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I just got back from jogging. It’s surprising to admit this fact. I think it might have been a decade since the previous time. However I found out recently that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

For the first time ever in my existence that the driving force to exercise has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I jogged because I desired to lose weight. I’ve also run to manage nervousness – I was merely escaping from the worry, not addressing it. At other times, I jogged because I aimed to improve at running. This was the meaning to me then to create a better life.

Jogging with altered intent at present sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve connected with my physique during my years and the way it’s evolving as I transition from youth to middle age. I don’t think I’ve valued my physical form, not truly. I’ve valued it only for its roles and the objectives it provided: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5K run. Up to now, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my life, rather than something that produces results.

A lot has been written through history about the division of mind and body – which you will be relieved to know, I’m not going to precis here. What resonated most compelling is Freud’s understanding that mental and physical selves are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because physical development requires psychological development and vice versa. The newborn’s bodily experiences – for example the physical sensation of hunger – motivate consciousness to build the skill to recognise hunger as an emotion that can be sated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and contentment regularly delivered by meal after meal nourishes the infant’s psyche similar to the milk sustains them bodily. Similarly mental events – like the desire to rise and reach for something, and the resolve to try again and again – are the reason and method the body develops power. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are interlinked in shared growth as unified as DNA strands.

Yet I’ve observed, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that my mind and body might experience an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My consciousness may employ my physique to retain and display things that my mind deems undesirable or unbearable. In my sessions we realized that there are particular emotional states that I fear are too much for me; rather than sensing them psychologically, I unconsciously force them into bodily form, where they remain as corporeal issues.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – not connected to my diet, but acted as a type of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest in my mind. This wasn’t a conscious choice, but once it was raised to awareness in sessions, and my fear and sensitivity and rage and terror were experienced and articulated in place of changed into bodily feelings, it disappeared. I seldom experience with digestive issues today.

The toughest period I had this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I felt I was forfeiting my mind. I went to the GP, who organised multiple examinations and assessments, but there was nothing physically wrong. The situation was a different physician who told me that the cause may be psychological. My therapist agreed. I was surprised, but I recognized it to be true.

Whenever someone endures a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted if told that it may have an emotional origin. They can experience this as being disrespected, the idea that their illness is imagined. Naturally such cases occur – some face their pain dismissed or incorrectly identified. Yet occasionally it might be that the physical symptoms are genuine – without doubt – and the origin is psychological, the inner mind employing the body to express emotional hurt or anger or whichever sentiment the conscious self fails to handle. Occasionally, we may believe our emotions is only valid only through expression through the body. We continually disrespect our minds personally, collectively and as a culture; for what reason do we accept the shocking reduction of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

Personal insights have shown me that a superior lifestyle cannot be created if we remain trapped unawares in ways of relating, within ourselves and socially, that originate in disrespect, manipulation and dealings. These dynamics are often easier to spot “externally” in broader culture. It’s perhaps more challenging to think about their origins, and to recognise these patterns personally and in intimate connections, in the workings of our mental lives.

But it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my trainers back on following many years, heading out not to get bodily change, or to escape a feeling, or to beat a running record, {it