Having relaxed the legs and arms and head, next the spine and all the muscles of the chest must be helped to relax.  This is more difficult, and requires not only care but greater muscular strength in the lifter.  If the one who is lifting will only remember to press hard on the floor with the feet, and put all the effort of lifting in the legs, the strain will be greatly lessened.

Take hold of the hands and lift the patient or pupil to a sitting attitude.  Here, of course, if the muscles that hold the head are perfectly relaxed, the head will drop back from its own weight.  Then, in letting the body back again, of course, keep hold of the hands,—­never let go; and after it is down, if the neck has remained relaxed, the head will be back in a most uncomfortable attitude, and must be lifted and placed in the right position.  It is some time before relaxation is so complete as that.  At first the head and spine will come up like a ramrod, perfectly rigid and stiff.  There will be the same effort either to assist or resist; the same disinclination to give up; often the same remark, “If you will tell me what you want me to do, I will do it;” the same inability to realize that the remark, and the feeling that prompts it, are entirely opposed to the principle that you are wanted to do nothing, and to do nothing with an effort is impossible. In lowering the body it must “give” like a bag of bones fastened loosely together and well padded.  Sometimes when it is nearly down, one arm can be dropped, and the body let down the rest of the way by the other.  Then it is simply giving way completely to the laws of gravity, it will fall over on the side that is not held, and only roll on its back as the other arm is dropped.  Care must always be taken to arrange the head comfortably after the body is resting on the ground.  Sometimes great help is given toward relaxing the muscles of the chest and spine by pushing the body up as if to roll it over, first one side and then the other, and letting it roll back from its own weight.  It is always good, after helping the separate parts to a restful state, to take the body as a whole and roll it over and over, carefully, and see if the owner can let you do so without the slightest effort to assist you.  It will be easily seen that the power, once gained, of remaining perfectly passive while another moves you, means a steadily increasing ability to relax at all times when the body should be given to perfect rest.  This power to “let go” causes an increasing sensitiveness to all tension, which, unpleasant as it always is to find mistakes of any kind in ourselves, brings a very happy result in the end; for we can never shun evils, physical or spiritual, until we have recognized them fully, and every mistaken way of using our machine, when studiously avoided, brings us nearer to that beautiful unconscious use of it which makes it possible for us to forget it entirely in giving it the more truly to its highest use.