One of the most simple instances of bearing pain more easily by relaxing to it occurs while sitting in the dentist’s chair.  Most of us clutch the arms, push with our feet, and hold ourselves off the chair to the best of our ability.  Every nerve is alive with the expectation of being hurt

The fatigue which results from an hour or more of this dentist tension is too well known to need description.  Most of the nervous fatigue suffered from the dentist’s work is in consequence of the unnecessary strain of expecting a hurt and not from any actual pain inflicted.  The result obtained by insisting upon making yourself a dead weight in the chair, if you succeed only partially, will prove this.  It will also be a preliminary means of getting well rid of the dentist fright,—­that peculiar dread which is so well known to most of us.  The effect of fright is nervous strain, which again contracts the muscles.  If we drop the muscular tension, and so the nervous strain, thus working our way into the cause by means of the effect, there will be no nerves or muscles to hold the fright, which then so far as the physique is concerned cannot exist. So far as the physique is concerned,—­that is emphatic; for as we work inward from the effect to the cause we must be met by the true philosophy inside, to accomplish the whole work.  I might relax my body out of the nervous strain of fright all day; if my mind insisted upon being frightened it would simply be a process of freeing my nerves and muscles that they might be made more effectually tense by an unbalanced, miserably controlled mind.  In training to bring body and mind to a more normal state, the teacher must often begin with the body only, and use his own mind to gently lead the pupil to clearer sight.  Then when the pupil can strike the equilibrium between mind and body,—­he must be left to acquire the habit for himself.

The same principles by which bearing the work of the dentist is made easier, are applicable in all pain, and especially helpful when pain is nervously exaggerated.  It would be useless and impossible to follow the list of various pains which we attempt to bear by means of additional strain.

Each of us has his own personal temptation in the way of pain,—­from the dentist’s chair to the most severe suffering, or the most painful operation,—­and each can apply for himself the better way of bearing it.  And it is not perhaps out of place here to speak of the taking of ether or any anaesthetic before an operation.  The power of relaxing to the process easily and quietly brings a quicker and pleasanter effect with less disagreeable results.  One must take ether easily in mind and body.  It a man forces himself to be quiet externally, and is frightened and excited mentally, as soon as he has become unconscious enough to lose control of his voluntary muscles, the impression of fright made upon the brain asserts itself, and he struggles and resists in proportion.