University of Virginia Library

SWEDISH MOVEMENTS

The Swedish Movements are a series of systematic exercises therapeutically applied to the human body.

"Every exercise the direction and the duration of which are fixed is a movement.''

That is the definition of a movement given to us by the Swede, P. H. Ling, who lived and worked in the early part of the last century. He erected the first system of scientific movements, as before his time no approach had been made to a method of designating and classifying the positions and various movements of the body for the purposes contemplated in the MOVEMENT CURE.

In every science terminology is necessary; so even in this. Ling gave every movement a complicated or double name, the first part of which indicated the position which the patient must assume, the second part telling the nature of the movement itself; for instance, sitting, rotation of the arms.

Thus it is left to us to first analyze the positions and afterward the movements.