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I just got back from jogging. It’s shocking to state that statement. I think it was likely many years since the previous time. Yet It came to my attention that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

For the first time ever in living memory that the driving force to be active has been my health status. During earlier years, I jogged because I aimed to be thinner. I’ve also run to manage my anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, without confronting it. Sometimes, I exercised because I wanted to improve in running. This was the definition to me at that time to create an improved existence.

Running for a different reason now sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I progress from being a young person to midlife. I believe not I’ve honored my physical form, not deep down. I’ve prized it only for its capabilities and the aims it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; escaping emotions; running a faster 5km. Previously, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it is my existence, instead of an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been discussed over the centuries about the split involving physical and mental aspects – which it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing now. What I’ve found most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated from birth, because physical maturation requires psychological development and vice versa. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the mind to cultivate the capacity to identify hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by eating; and the psychological solace and satisfaction repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment feeds the child’s mind just as the food sustains them corporally. Similarly emotional occurrences – for instance the wish to get up and attain a goal, and the determination to persist through effort – are why and how the body develops power. Starting at birth, mind and body are interlinked in mutual development as connected as a double helix.

However I have noticed, in sessions with my analyst, that my consciousness and physique might experience an alternate dynamic – a less unified and somewhat abusive. My psyche may employ my physique to store and express things that my psyche considers undesirable or intolerable. In my sessions we’ve become aware how there are particular emotional states that I am afraid are too much for me; instead of feeling these psychologically, I subconsciously push them into my body, where they remain as bodily signs.

I previously experienced this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but represented a form of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest psychologically. It wasn’t an intentional act, but when it was brought into my consciousness by my analyst, and my dread and sensitivity and frustration and panic could be felt and articulated in place of changed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. I rarely suffer from indigestion today.

The worst time I experienced this intense reflux, I was unable to sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was forfeiting my sanity. I went a general practitioner, who arranged multiple diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found corporally problematic. The situation was an alternate medic who told me that the origin may be emotional. My analyst concurred. I was surprised, but I also felt it to be true.

Whenever someone endures a bodily issue, they can be offended upon hearing that there might be a mental root. They might feel this as being disrespected, being told that their condition is fabricated. Certainly such cases occur – individuals may experience their symptoms ignored or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it might be that the physical symptoms exist – without doubt – and the origin is psychological, the subconscious employing the physical self to convey some pain or rage or whatever emotion the conscious self fails to handle. Occasionally, we may believe our emotions is only valid if manifested in physical form. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being on a personal level, collectively and as a culture; for what reason can we allow the appalling killing-off of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

Life lessons have shown me that a better life cannot be built when we are stuck unawares in modes of connection, inside us and socially, that originate in devaluation, use and exchange. These dynamics are frequently more straightforward to identify “externally” in the general public. It may be less comfortable to think about how they got out there, and to identify these forms personally and in intimate connections, in the economy of our psyches.

However it’s worth persevering. When I put my running shoes once more following many years, venturing out not to get physical improvement, or to eliminate a feeling, or to improve a 5km time, {it