project 10/

LOOKING UPWARD

W. Pokolevoy, House-Painter, Simbirsk

All possible kinds of mechanical machines for physical training are extraordinarily fashionable today - people exercise on them for hours at home or they go to specially equipped gyms to tone their muscles, to make their figures athletically fit. But at the same time, there are very few who worry about what is happening, about the internal mental state of a person, which usually swings from extreme nervous excitement to a subsequent fall and depres- sion. Wouldn't it make sense to propose some similar method of auto-training of one's inner world with a sufficiently efficient coefficient of action? The proposal for such a device is attached below. The principle of its action can be reduced to the follow- ing postulate: "Look up!" Actually, observations have indicated (an experiment was conducted at Manchester University in October of 1989) that 42% of daytime our head is aimed directly forward, 56% of the time downward, and only 3& of the time upward. At the very same time, it was noted that it is precisely in this last instance that an outflow of negative emotions occurs, a calming of the mental processes, an inflow of lofty ennobling thoughts and feelings. The device stimulating such emotions and which is accessible for installation in home conditions looks like a table with protuding armrests, so that it is comfortable to rest one's arms on them. A small round narrow opening is made in the table opposite the person seated, from which a fine fishing line is stretched to the ceiling, Small wings are glued to three points on this line, four wings at each point. The person sitting in front of such a device concentrates all of his attention on any one of these groups of wings and according to the law connected with the proportions of the distances between each of these groups, equal to 2 : 6 : 12, his attention consequently and his head will raise higher and higher all by itself without any con- certed efforts, moving from one group of wings to the next. As has been said above, his mental state will change correspondingly as well. This training will yield positive results given daily repetition.

LOOKING UPWARD

1. Build a table-box from plywood and cover it with light brown lacquer.

2. Saw a round hole in the top of this table.

3. Stretch a fine fishing line from the ceiling through the center of this hole and attach it below, on the bottom of the box.

4. At a height of 46 cm and 150 cm from the surface of the table, attach to the line two pairs of wings out out of thin blue paper. The wings should be folded and glued "in pairs" as indicated in the sketch.

5. Place a rotating or simple chair on the board which pro- trudes at the bottom of the table.