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I have just returned from a run. It’s surprising to state those words. I think it might have been many years since the previous time. But I recently discovered that I have somewhat raised cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

This is the first time in my existence that the driving force to exercise has been my health status. When I was younger, I jogged because I aimed to lose weight. At times I ran to alleviate nervousness – I was just running away from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. At other times, I jogged because I aimed to enhance with jogging. It signified what it meant to me then to build a better life.

Jogging with altered intent currently got me thinking about the ways I’ve connected with my body over my lifetime and its transformation as I transition from youth to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve valued my own body, not deep down. I’ve appreciated it only for its capabilities and the purposes it fulfilled for me: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; completing a speedier five kilometers. Until today, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it embodies my life, instead of a tool for outcomes.

Much has been explored through history about the split between body and mind – which it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize now. What I’ve found most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mind and body are naturally unified right from the start, because physical maturation necessitates psychological development and conversely. The infant’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the mind to build the skill to identify hunger as a feeling that is alleviated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and contentment consistently provided by meal after meal feeds the child’s mind just as the food nourishes them bodily. Similarly psychological experiences – like the desire to get up and grab an object, and the determination to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, mind and body are intertwined in shared growth as unified as DNA strands.

But It’s become clear, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that my mind and body may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and more exploitative. My mind may employ my physique to store and manifest aspects that my consciousness considers undesirable or intolerable. In analysis it emerged that exist particular emotional states that I fear are too much for me; instead of experiencing them in my mind, I unintentionally push them into bodily form, where they remain as bodily signs.

I often had this with indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but acted as a type of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle in my mind. It wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced to awareness by my analyst, and my anxiety and sensitivity and anger and panic were experienced and put into words instead of changed into bodily feelings, it vanished. I seldom experience with digestive issues currently.

The toughest period I experienced this intense reflux, I didn’t sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was slipping away from my sanity. I consulted to the GP, who arranged various diagnostic procedures, but there was nothing corporally problematic. It was a different physician who suggested that the cause might be mental. My psychoanalyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also knew it to be true.

When a patient is suffering a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting if told that it may have an emotional origin. They might feel like disrespect, the idea that their illness is fabricated. Naturally such cases occur – individuals may experience their pain ignored or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it could be that the corporeal issues are genuine – no question – and the origin is mental, the subconscious using the physique to express certain suffering or rage or any feeling awareness fails to handle. At times, it’s easy to think our experience is only valid when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our minds as individuals, in social contexts and culturally; why else can we allow the appalling elimination of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

Personal insights have taught me that a superior lifestyle is unattainable while caught without realization in ways of relating, within ourselves and with others, that originate in disrespect, manipulation and transaction. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to identify “in the world” in wider society. It’s perhaps more challenging to think about where they come from, and to recognise these patterns inside us and in intimate connections, in the economy of our mental lives.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my running shoes once more following many years, heading out without aiming for physical improvement, or to escape a feeling, or to beat a personal best, {it