100 Words For Snow

The Eskimo people, who for generations have lived in intimate contact with snow, have developed more than one hundred words to describe it. These include: aput ("snow on the ground"), qana ("falling snow"), piqsirpoq ("drifting snow"), qimuqsuq ("snowdrift"), "pokatok" ("grainy, salt-like snow"), "mauyak" ("soft snow"), and "ayak" ("snow on your boots”).

English-speakers, on the other hand, are left with few descriptors when a blizzard strikes. We call the stuff snow and that’s the end of it.

Language reflects experience and engagement. Complex language tends to develop around those things we find interesting and compelling. Perhaps that's a clue as to why we have only one word to describe healthful physical activity — that word is exercise. 

From my point of view, the word “exercise” is both limiting and unsatisfying. "Exercise" reminds me of the calisthenics Jack LaLanne used to do on television when I was a kid…you know, push ups, jumping jacks, marching…that kind of thing. Exercise is a word that has regimentation built into it. In many minds, exercise is what one forces oneself to do. Exercise is what happens when the all too human body is pushed into unwilling interaction with cold hard machinery: the treadmill, the stationary bike, the pulleys, levers and weights that make up gym equipment. Exercise is a word that has a bad vibe.

If our culture were more in touch with the physical body and the pleasures of exertion, we might have developed 100 words for exercise. We could have used these to express the complexities of this wonderful experience. They would have had definitions like these:

• Exercise that creates a trance like state of deep thought

• Exercise that stimulates bursts of intense joy

• Sweaty activity that loosens the body and spirit

• Calming exercise

• Heart pounding, elating exercise

• Exercise that connects inner and outer worlds

• Magical exercise

If we had these words, perhaps people like me could convince others to find the magic that exists in moving their bodies.

It’s incredible what folks will do to try to lose weight. My patients have been willing to do all sorts of things. They have been willing to eat bizarre diets composed of pots of cabbage soup, mounds of grapefruit and odd assortments of bars and supplements. They have been willing to have surgical treatments and to undergo the slashing of their stomachs, intestines, and extra skin folds. They have been willing to have suction catheters shoved under their skin to forcibly vacuum out the fat. They have been willing to purchase totally unproven remedies sold on radio and in magazines. They have been willing to ingest these unknown substances in the hope that their cortisol levels will be suppressed, their carbs will be blocked, or that they will lose the 20-30 pounds that “some experts say are stuck to the colon walls like spackle or paste” (!).

They have been more than willing to do all of this, yet a large number of them are competely unwilling to exercise.

Here's an example: The woman sitting in front of my desk has just lost 50 pounds.

“What are you doing about getting some exercise?” I ask. Despite the fact that I have tried to tell her repeatedly that she will not be able to maintain her weight loss without routine physical activity, she is unconcerned.

“I haven’t had time to get that in,” she says with a bit of annoyance (directed at me). “Yes, I know I have to, but I just don’t like to sweat.”

I blame this on the "E" word.

I simply don’t have the right words to let this patient know that exercise is a sublime addiction. She doesn’t believe me when I try to convince her.

Like all addictions, exercise starts out badly. Remember that first cigarette? That first beer? UGH! My first inauspicious experience with exercise occurred when I was 35 years old. Prior to that I’d been an utter couch potato with increasingly flabby thighs, a testament to my love for Mallomars and inactivity. A friend suggested that I accompany her to something new called “aerobics”. It was painful. About 15 of us gathered in a circle in a poorly lit gym. The instructor stood in the center while an odd disco tape played and we tried to imitate her kicks and knee lifts. “Well”, I thought later, “that certainly isn’t something I am ever doing again.”

But a year passed. One day, while walking down the Main Street of a new town, I heard a commotion coming from above me. I looked up, and there, in the plate glass window, above a stationery store, were about 30 women in leotards jumping up and down on little purple platforms. The music was great. They were shouting, sweating and hooting. I wanted to be up there with them. And so I drummed up the courage to mount the dark staircase that led to the studio of Patty Scott. From Patty, I learned that aerobics could be joyful, social and yes, addictive.

I was bad at aerobics for a long time. There were always women in the front row of the class who knew Patty personally, looked incredibly trim, and could do the class from start to finish without stopping to catch their breath. I, on the other hand, continued to stand in the back row gasping.

It took about a year to begin my move forward, but move I did. It became my goal to make that front row. Along the way, I got to meet a lot of really great people who stood in all sorts of positions around the room. Once I got good enough to stand up front, I chose to stay in the back with some of my new friends. That was the cool move.

In the years since, I’ve followed a slew of instructors through various iterations of aerobic nirvana. It’s been an experience that has only become more important as I’ve gotten older. I never feel as alive as I do when I’m taking a class with people who are half my age and I can marvel at the fact that my body still responds, still works for me and still really enjoys this experience. None of this is specific to aerobics. I just happen to like that particular form of workout. I see the same expression on the faces of distance bikers, karate enthusiasts, kick boxers, tennis players, line dancers and runners. Discovering the right exercise is a direct line to bliss.

I try to share this with my patient - the one who won’t exercise. Finding the right words is impossible when you speak a language that doesn’t encompass the subtleties of the physical. Instead, I simply advise her to find a kind of exercise that she thinks she could love…someday. There has to be an attraction at the very beginning, I say, or she’ll never last through the tough times. I tell her that if she waits it out and starts falling for her chosen exercise, it will change her life. But I can see that she hasn’t moved past the “e” word. In her mind, I’m still asking her to do something painful and horribly sweaty.

I suspect that many of you who are reading this have not yet found a connection to exercise. Take it from a one-time couch potato: you really should try. Really. There is absolutely nothing like experiencing that undefined region where physical activity brings you into direct connection with the body you inhabit and the joyful spirit that cares for it.