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I have just returned from a run. It’s shocking to write those words. I think it could have been a decade since I last did so. However I recently discovered that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

This is the first time in my life that my motivation to be active has been my bodily well-being. During earlier years, I exercised because I aimed to lose weight. At times I ran to manage nervousness – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, not addressing it. On other occasions, I ran because I wanted to enhance in running. It signified what it meant to me at that time to develop a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation at present sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve connected with my physical self during my years and the way it’s evolving as I progress from youth to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve respected my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve appreciated it only for its roles and the purposes it provided: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5K run. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my life, as opposed to an instrument for achievements.

Much has been explored for ages about the separation of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What I’ve found most compelling is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are naturally unified right from the start, because physical development requires mental growth and vice versa. The infant’s bodily experiences – like the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the mind to build the ability to identify hunger as an emotion that may be satisfied by eating; and the psychological solace and satisfaction consistently provided by meal after meal feeds the child’s mind in the same way the milk sustains them bodily. Similarly mental events – for instance the urge to get up and reach for something, and the persistence to try again and again – are the cause and means physical strength increases. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as unified as a double helix.

Yet It’s become clear, during therapy with my analyst, that my mind and body might experience an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My mind might utilize my physique to store and express aspects that my psyche considers unwanted or unbearable. In my sessions it emerged that there are specific feelings that I fear I cannot bear; rather than experiencing them in my mind, I subconsciously force them into my body, becoming trapped as bodily signs.

I used to get this with indigestion – not connected to what I’d eaten, but represented a kind of physical reflux of the harsher emotions I couldn’t digest in my mind. This wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced into my consciousness by my analyst, and my fear and sensitivity and anger and alarm were experienced and articulated rather than converted to physical sensation, it vanished. I rarely suffer with digestive issues now.

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 went to the GP, who scheduled multiple examinations and assessments, but no issues were found corporally problematic. It turned out to be an alternate medic who told me that the root might be mental. My therapist agreed. I was shocked, but I also felt it to be true.

Whenever someone experiences a bodily issue, it can be upsetting upon hearing that it may have a mental root. It can seem as invalidation, hearing that their illness is fabricated. Naturally such cases occur – individuals may experience their pain dismissed or wrongly assessed. Yet occasionally it’s possible that the corporeal issues are real – certainly – and the origin is emotional, the unconscious utilizing the physique to manifest emotional hurt or anger or any feeling the mind is unable to bear. At times, it’s easy to think our experience matters solely when it is expressed in physical form. We continually disrespect our psychological well-being as individuals, collectively and within our culture; why else do we accept the shocking reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy through health services?

Life lessons have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be created when we are stuck unconsciously in ways of relating, inside us and in relationships, that are rooted in devaluation, exploitation and transaction. These interactions tend to be simpler to spot “in the world” in the general public. It’s likely harder to consider their origins, and to see these patterns inside us and among loved ones, in the workings of our minds.

But persistence pays off. After donning my jogging shoes again following many years, venturing out not for bodily change, or to escape an emotion, or to surpass a personal best, {it