Wordstalks 8: 'Exercise' vs. 'Gymnastics,' ND Visit, Spring Growth, Court

There's so much I want to talk about today! I just hope that I can organize it coherently. Although this is a wordstalk post, it's also definitely subject matter that would benefit from some pictures. I'm working on manifesting a camera!

Spring Growth, Court

And that might be the best place to start: on Thursday I went to court in Kenai (70-some miles away) to contest the citation that the trooper had issued me with following the crash in the blizzard. It was a freak blizzard on a notorious stretch of road, I was going slow, and really did not believe that I'd been driving without due care and attention. And the judge accepted that there was a 'reasonable doubt' that I was at fault, and acquitted me! If I chose to think about it that way, I could say that saving the cost of the citation would afford buying a decent camera. Any recommendations on a good kind?

It was a fun road trip for Phil and me into the bargain: up in Kenai and neighboring Soldotna, there are stores where you can get things unavailable here, or regular groceries but fresher and much cheaper (Homer is at the end of the road  and you pay for it at the store both in price and quality!) But besides the stuff to be bought with money, there was the delight of seeing the road in the new season. Phil often 'harvests' young volunteer trees (especially birches) that are going to be mown off anyway and transplants them to our homestead. Considering that there were blizzards a month ago, it is incredible how rapidly the green colonizes everything. This time, the birches were leafing out, adding an iridescent pale linden green to the deeper, shinier spruce green and the dusty, gray-green of the alder and willow leaves. And we saw the first moose calf of the year, with its mother, chowing down by the road side! It was so small - about the size of a large dog.

Kenai is so flat, a strange change from Homer, which straggles up the bluff and mountains. The buildings all seem kind of squat and flat too, sprawly and mall-like compared to Homer's log cabin quaintness. But we found 'quaint:' the most incredible thrift shop I've ever seen. You had to go down some stairs to get in, and from the front it looked like a small, unprepossessing store with large amounts of china ornaments prominently displayed. But appearances were deceptive. That first room led to some steps up, opening into a broader chamber with three more smaller rooms off to the side, each stuffed with different secondhand items - kitchen tools in two of them, luggage in the third. Storage cubbies spilled over with semi-used or unopened medical supplies, stationery, kitchenware, more ornaments. Up another flight of stairs, military surplus gear (it was kind of stinky up there!) Back down the stairs, in the broad room, an exit stage right into another little corridor, lined with books, that opened into a concrete-floored enormous cavern, with tools all down the front wall and the rest of the space just stuffed with clothes, rows and rows of rails packed with clothes on hangers. And this cavern had two more rooms opening from it! By the time we got there, I was completely overwhelmed and a little dizzy - certainly not a store that I could just hit at random and browse. I was so impressed, though - I've never seen anything quite like that. It was like some immense organically evolved system of caves. Would you have been able to shop in a place like that on your first visit?

ND Visit

My energy has been somewhat better this past week, and at the ND's yesterday that was explained by my bloodwork coming back showing that the new thyroid supplements are working, which is great. The labs also suggested that the root of the problem isn't in the thyroid but rather the pituitary. Apparently pituitary dysfunction is very common in eating disorder cases. But it's great to know that the thyroid situation isn't autoimmune and can be brought back into balance. There was a lot more that I learned there, that I can share if there's interest, and a little more that I talk about below.

The upshot of this extra energy is that I've been exercising a little every day this week, for the first time in a while. I have 'crashed' energetically a few times as a result, but nothing like the crashes of a few weeks ago. I've been hiking, and rowing on the rowing machine, which we now have placed outside, right on the edge of the bluff, so that you can row whilst looking down at the ocean, out over the bay, watching the eagles fly by. 

Wordstalk

Which brings me to my 'wordstalk:' the act of exercising got me to thinking about the word 'exercise' and its etymology, and the contrast with its Greek counterpart, 'gymnastics.' 'Exercise' comes from a Latin verb meaning 'exercise, train,' which etymologizes further, and quite transparently, into meaning 'ward off,' 'make efforts to avoid.' The Latin noun derived from that verb means 'army.' In contrast, the Greek 'gymnastics' comes from a verb that means simply 'engage in physical activity whilst naked,' and is itself derived from the adjective meaning 'naked.' So, the Latin concept of exercise is about arming yourself up and taking action to avoid something, and accrued even a military connotation, whereas the Greek concept is about getting naked (as vulnerable as you can be, presumably) and training like that! It seems like the Latin concept, which is the one that we have really incorporated in our own thinking (since for us, the word 'gymnastics' has evolved a highly specific meaning as opposed to denoting all kinds of physical training) is much more goal-oriented, and a negative, preventative goal at that. 

I know that I have tended to view exercise as an aversive, compulsive, preventative thing, a desperate measure to burn calories. The naturopath was explaining to me yesterday how counterproductive this can be in an adrenal exhaustion situation: the lactic acid built up from intense exercise feeds straight into cortisol production, which raises blood sugar and insulin and leads to fat deposits around the midriff. And the bit of fat that I have at the top of my buttocks incenses and upsets me so much when I notice it that it drives me to exercise more intensely! Talk about a vicious circle. Maybe I should start to give my exercise a Greek etymology rather than a Latin one!

Is your exercise a means to an end, a way to prevent something from happening, or a totally vulnerable 'strip everything off and be physical?'