Snake Pit

Exercise might really be able to keep you out of your own snake pit.


Dr. Wayne Wescott reports that during a 10-week exercise program for formerly sedentary people, he was able to catalogue significant improvements in physical, mental, and emotional markers of health.


These included: physical self-concept, total mood disturbance, depression, fatigue, physical exhaustion, positive engagement, and tension.



From The Snake Pit (1948) starring Olivia de Havilland as Virginia Cunningham-


Virginia Stuart Cunningham: It was strange, here I was among all those people, and at the same time I felt as if I were looking at them from some place far away, the whole place seemed to me like a deep hole and the people down in it like strange animals, like... like snakes, and I've been thrown into it... yes... as though... as though I were in a snake pit... 
Doctor Mark Kik: A snake pit? 
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: Later, weeks later, I understood. I remembered once reading in a book that long ago they used to put insane people into pits full of snakes. I think they figured that something which might drive a normal person insane, might shock an insane person back into sanity. Did you ever hear of that? 
Doctor Mark Kik: Yes. 
Virginia Stuart Cunningham: Well, it was just as though they'd thrown me into a snake pit. And I was shocked into thinking that maybe I wasn't as sick as the others... and I really am.ight get well.