The key ideas

Power Through Repose

Annie Payson Call, 1891

Why does eight hours in bed not rest you, while an hour of waiting drains you like a working day? In 1891 Annie Payson Call found the answer in the extra tension we bring to everything we do, even when we rest. The book is about how to notice this clench and let it go: from exercises on the floor to pain, anger and hard work.

Who it is for

For people who wake up worn out after a whole night’s sleep, who tire more from talking and waiting than from work, and who clench their jaw over any hard task.

Are you holding yourself up on the chair, or is the chair holding you?

Head Above the Pillow

Picture a drawing room of the late nineteenth century. A woman has lain down to rest on a couch, with a heap of the softest cushions under her. Yet she holds her head up in mid-air, with visible effort, although it would be far easier to let it sink into the pillow. The American teacher Annie Payson Call saw such a scene with her own eyes and noticed that the case was not rare at all, but the most ordinary one.

In 1891 Call published the book “Power Through Repose”. Her idea is simple and unpleasant: most of our fatigue comes not from work but from the extra tension we add to everything we do. We tighten up when we sleep, wait, think, listen, endure pain and get angry. That is why rest so often fails to help: we rest with the same clench.

Call describes the body in the language of her century. Her “nerve force” is like a fuel that can be burned up for nothing, and it is an image of the nineteenth century, not modern physiology. Yet her observations are easy to check right now. Where are your shoulders? Is your jaw clenched? Is your tongue pressing against the palate?

The main point of the book is not complaint but training. Call was convinced that letting go of unneeded tension can be learned as gradually as muscles are built in a gym: from simple steps to harder ones. Ahead come her cases, exercises on the floor, and frank warnings about where the method does not work. Let us start with how we rest.

Let the Bed Hold You

Call suggests a simple experiment: watch yourself in bed. Almost everyone, she writes, holds themselves up on the bed, instead of handing over their weight to it. The spine touches the mattress only at its ends, the knees are drawn up, the fingers grip the pillow, the tongue presses against the palate, the face is set. In the morning a person is surprised that eight hours in bed did not give them any rest.

The same happens by day. One woman who had only just begun to learn to relax set off on a journey, exhausted by anxiety. In the carriage she felt sick from the swaying. She understood the cause, let go of the extra tension, and the nausea passed. Then she took up an absorbing novel, and as the plot unfolded her muscles tightened again and the sickness came back. She had to put the book down and relax once more. This happened about six times before she could read without an attack.

Call calls this trying to carry the train instead of letting the train carry us. We brace our feet against the floor of the carriage on a bend and sit on a chair as if it would break under our full weight. We wait so impatiently that an hour of nervous waiting, by her estimate, wears us out as much as a working day. And yet waiting does not become any shorter by a single minute.

What should you do? When you lie down to sleep, begin with the muscles, not the thoughts. “If you cannot stop thinking, do not try,” Call advises. Let the thoughts run, and let your attention busy itself with how the legs, arms and neck let go. The more absorbing this work is, the less there is for the thoughts to catch on. The same rule works by day: on a chair, in transport, in a queue, ask yourself what you are holding now and why.

At first this attention to yourself is irritating: the tension suddenly shows up everywhere. Call considers this a necessary stage. To wash a stain off your face, you must first see it, and once the face is clean you no longer think about the stain.

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About the author

Annie Payson Call, an American teacher of the late nineteenth century, taught people to relax and to spend their energy without strain. She wrote popular books about nervous tension and how to free yourself from it.

All books by this author: Annie Payson Call

Terms from the book

  • Ruskin
  • Nerve force: A concept of nineteenth-century medicine: a store of nerve energy that can be spent like fuel. It is the image of Call’s era, not a modern scientific term.
  • Palate: The roof of the mouth, against which the tongue is often pressed in tension.
  • Emotional microscope: An image from the book, not a scientific term: Call’s name for the habit of a tired person of magnifying small feelings and slights many times over.
  • Vertebrae: The bones that make up the spine.
  • Forearm: The part of the arm from the elbow to the wrist.

All terms

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