HOW TO BE HEALTHY—AND WISE
In addition to the exercises for your body which are given earlier in this book you should understand what they do for you and why you are advised to practise them. It is not for MY amusement! It is for your own health and happiness. And here are a few more tips that will help you to be healthy, and possible wealthy, and certainly wise—if you carry them out.
Exercises and Their Object
To make yourself strong and healthy it is necessary to begin with your inside and to get the blood into good order and the heart to work well; that is the secret of the whole thing, physical exercises should be taken with that intention. This is the way to do it:—
(a) Make the heart strong in order to pump the blood properly to every part of the body, and so to build up flesh, bone, and muscle. Exercise: “Swimming” and “Wrist Pushing.”
(b) Make the lungs strong in order to provide the blood with fresh air. Exercise: “Deep breathing.”
(c) Make the skin perspire to get rid of the dirt from the blood. Exercise: Bath, or rub with a damp towel every day.
(d) Make the stomach work to feed the blood. Exercise: “Body bending.”
(e) Make the bowels active to remove the remains of food and dirt from the body. Exercise: “Body bending” and “Kneading the abdomen.” Drink plenty of good water. Punctual daily move of bowels.
(f) Work muscles in each part of the body to make the blood circulate to that part, and so increase your strength. Exercise: Walking and special exercises of special muscles.
The blood thrives on simple good food, plenty of exercise, plenty of fresh air, cleanliness of the body both inside and out, and proper rest of body and mind at intervals.
The Japs are particularly strong and healthy. They eat very plain food, chiefly rice and fruit, and not much of it. They drink plenty of water, but no spirits. They take lots of exercise. They make themselves good-tempered. They live in fresh air as much as possible day and night. Their particular exercise is “Ju-Jitsu,” which is more of a game than drill, and is generally played in pairs. By Ju-Jitsu, the muscles and body are developed in a natural way, in the open air as a rule. It requires no apparatus.
The Nose
Always breathe through the nose. Shut your Mouth and Save your Life. Indians for a long time adopted that method with their children to the extent of tying up their jaws at night, to ensure their breathing only through their nose.
Breathing through the nose prevents germs of disease getting from the air into the throat and stomach; it also prevents a growth in the back of the throat called “adenoids,” which are apt to stop the breathing power of the nostrils, and also to cause deafness.
For a Scout nose-breathing is also specially useful.
Indian cradle: the mouth bandage to induce nose breathing
By keeping the mouth shut you prevent yourself from getting thirsty when you are doing hard work. And also at night, if you are in the habit of breathing through the nose, it prevents snoring. Therefore practise keeping your mouth shut and breathing through your nose.
Ears
A Scout must be able to hear well. Generally the ears are very delicate, and once damaged are apt to become incurably deaf. People are too apt to fiddle about with their ears in cleaning them by using things which are dangerous with such a sensitive organ as the ear, the drum of the ear being a very delicate, tightly-stretched skin which is easily damaged. Very many children have had the drums of their ears permanently injured by getting a box on the ear, or cleaning them out roughly with the hard corner of a towel.
Eyes
A Scout, of course, must have particularly good eye-sight; she must be able to see anything very quickly, and to see at a long way off. By practising your eyes in looking at things at a great distance they will grow stronger. While you are young you should save your eyes as much as possible, or they will not be strong when you get older; therefore avoid reading by lamp-light or in the dusk, and also sit with your back or side to the light when doing any work during the day; if you sit facing the light it strains your eyes.
The strain of the eyes is a very common failure with growing girls, although very often they do not know it, and headaches come most frequently from the eyes being strained; frowning on the part of a girl is very generally a sign that her eyes are being strained. Reading in bed brings headaches.