Page:Massage & exercises combined (second version).djvu/40



Doing this exercise five times will take about half a minute.

While the fingers are stroking the neck on each side of the cervical vertebrae, the elbows should be elevated as high as possible.

Inhale while the hands are moving over the head and down the back of the neck. Exhale while the hands and fingers are moving around the neck and over the throat.

Women with long and abundant hair, which in hanging loose might interfere with the movements of the hands and fingers, can braid it at the back of the head (pigtail fashion) and the fingers can stroke around each side of it. Or the loosened hair may be parted in the middle, thus leaving the back of the neck comparatively free.

Analysis and Effects of the Combined Massage

Exercise No. 1

''The influence of the massage movements on the muscles, nerves, tissues and circulation as well as on the internal organs has already been described to some extent in the Chapter, "Construction and Characteristics of the Combined Massage Exercises." Therefore, the analysis and effects of this and the other exercises will only attempt to explain how each exercise is combined, and what nerves, muscles and organs are influenced by it.''

This exercise is combined in such a way, that there is obtained the movements of the arms and the bending of the head forward and backward, together with the massage of the temples, the forehead, the scalp, the cervical vertebrae, the neck and the throat.

The movements of the head, arms and hands in applying the massage movements, exercise the muscles and nerves of the hands, arms, shoulders, the upper back, the sides and the