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I have just returned from a jog. I’m amazed to state that statement. I believe it might have been ten years since the previous time. But I found out recently that I have elevated cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise regularly.

For the first time ever in living memory that the reason to exercise has been my health status. During earlier years, I exercised because I aimed to be thinner. I also jogged to manage feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the worry, without confronting it. Sometimes, I ran because I sought to improve at running. That represented the meaning to me then to build an improved existence.

Running for a different reason now prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve interacted with my physique throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I move from youth to midlife. I believe not I’ve honored my own body, not deep down. I’ve appreciated it only for its functions and the aims it provided: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; achieving a quicker 5K run. Up to now, I’ve not understood that I am my body, it embodies my life, rather than something that produces results.

A great deal has been explored through history about the division involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis now. What has struck me most compelling is Sigmund Freud’s view that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated right from the start, because physical development necessitates emotional evolution and vice versa. The infant’s physical sensations – like the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the brain to build the capacity to identify hunger as an emotion that can be sated by eating; and the psychological solace and fulfillment consistently provided by meal after meal supports the child’s mind just as the food sustains them corporally. Similarly mental events – for instance the wish to get up and attain a goal, and the persistence to persist through effort – are why and how muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are intertwined in shared growth as integrated as a spiral.

But I have noticed, in sessions with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique might experience an alternate dynamic – a more separated and more exploitative. My psyche can use my physical self to retain and express things that my consciousness deems undesirable or intolerable. In analysis it emerged that exist certain emotions that I am afraid I can’t handle; instead of sensing them mentally, I subconsciously shift them into bodily form, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.

I often had this with indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but was a kind of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I was unable to process in my mind. It wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced to my attention in sessions, and my dread and vulnerability and anger and panic became palpable and expressed verbally in place of converted to bodily feelings, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems now.

The toughest period I experienced this intense reflux, I didn’t sleep for several nights in a row. It seemed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I consulted to the GP, who arranged all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but there was nothing physically wrong. The situation was another doctor who told me that the cause may be psychological. My psychoanalyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also felt it was accurate.

Whenever someone is suffering a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting upon hearing that it may have an emotional origin. They can experience as invalidation, hearing that their symptom is fabricated. And of course that does happen – individuals may experience their symptoms dismissed or incorrectly identified. Yet occasionally it’s possible that the corporeal issues exist – no question – and the source is psychological, the subconscious utilizing the body to convey emotional hurt or fury or any feeling the mind cannot tolerate. At times, we might assume our feelings matters solely when it is expressed through the body. We often undervalue our psychological well-being personally, in social contexts and as a culture; why else would we tolerate the appalling reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

Personal insights have shown me that a better life is unattainable if we remain trapped unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and socially, that originate in devaluation, exploitation and dealings. Such patterns tend to be simpler to spot “externally” in the general public. It may be more challenging to think about how they got out there, and to see these shapes within ourselves and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our minds.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. When I put my jogging shoes again following many years, heading out without aiming for a better body, or to eliminate an emotion, or to beat a 5km time, {it