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I have just returned from a run. I’m amazed to write those words. I believe it was likely a decade since the previous time. However I recently discovered that I have slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise regularly.

This is the first time in my life that the reason to exercise has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I jogged because I aimed to lose weight. I also jogged to manage feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I jogged because I aimed to enhance with jogging. This was the meaning to me at that time to create a better life.

Running for a different reason currently sparked reflection about the methods I’ve connected with my physique over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I transition from youth to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve valued my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it only for its roles and the aims it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; completing a speedier five kilometers. Up to now, I’ve not understood that I am my body, it is my life, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

A lot has been explored over the centuries about the division involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize now. What has struck me most compelling is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are innately connected right from the start, because bodily growth demands emotional evolution and the reverse is true. A baby’s physical sensations – like the bodily feeling of hunger – propel consciousness to cultivate the ability to identify hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by a feed; and the mental reassurance and fulfillment repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment feeds the child’s mind similar to the nutrition sustains them physically. Likewise emotional occurrences – such as the urge to stand up and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are why and how physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our body and mind are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as connected as a spiral.

Yet It’s become clear, in sessions with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique might experience a different kind of relationship – a less unified and more exploitative. My psyche can use my body to hold and manifest things that my psyche views undesirable or unacceptable. In analysis it emerged that there are specific feelings that I am afraid I cannot bear; rather than sensing them in my mind, I unintentionally force them into my body, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I often had this with indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but acted as a form of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest in my mind. This was not an intentional act, but once it was raised to awareness through therapy, and my dread and vulnerability and anger and terror became palpable and expressed verbally instead of converted to physical sensation, it resolved. It’s uncommon for me with digestive issues currently.

The worst time I endured this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for many nights straight. I felt I was losing my mind. I went my doctor, who scheduled various scans and tests, but no issues were found physically wrong. It turned out to be another doctor who suggested that the cause may be psychological. My psychoanalyst agreed. I was shocked, but I recognized it to be true.

Whenever someone experiences a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that there might be a mental root. They can experience like disrespect, being told that their illness is fabricated. And of course such cases occur – individuals may experience their suffering ignored or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it’s possible that the corporeal issues exist – certainly – and the cause is emotional, the inner mind using the physique to convey certain suffering or rage or any feeling the mind fails to handle. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our feelings only has value if manifested in physical form. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being on a personal level, in social contexts and culturally; why else can we allow the appalling killing-off of psychological therapies through health services?

My experiences have taught me that a better life cannot be built if we remain trapped unconsciously in patterns of interaction, inside us and socially, that stem from disrespect, use and transaction. Such patterns are often easier to spot “externally” in wider society. It’s perhaps more challenging to think about how they got out there, and to identify these forms within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the dynamics of our mental lives.

Yet persistence pays off. Upon wearing my jogging shoes once more post a long hiatus, going outside not for physical improvement, or to escape an emotion, or to beat a personal best, {it