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I recently came back from a jog. I’m amazed to write that statement. I believe it might have been a decade since the previous time. However It came to my attention that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that the reason to work out has been my physical health. When I was younger, I ran because I wanted to lose weight. I also jogged to cure nervousness – I was just running away from the anxiety, without confronting it. On other occasions, I exercised because I aimed to improve at running. It signified what it meant to me at that time to build a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation now sparked reflection about the methods I’ve connected with my body over my lifetime and its transformation as I move from being a young person to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my physical form, not truly. I’ve appreciated it only for its functions and the aims it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; dodging sentiments; running a faster five kilometers. Previously, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it is my existence, instead of an instrument for achievements.

Much has been written for ages about the division involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis here. What I’ve found most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are innately connected right from the start, because bodily growth requires emotional evolution and conversely. A baby’s bodily experiences – for example the physical sensation of hunger – motivate the brain to build the ability to perceive hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by eating; and the emotional comfort and contentment repeatedly brought by feed after feed nourishes the young mind just as the food nourishes them bodily. So too mental events – for instance the urge to stand up and attain a goal, and the determination to try again and again – are the cause and means muscles grow stronger. Starting at birth, mind and body are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as integrated as a spiral.

Yet It’s become clear, during therapy with my therapist, that mental and physical aspects may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche might utilize my physique to hold and display elements that my mind deems undesirable or unbearable. During therapy we’ve become aware how there are particular emotional states that I fear I cannot bear; rather than experiencing them mentally, I unconsciously force them into my body, where they remain as corporeal issues.

I often had this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but represented a form of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I failed to handle mentally. This was not an intentional act, but when it was brought to my attention by my analyst, and my dread and insecurity and anger and panic could be felt and expressed verbally instead of converted to corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. I rarely suffer with digestive issues currently.

The toughest period I experienced this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for multiple consecutive nights. It seemed I was losing my mind. I consulted to the GP, who scheduled multiple diagnostic procedures, but everything was physically wrong. It turned out to be another doctor who told me that the origin may be mental. My analyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also felt it was correct.

Whenever someone is suffering a physical symptom, they might feel insulted upon hearing that there might be an emotional origin. They can experience like disrespect, the idea that their condition is imagined. And of course such cases occur – some face their symptoms dismissed or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it’s possible that the bodily signs exist – no question – and the cause is psychological, the unconscious using the physical self to express some pain or anger or whatever emotion the mind is unable to bear. At times, we might assume our experience matters solely only through expression through the body. We continually disrespect our minds as individuals, collectively and as a culture; how else would we tolerate the shocking elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?

Life lessons have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be created when we are stuck without realization in ways of relating, inside us and socially, that stem from disrespect, manipulation and exchange. These dynamics are frequently more straightforward to spot “out there” in wider society. It’s perhaps less comfortable to think about where they come from, and to identify these shapes personally and in intimate connections, in the economy of our minds.

However persistence pays off. When I put my jogging shoes again post a long hiatus, going outside not to get a better body, or to escape a feeling, or to surpass a running record, {it