Annie Payson Call
1853 to 1940
Annie Payson Call was an American writer from Massachusetts who taught, decades before the word became common, what we now call relaxation. She worked with students and patients on the habits of tension in the body, the voice and the mind, and wrote about them for a general reader.
Power Through Repose, her best-known book, went through many editions and was praised by physicians of her time. Her argument is simple and still unusual: much of our effort is strain we add ourselves, and strength begins with letting it go.
