Your Mind Matters: Annie Payson Call

Our mental state and physical health are intricately linked. Anxiety, for example, can cause the body to release stress hormones, resulting in elevated heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. We’re revisiting Annie Payson Call’s writing on this topic by sharing her thoughts below:

It is of the better use, the truer guidance of this machine, [the human body,] that I wish especially to write. Although attention is constantly called to the fact of its misuse — as in neglected rest and in over-strain — in all the unlimited variety which the perverted ingenuity of a clever people has devised, it seems never to have come to any one's mind that this strain in all things, small and great, is something that can be and should be studiously abandoned, with as regular a process of training, from the first simple steps to those more complex, as is required in the work for the development of muscular strength. When a perversion of Nature's laws has continued from generation to generation, we, of the ninth or tenth generation, can by no possibility jump back into the place where the laws can work normally through us, even though our eyes have been opened to a full recognition of such perversion. We must climb back to an orderly life, step by step, and the compensation is large in the constantly growing realization of the greatness of the laws we have been disobeying. The appreciation of the power of a natural law, as it works through us, is one of the keenest pleasures that can come to man in this life.

Ms. Call argues that we often misuse our bodies, leading to physical and mental strain. Instead of focusing solely on the negative consequences of misuse, Ms. Call suggests a more proactive approach: a systematic training regimen to gradually correct these harmful habits and restore a harmonious relationship with natural laws. Following this path, not only do we improve our physical health, but we gain a deeper appreciation for the power and beauty of these laws.

We’ll revisit Ms. Call’s books for her specific advice in future posts. This particular excerpt comes from Power Through Repose (1891).