Possessing no garden to cultivate, lying flat upon the ground without blanket or pillow answers a good purpose. More rest can be obtained in five minutes than in five hours upon lounge or bed in the house. Although this is contrary to all tradition and teaching, many have proved its value.
What is the object to be gained by exercise in pregnancy? Evidently absorption, nutrition and excretion. All the functions must be kept to a normal standard, so that the processes of assimilation and waste can be perfectly performed.
The involuntary muscles of respiration must be educated. Those required in parturition must be developed and strengthened. There are the muscles of the abdomen, pelvis, perineum and groin, also some of the muscles of the trunk.
Full and deep breathing is not only necessary to perfectly oxygenate the blood and by the attendant motion to promote digestion, but it makes room for the fetus as well. It expands the wall of the abdomen and chest, and strengthens the sustaining power of the uterus. Is it not possible, too, that it gives a needed exercise to the fetus, a constant gentle motion promoting the functions necessary to its development and growth?
Breathing for the most part is an involuntary action, and in children and animals is performed naturally from the abdomen or flank. “Look upon that quietly sleeping cat on the rug. Its sole indication of vitality is the bellows-like motion of its body in breathing. You must also have observed that in all domestic animals, at each respiration, an undulating motion extends quite through the whole trunk, and that this motion terminates only at the hindermost limbs. This is natural respiration as it is performed throughout quadruped existence.
“Have you a perfectly healthy lady friend? Lay your hand upon her and you will find that her abdomen rises and falls in exactly the same way at every respiratory act; not only so, but that this act is involuntarily performed in a more profound manner every few moments, and that this increased motion operates particularly upon the lowest portion of the trunk.
“Observe in the same way your own person. If you are an invalid, you will find this motion diminished, perhaps suppressed. When one half breathes he only half lives.”
The lungs or air receptacles are enclosed within the walls of the chest or thoratic cavity; beneath the lungs is the great breathing motor, the diaphragm, of a convex shape when in repose. In all correct inhalation the air filling the lungs flattens the diaphragm. This must result in the expansion of the body adjacent to and surrounding the diaphragm. Natural breathing should be accomplished without any upheaval of the chest or hoisting of the shoulders.
That adults, and especially women, have not this deep waist breathing is on account of disuse of the muscles. The young man who is stoop-shouldered, walks the streets with his hands in his pockets or sits bent over his desk, soon diminishes the action of these muscles. The girl, deprived of pockets, may keep her head and shoulders erect, yet by faulty dress, compresses and fixes the lower muscles of respiration and breathes only with the top of the lungs. When either man or woman has lost the ability to breathe deeply, a long road must be traveled to educate the muscles back to natural use.
A man in Colorado had broncorrhœa and occasional lung hemorrhage. Although he could walk six or seven miles he could not breathe below the eighth rib. I said: “I did not know a man could live, and breathe no deeper. By all your hopes of life, you must learn to breathe. To be sure you can walk, but the muscles of your legs don’t help your respiration. You must take exercises that develop the diaphragm and abdominal muscles. Breathe down, down, and relieve the congestion of the upper lungs.” He said: “I have consulted many physicians the last six years, and why have none told me this before?” Several months afterward he wrote me that by simply developing the lower muscles of respiration, he had saved funeral expenses.