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I have just returned from a jog. I’m amazed to write this fact. I believe it could have been many years since the previous time. Yet It came to my attention that I have elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts on a consistent basis.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that the driving force to be active has been my health status. In my youth, I ran because I wanted to lose weight. I’ve also run to alleviate my anxiety – I was just running away from the anxiety, without confronting it. On other occasions, I ran because I aimed to enhance at running. This was the definition to me at that time to develop a better life.

Running for a different reason currently prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve connected with my body over my lifetime and its transformation as I move from youth to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve valued my physical form, not truly. I’ve valued it only for its capabilities and the purposes it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5km. Previously, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it is my existence, rather than a tool for outcomes.

A great deal has been written over the centuries about the division involving physical and mental aspects – which it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize here. What resonated most compelling is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated right from the start, because physical development demands mental growth and conversely. The infant’s bodily experiences – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate the mind to develop the ability to identify hunger as an emotion that can be sated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and fulfillment consistently provided by meal after meal nourishes the infant’s psyche in the same way the nutrition sustains them bodily. Likewise emotional occurrences – like the urge to stand up and reach for something, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method the body develops power. Starting at birth, our body and mind are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as unified as a spiral.

However I have noticed, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique may exist in a distinct connection – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My psyche might utilize my physical self to hold and manifest things that my psyche views undesirable or unacceptable. In analysis it emerged how there are specific feelings that I fear I cannot bear; rather than sensing them mentally, I unintentionally push them into bodily form, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I used to get this as indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but was a form of bodily backlash of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle in my mind. This was not a conscious choice, but when it was brought to awareness through therapy, and my fear and vulnerability and anger and alarm could be felt and articulated instead of converted to corporeal symptoms, it resolved. I seldom experience from stomach problems now.

The most severe episode I had this intense reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. I felt I was slipping away from my sanity. I consulted a general practitioner, who arranged various diagnostic procedures, but everything was physically wrong. It was a different physician who informed me that the root could be emotional. My analyst agreed. I was shocked, but I recognized it was accurate.

If an individual experiences a bodily issue, they can be offended if told that it may have a mental root. They can experience like disrespect, hearing that their condition is fabricated. And of course that does happen – some face their symptoms discounted or wrongly assessed. But in some cases it’s possible that the corporeal issues are genuine – without doubt – and the origin is psychological, the subconscious employing the body to express certain suffering or fury or whichever sentiment the conscious self fails to handle. At times, we might assume our emotions is only valid if manifested as bodily symptoms. We often undervalue our psychological well-being as individuals, as a society and as a culture; how else can we allow the shocking killing-off of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

My experiences have taught me that a superior lifestyle cannot be created if we remain trapped unawares in modes of connection, within ourselves and in relationships, that stem from disregard, manipulation and dealings. Such patterns are frequently more straightforward to spot “externally” in wider society. It’s likely harder to reflect on how they got out there, and to see these forms personally and in intimate connections, in the economy of our mental lives.

But it’s valuable to continue. When I put my running shoes again post a long hiatus, venturing out without aiming for a better body, or to eliminate an emotion, or to improve a personal best, {it