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I have just returned from a run. It’s shocking to admit that statement. I think it could have been a decade since I last did so. However I recently discovered that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts frequently.

For the first time ever in my existence that the driving force to work out has been my health status. During earlier years, I jogged because I desired to lose weight. I also jogged to alleviate feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, not addressing it. Sometimes, I ran because I wanted to enhance in running. It signified the definition to me at that time to develop an improved existence.

Exercising with new motivation now got me thinking about the ways I’ve connected with my physique throughout my life and its transformation as I progress from being a young person to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it solely for its capabilities and the aims it provided: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5km. Up to now, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it is my existence, instead of an instrument for achievements.

Much has been explored through history about the separation of mind and body – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I’m not going to precis now. What resonated most compelling is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are naturally unified from the beginning, because physical development requires mental growth and conversely. The newborn’s bodily experiences – like the corporeal experience of hunger – propel the mind to cultivate the capacity to recognise hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction regularly delivered by feed after feed feeds the young mind just as the food sustains them corporally. Likewise psychological experiences – for instance the wish to rise and reach for something, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the cause and means the body develops power. Since infancy, mind and body are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as connected as a double helix.

But It’s become clear, in sessions with my analyst, that mental and physical aspects might experience an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My consciousness can use my body to retain and express things that my psyche views unacceptable or intolerable. In my sessions we realized that exist specific feelings that I worry are too much for me; instead of experiencing them in my mind, I subconsciously shift them into bodily form, where they get stuck as bodily signs.

I used to get this as indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but acted as a kind of corporeal reaction of the harsher emotions I failed to handle mentally. This was not a conscious choice, but once it was raised to awareness in sessions, and my fear and vulnerability and frustration and alarm were experienced and put into words instead of converted to corporeal symptoms, it resolved. It’s uncommon for me from indigestion today.

The toughest period I endured this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. I felt I was losing my mind. I visited a general practitioner, who arranged multiple examinations and assessments, but everything was corporally problematic. It turned out to be an alternate medic who told me that the root may be mental. My analyst concurred. I was stunned, but I also knew it was correct.

If an individual endures a bodily issue, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that it could have a mental root. It can seem this as being disrespected, being told that their illness isn’t real. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their symptoms ignored or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it might be that the physical symptoms exist – certainly – and the origin is mental, the subconscious using the body to manifest certain suffering or rage or whichever sentiment the conscious self fails to handle. Occasionally, it’s easy to think our experience is only valid if manifested in physical form. We often undervalue our psychological well-being on a personal level, as a society and culturally; how else do we accept the shocking elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

Life lessons have taught me that a superior lifestyle cannot be built if we remain trapped without realization in ways of relating, within ourselves and with others, that are rooted in devaluation, exploitation and exchange. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to spot “out there” in the general public. It may be less comfortable to think about their origins, and to see these shapes within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our psyches.

Yet persistence pays off. When I put my jogging shoes again post a long hiatus, heading out without aiming for physical improvement, or to eliminate a sensation, or to beat a personal best, {it