
Surely this experiment is entitled to a place among the hundreds of
other experiments which have been and which are being tried.