No matter who laughs, consider your morning exercises sacred to you. Make them a part of your very life and habits, and put into them your thought and the attitude of your mind toward your fellow-beings.
You will be tempted to regard such movements as merely mechanical and artificial. You will be tempted to think they are just the ideas of some crank. Put all this aside. Begin your exercises joyously and happily, for the very pleasure of the action.
Remember that you are not a body in which you have a soul; you are a soul and have a body. The cause of everything, even of health, is in our minds. Our awakening is not a physical matter.
There is no power in the material body to move a finger. An exercise is bringing a mental action into manifestation. However physical an action may appear, its only significance is as an act of mind.
An exercise is an expression.
It is an act of being, not of body; it is activity of being in action of body. There is no such thing as physical expression.
Expression is not merely a reflex action. It is the emanation of activity. It is the union of thinking, feeling and willing.
An exercise implies that we can choose what we are to express. It implies also that we can consciously regulate, guide or accentuate our mental, imaginative and emotional activities.
Here we find the importance also of expression as an educational view. Repression and suppression may be injurious to health. Expression is necessary even for the proper functioning of the vital organs. Impression implies the conscious use of an impulse. It implies the ability to share our ideas, feelings or experiences with others.
An exercise is a means of turning an impulse in a higher direction. It implies also the curbing of abnormal impulses.