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I have just returned from a jog. I’m amazed to write those words. I think it might have been ten years since I last did so. Yet I recently discovered that I have elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts frequently.

It’s the initial instance in my life that the driving force to work out has been my physical health. When I was younger, I ran because I desired to lose weight. At times I ran to manage nervousness – I was just running away from the worry, without confronting it. On other occasions, I ran because I wanted to get better in running. It signified the definition to me at that time to develop an improved existence.

Exercising with new motivation now sparked reflection about the ways I’ve interacted with my body throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I progress from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve valued my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it just for its functions and the aims it served me: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5K run. Until today, I’ve not understood that I am my body, it embodies my life, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

A lot has been explored for ages about the separation involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I’m not going to precis here. What I’ve found most compelling is Freud’s understanding that mental and physical selves are innately connected right from the start, because physical development requires emotional evolution and conversely. A baby’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – propel the brain to develop the ability to recognise hunger as a feeling that is alleviated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction regularly delivered by feed after feed nourishes the young mind similar to the milk fuels them physically. So too psychological experiences – like the urge to rise and reach for something, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are why and how muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are interlinked in mutual development as unified as a spiral.

Yet It’s become clear, in treatment with my therapist, that my mind and body might experience an alternate dynamic – a less unified and more exploitative. My consciousness might utilize my body to hold and manifest aspects that my psyche views undesirable or unacceptable. During therapy we’ve become aware how exist particular emotional states that I fear I can’t handle; in place of feeling these mentally, I subconsciously shift them into my body, where they get stuck as corporeal issues.

I used to get this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but acted as a form of physical reflux of the more acidic feelings I failed to handle mentally. This wasn’t a conscious choice, but once it was raised to awareness through therapy, and my anxiety and sensitivity and frustration and panic could be felt and expressed verbally instead of transformed into bodily feelings, it disappeared. I rarely suffer from stomach problems today.

The toughest period I had this intense reflux, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. I felt I was losing my mind. I visited to the GP, who arranged all sorts of examinations and assessments, but there was nothing physically wrong. The situation was an alternate medic who suggested that the origin might be psychological. My therapist concurred. I was shocked, but I also felt it was accurate.

Whenever someone endures a physical symptom, it can be upsetting if told that it could have a mental root. It can seem as invalidation, being told that their illness isn’t real. And of course it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their symptoms dismissed or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it’s possible that the physical symptoms are real – without doubt – and the origin is emotional, the inner mind using the physique to manifest certain suffering or rage or whichever sentiment the conscious self cannot tolerate. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our feelings only has value if manifested through the body. We continually disrespect our minds personally, as a society and within our culture; for what reason would we tolerate the shocking reduction of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

Life lessons have revealed that an improved existence cannot be created when we are stuck unawares in modes of connection, inside us and in relationships, that are rooted in disregard, use and transaction. Such patterns are frequently more straightforward to spot “out there” in broader culture. It may be more challenging to think about where they come from, and to recognise these forms within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our psyches.

Yet persistence pays off. Upon wearing my jogging shoes again following many years, venturing out not to get a better body, or to escape a sensation, or to beat a running record, {it