To exercise or exorcise, that is the question…
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To exercise or exorcise, that is the question…
Fads and trends come and go. From fashion to music to arts and entertainment, there is a cycle of focus in the world that varies from culture to culture and country to country, dictating to the masses who they can be and what they can do and have that will make their lives better and more enjoyable.
Exercise and fitness fads are subject to these societal waves of focus, and they usually evolve with the eras. The 1980’s can be remembered for headbands, tight body leotards and the desirable body image being sleek and slender.
Cut to the current 2020’s and we have an overflow of exercise focus where active wear is the new common wear ‘jeans and t-shirt’. It doesn’t matter if you actually are working out or intend to at all, you can absolutely get away with wearing your tights and trainers pretty much anywhere in Australia.
But this is not an article about fashion; this is looking at the vast and varied smorgasbord of ways to exercise, and there are many who consider themselves experts on the subject. If you look on the internet or YouTube and type in ‘get fit’ or ‘lose weight’, there is a plethora of workout videos with people claiming to have the best and most effective workout to give you very fast results for little to no effort at all.
In a world where fast food chains litter almost every city, town and suburb on the planet, where smoking, drug use and alcohol consumption is considered normal, why is it that there is so much focus on exercise and getting fit?
The word ‘exercise’ is very closely related in sound and spelling to the word ‘exorcise’. According to an online dictionary , to ‘exercise’ is to engage in physical activity to sustain or improve health and fitness – the noun of this is an activity that requires some sort of effort. To ‘exorcise’ is to ‘seek to expel an evil spirit or demon from a person or place using adjuration, religious or solemn ceremonies’[1]. Although the definition for exercise is accurate to what we can see exercise to be and what we assume or may have experienced exorcise to be, these two words may be more alike than what these definitions are actually portraying.
Is it possible that when we truly exercise we are actually expelling energy from the body in order to realign and connect to an inner place of truth and wisdom, untouched by outside influence?
As we exercise, we are ridding the body of energy that has been absorbed throughout the day. This could be in the form of emotions, sympathy and reactions to our own tensions with life, those around us, or a reaction to a wider level of disturbance in the world. Those feelings need to go somewhere, and our bodies deal with a lot of unseen disharmonious feelings, and a magnitude of seen – be they food, arguments, alcohol, drugs, fighting, neglect, jealousy or competition, etc. Our bodies live through it all and with regular and true exercise, we can support the body to free itself from what it has taken on.
Could this be why exercise has been so highlighted throughout cultures in society? You can look at sport as a form of exercise, competition, training, gymnastics – all of these avenues of exercise become a way of life for people where every aspect of their waking and sleeping state is focussed on bettering themselves to win the next tournament, to look better, to feel better by the achievements and recognition they receive.
You can see how exercise has been stripped of its very simple yet powerful purpose, to connect to a place of truth within the body and actively move free of outside energetic imposition, and has been turned into an league of obsession that caters for anyone and everyone – from the mums with bubs group getting their pre-birth bodies back, to the young athletes training in hope to one day compete their way to the top of their chosen sport, to the ‘gym junkies’ who work out day and night to have the body they think they need to get their desired partner, or for many men to be buff enough that they do not have to feel their own deep-seated insecurity.
Instead of using exercise to reconnect and expel excess energy, it is being used to condense the body with more imposed movements that pollute an otherwise feeling of connection.
It is quite common and well understood to the point of there being the saying, ‘walk it off’ – that if a situation or life in general has become heavy and reactionary, we know we can ‘walk it off’ and take ourselves for a walk to reconnect and leave behind what was causing the reaction. The simple steps of walking in presence can expel energy from the body that is not you.
If I’ve had a long day at work and let energy interfere with the clarity, sharpness and loving nature that is essentially me, I go for a walk to clear what has been taken on. If there have been other intense situations where I find my movements have changed and become sunken and reserved or hard and protective then I will do something a little more active, like weights or a cardio routine with abdominal work. I do this to help shift the poison in my body and as I have become more aware of how this works, I can actually start to feel how my muscles, organs and bones are releasing. I can then start to be more aware of which areas of the body require support to clear, whether it is the abs, the legs or arms.
After exercising these areas, I have clearly exorcised the energy out of my body as I can feel myself and my movements are back feeling light and free of the heavy imposition they were once under. Keeping this up regularly, the body can start to strengthen and support me back in the situations where I might have taken on energy in the past; I can now feel the foundation in my body and focus on that as a point of inner truth and connection.
Seeing exercise from this perspective offers a whole other level to go to in terms of exercising to be ‘fit for life’. Wow, what if we don’t litter the body in the first place and then have to work off the energy, but if we start with a clear body to begin with? This seems like that there is a whole other dimension waiting for us to be lived when getting off the treadmill of resurrecting ourselves from the normalised trend of polluting our bodies, embracing life without the heavy impositions we put ourselves under.
Exercise can then be used as a confirming and building movement to assist the body in all it supports us with in every moment of every day.
References
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Body awareness, Healthy living, Lifestyle
