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I just got back from a jog. It’s shocking to write this fact. I think it could have been ten years since the previous time. But I recently discovered that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

For the first time ever in living memory that the reason to exercise has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I ran because I wanted to lose weight. I also jogged to manage feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from the worry, without confronting it. On other occasions, I jogged because I aimed to enhance at running. This was what it meant to me back then to build a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation now prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve connected with my physical self during my years and the way it’s evolving as I progress from youth to midlife. I don’t think I’ve respected my body, not deep down. I’ve prized it only for its capabilities and the purposes it served me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5km. Previously, I failed to grasp that my body represents me, it is my existence, as opposed to something that produces results.

Much has been written through history about the separation between body and mind – which it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize here. What resonated most intriguing is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because physical maturation demands mental growth and the reverse is true. The infant’s bodily experiences – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – drive consciousness to cultivate the ability to identify hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by nourishment; and the psychological solace and contentment regularly delivered by repeated nourishment supports the young mind just as the food fuels them corporally. So too mental events – for instance the urge to rise and attain a goal, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the cause and means muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, mind and body are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as connected as a spiral.

Yet I’ve observed, during therapy with my analyst, that my mind and body may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and more exploitative. My consciousness might utilize my physique to hold and manifest things that my psyche considers unacceptable or unbearable. In my sessions it emerged how there are specific feelings that I am afraid I cannot bear; rather than feeling these in my mind, I unintentionally force them into my body, where they remain as bodily signs.

I often had this as indigestion – unrelated to what I’d eaten, but represented a kind of physical reflux of the harsher emotions I failed to handle psychologically. This wasn’t an intentional act, but when it was brought to my attention in sessions, and my anxiety and insecurity and frustration and alarm were experienced and expressed verbally in place of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it vanished. I seldom experience from indigestion today.

The toughest period I endured this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. It seemed I was slipping away from my mind. I consulted to the GP, who organised various examinations and assessments, but there was nothing medically abnormal. It turned out to be an alternate medic who told me that the cause could be emotional. My therapist concurred. I was shocked, but I also knew it was correct.

Whenever someone experiences a physical symptom, they can be offended at the suggestion that there might be a psychological cause. They can experience like disrespect, the idea that their illness is imagined. Certainly that does happen – individuals may experience their pain discounted or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it could be that the physical symptoms exist – no question – and the cause is emotional, the subconscious utilizing the physical self to express emotional hurt or fury or whatever emotion the mind fails to handle. Sometimes, we may believe our feelings matters solely when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our mental states on a personal level, collectively and within our culture; how else would we tolerate the terrible reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

Personal insights have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be built while caught unawares in patterns of interaction, within ourselves and with others, that are rooted in devaluation, use and dealings. These interactions tend to be simpler to identify “in the world” in broader culture. It’s perhaps harder to think about their origins, and to see these forms personally and in intimate connections, in the workings of our psyches.

But it’s worth persevering. After donning my running shoes once more following many years, venturing out without aiming for physical improvement, or to eliminate a feeling, or to surpass a personal best, {it