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We have already discussed the very close relationship between the body and the mind, and we have seen that relaxation of the body itself produces some relaxation of the mind. But we can go further than that, and we continue our exercises in this fashion:

Our whole body is relaxed.—We feel it all through us.—It is in our face.—Our face is utterly relaxed.—We feel it in our forehead, and in the sides of our forehead.—We feel it there deeply, deeply in the sides of our forehead.—Deeply, we feel it in our mind.

This sequence follows on easily enough. We feel the relaxation in the muscles of our face, and with this relaxation we feel our face smooth, out in calm. There is a very intimate relationship between the state of our mind and the state of our face. If your mind is calm, so is your face. Conversely if we learn to make our face calm, we experience a feeling of increasing calm of our mind.

With our jaw loose the muscles that work the jaw are fully relaxed. The two temporal muscles extend up to the sides of the forehead. You can feel them by placing the fingertips at the side of the forehead and firmly clenching the jaw. You can feel the muscle contract and then let go as the jaw is relaxed. The feeling of relaxation here gives us the feeling of relaxation deeply within us—in the mind itself.

The whole of our body is relaxed.—We feel the relaxation of all the muscles of our body.

—They are relaxed.—They are relaxed and calm.—We can feel the calm.—We feel the relaxation and we feel the calm.—The relaxation is all through us, and so is the calm that goes with it—The calm of it is part of us.—It is all through us in our body and our mind.

Again, the sequence is logical and straightforward. We feel the relaxation of our muscles. Our relaxed muscles are calm. We can feel the sensation of calm in them, we feel the calm of it all through us. We feel the calm of it in our mind.

Remember that the feeling of relaxation of the mind may at first be variable. It may come and go. There may be a momentary experience of calm of the mind and then it is gone. This is to be expected for the first few attempts. Remember that people who can attain relaxation of the body can all learn to attain relaxation of the mind. If you are able to capture just a moment of calm, it will not be long before you can achieve the full state.

Remember, too, that relaxation of the mind is greatly enhanced by physical relaxation which is attained in relatively uncomfortable circumstances. So as we become more adept at our physical relaxation we do it in increasingly uncomfortable positions.

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The second rule of vital nutrition is that your foods should be whole, complete, unrefined, and unadulterated. Whole wheat, brown rice, orange, sugar cane, and potatoes are whole foods. White bread, polished rice, orange juice, white sugar, and instant potatoes are not whole foods. They are refined, concentrated, or are fragments of the foods from which important vital nutritive factors have been removed.

Whole foods are simply foods which still contain all the nutrients which nature has put in them—all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, enzymes, etc. But 80 per cent of the foods consumed by the average American today have been tampered with in one way or another, and most of the nutrients have either been taken out of them or destroyed. White bread, white sugar, breakfast cereals, and processed oils are typical examples of such devitalized nutritionless foods.

Whole foods contain not only complete nutrition but also all the enzymes and other factors necessary for proper digestion and good assimilation of these particular foods. When certain parts are removed, the digestion and assimilation can be incomplete and nutritional deficiences may result.

Only whole foods can supply optimum nutrition for optimum health.

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