Relax!

>Feet apart, bend your knees and rest your weight on the balls of your feet.

> Hold arms parallel to the ground and shake your wrists vigorously.

> Dangling your arms between well-sagged knees, woggle your shoulders and touch an ear on the upward movement. Between woggles, droop shoulder?

> Swing your hands loosely between the knees and let your body slump downward until the backs of your hands touch the floor. Raise hips. Straighten back. Then your head. Repeat three times.

> Collapse on the floor.

In a large bedroom of St. Louis' Coronado Hotel, a thin-haired little man who looks like a timid clerk last week shot com mands at eight tired businessmen. "Little Bill" Miller, probably the country's foremost relaxation expert, was holding class--at $100 a head for six one-hour lessons.

For six years Miller has spread (and sold) the gospel that every athlete knows but few understand: a relaxed, loose body performs better than a tense, tight-muscled one. He has relaxed more than 10,000 people, aged 5 to 75, has loosened up college football and basketball teams, a professional baseball club, Army aviation cadets.

Looser Bodies. The Cincinnati Reds, who paid Miller $3,000 for a month's work last spring and finished second in the National League, endorse his technique. Oklahoma University had a mediocre basketball team until he relaxed the players. Then in their final game of the season they lost to Wyoming (National Collegiate Champions) by only three points. Miller also loosened up Tulsa's 1942 football team--undefeated until it lost to Tennes see in the Sugar Bowl, 14-7. He has been paid $100 an hour for private lessons.

Bill Miller had no chance to be a col lege athlete: he quit grammar school to help support his family. By 1938 he had an oil company soft job and a reputation as a crack basketball coach. Teams coached by him and his disciples won nine national championships in ten years. A onetime player himself, Miller concluded that the trouble with most coaches is that they teach the game but ignore the control of the body. Body control became Bill Miller's religion. He resigned to preach his faith full time.

A Los Angeles Y.M.C.A. hired him for a five-weeks' course for 4,000 adults, 1,500 youngsters. Back at Tulsa, Miller picked 100 Army air cadets, at random, taught them how to handle controls without strain or tension, reported to the Army that their washout rate had been cut a third below the average.

Sharper Brains. The Army was interested but unconvinced by Miller's informal and solitary experiment. He turned to tired, tense businessmen to prove that a loose, energy-conserving body means a keener mind in the clutches. Miller proved a crack salesman. Fat fees flowed in from Tulsa and Kansas City oiligarchs.

At 47, Miller is as lithe as a willow switch. He relaxes from relaxation with tennis and long walks. He calls his system "Miller Methods," and he has invented the word "loosy"--from loose and easy--to describe it. Miller never advertises, makes no lofty claims, refuses to touch organic difficulties. But some results he considers almost miracles, is properly lofty about his doctrine.

"I will not work long for any group or company," he says. "What I have belongs to humanity." Once St. Louis is relaxed, he will move eastward, toward more nerve-strung captains and lieutenants of war industry with inflationary-gap money to spend. At least one of his exercises should be popular with them. A fine way to get loosy, says he, is to do the rumba.

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