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I recently came back from a jog. I’m amazed to write those words. I think it was likely many years since I last did so. However I recently discovered that I have somewhat raised cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts on a consistent basis.

It’s the initial instance in my life that my motivation to work out has been my health status. During earlier years, I exercised because I aimed to slim down. At times I ran to alleviate feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the worry, instead of dealing with it. At other times, I ran because I wanted to improve in running. It signified the definition to me then to develop an improved existence.

Exercising with new motivation at present sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve related with my physical self throughout my life and how this is changing as I progress from youth to midlife. I believe not I’ve honored my body, not deep down. I’ve appreciated it only for its functions and the purposes it provided: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; completing a speedier five kilometers. Up to now, I failed to grasp that my body represents me, it is my life, as opposed to an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been written for ages about the split between body and mind – a topic it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize in this piece. What resonated most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because physical maturation demands mental growth and the reverse is true. A baby’s corporeal feelings – like the bodily feeling of hunger – drive consciousness to build the ability to recognise hunger as a feeling that can be sated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and contentment consistently provided by feed after feed feeds the young mind similar to the nutrition sustains them physically. So too emotional occurrences – like the desire to get up and grab an object, and the determination to attempt repeatedly – are why and how the body develops power. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are interlinked in mutual development as connected as DNA strands.

However I have noticed, during therapy with my analyst, that mental and physical aspects can be in a different kind of relationship – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My psyche can use my physique to store and display aspects that my consciousness deems undesirable or intolerable. In my sessions it emerged that exist particular emotional states that I fear I can’t handle; instead of feeling these psychologically, I unconsciously push them to my physical self, where they remain as corporeal issues.

I used to get digestive discomfort – not connected to what I’d eaten, but acted as a form of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest psychologically. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but after it was introduced to my attention through therapy, and my anxiety and vulnerability and rage and alarm became palpable and expressed verbally in place of changed into physical sensation, it disappeared. I rarely suffer from stomach problems today.

The toughest period I had this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. It seemed I was slipping away from my sanity. I consulted a general practitioner, who arranged multiple diagnostic procedures, but there was nothing corporally problematic. It turned out to be a different physician who told me that the cause could be emotional. My therapist agreed. I was shocked, but I also felt it to be true.

Whenever someone is suffering a bodily issue, they might feel insulted upon hearing that there might be a mental root. It can seem like disrespect, hearing that their illness is fabricated. And of course that does happen – people can have their symptoms ignored or wrongly assessed. Yet occasionally it might be that the corporeal issues exist – without doubt – and the cause is mental, the inner mind employing the body to manifest certain suffering or rage or whichever sentiment the mind fails to handle. At times, we might assume our feelings is only valid when it is expressed in physical form. We often undervalue our minds as individuals, as a society and as a culture; for what reason would we tolerate the appalling elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy in public healthcare?

My experiences have taught me that an improved existence is unattainable when we are stuck unconsciously in modes of connection, internally and with others, that are rooted in disrespect, use and exchange. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to spot “externally” in the general public. It’s likely less comfortable to think about where they come from, and to recognise these forms personally and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our mental lives.

Yet it’s worth persevering. After donning my trainers once more following many years, venturing out not to get bodily change, or to get rid of a sensation, or to surpass a 5km time, {it