The Ennobling Power of Thoracic Expansion

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Joseph Rodes Buchanan · Living the Life Series · 11 pages

An eleven-page compilation pairing Blavatsky on the benefits of mountain air with Professor J.R. Buchanan on the influence of thoracic expansion, opened by an abstract and train of thoughts. Buchanan appears again in the Higher Ethics and Devotion series, where “Love is the healing power of the successful physician” makes the same argument about singing from the medical side.

The first half is about altitude. Mountain air, being placed nearer to what the text calls the Fountain of Life, is said to fortify health and prolong life; retreat in solitude and unbroken stillness, where the air is free of all pestilential exhalations, is named together with deep study as a prerequisite for higher knowledge. A short passage lists what is vexatious to the spirit — acrimony, antagonism, antipathy, enmity and resentment — and a section headed that holy life flourishes on snow-capped peaks gives the practical counsel on how to revitalise oneself under the sun. The second half supplies the physiological mechanism Buchanan proposed, and it is the reason the two halves are printed together: that singing promotes health and the development of the chest, and that the expansion of the chest allows the noblest parts of our nature to unfold. The link between the halves is then made explicit — that by forcing chest expansion and lung exhalation, high altitudes foster a spiritual temperament, so the benefit ascribed to mountains and the benefit ascribed to song are held to work by the same means.

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