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I recently came back from a jog. It’s surprising to write those words. I think it was likely a decade since I last did so. Yet I found out recently that my levels show slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts on a consistent basis.

This is the first time in living memory that the driving force to work out has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I exercised because I aimed to be thinner. At times I ran to alleviate feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. On other occasions, I ran because I sought to get better with jogging. It signified what it meant to me back then to build a better life.

Running for a different reason at present sparked reflection about the methods I’ve related with my body during my years and how this is changing as I move from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. I believe not I’ve respected my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it only for its capabilities and the aims it served me: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5K run. Until today, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it embodies my life, instead of something that produces results.

A lot has been discussed over the centuries about the separation involving physical and mental aspects – which it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing in this piece. What I’ve found most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are innately connected from the beginning, because physical maturation demands emotional evolution and vice versa. The infant’s bodily experiences – like the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the mind to build the ability to identify hunger as a sensation that can be sated by eating; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction regularly delivered by meal after meal feeds the child’s mind similar to the milk nourishes them corporally. Likewise psychological experiences – for instance the urge to get up and grab an object, and the determination to persist through effort – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, our body and mind are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as connected as a spiral.

Yet It’s become clear, in sessions with my analyst, that my consciousness and physique can be in a distinct connection – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My mind can use my physique to hold and manifest aspects that my psyche deems undesirable or intolerable. In analysis we realized how there are particular emotional states that I fear I cannot bear; rather than feeling these mentally, I subconsciously shift them to my physical self, becoming trapped as bodily signs.

I used to get this as indigestion – not connected to my diet, but acted as a kind of corporeal reaction of the harsher emotions I was unable to process psychologically. This wasn’t a conscious choice, but after it was introduced into my consciousness by my analyst, and my anxiety and sensitivity and frustration and terror were experienced and articulated in place of transformed into physical sensation, it vanished. I seldom experience from stomach problems now.

The worst time I experienced this intense reflux, I failed to rest for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was slipping away from my mental stability. I went to the GP, who arranged multiple scans and tests, but there was nothing physically wrong. It turned out to be another doctor who suggested that the cause could be mental. My therapist agreed. I was stunned, but I recognized it was accurate.

If an individual endures a bodily issue, they can be offended upon hearing that there might be an emotional origin. It can seem this as being disrespected, hearing that their condition is imagined. And of course that does happen – individuals may experience their symptoms dismissed or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it’s possible that the corporeal issues are real – without doubt – and the source is mental, the subconscious employing the physique to convey emotional hurt or rage or whichever sentiment awareness cannot tolerate. Sometimes, we may believe our feelings only has value only through expression through the body. We continually disrespect our mental states as individuals, collectively and as a culture; why else would we tolerate the terrible elimination of psychological therapies through health services?

My experiences have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be built if we remain trapped unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and socially, that originate in devaluation, exploitation and transaction. These dynamics tend to be simpler to spot “out there” in broader culture. It’s perhaps more challenging to consider their origins, and to see these shapes personally and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our psyches.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my running shoes once more post a long hiatus, venturing out not to get physical improvement, or to escape a sensation, or to beat a 5km time, {it