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I recently came back from a jog. I’m amazed to write those words. I believe it might have been many years since my last. But I found out recently that my levels show slightly high cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts frequently.

This is the first time in living memory that my motivation to work out has been my physical health. During earlier years, I ran because I desired to slim down. I’ve also run to manage nervousness – I was just running away from the worry, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I ran because I aimed to improve with jogging. This was what it meant to me then to develop a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation now prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve connected with my physique over my lifetime and how this is changing as I progress from youth to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my physical form, not truly. I’ve appreciated it just for its functions and the purposes it served me: aiming to appeal; avoiding feelings; achieving a quicker five kilometers. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my existence, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

Much has been explored through history about the division of mind and body – which you will be relieved to know, I’m not going to precis in this piece. What resonated most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are innately connected from birth, because physical maturation demands psychological development and the reverse is true. A baby’s physical sensations – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate consciousness to build the skill to identify hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and fulfillment consistently provided by repeated nourishment supports the child’s mind in the same way the nutrition fuels them bodily. So too mental events – for instance the urge to rise and grab an object, and the determination to try again and again – are why and how muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, mind and body are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as unified as a double helix.

However It’s become clear, in sessions with my therapist, that mental and physical aspects may exist in a different kind of relationship – a less unified and somewhat abusive. My psyche may employ my body to store and manifest aspects that my psyche considers unwanted or unbearable. During therapy we realized that exist particular emotional states that I am afraid I can’t handle; in place of feeling these in my mind, I subconsciously shift them to my physical self, where they get stuck as bodily signs.

I used to get digestive discomfort – which had nothing to do with food intake, but represented a form of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest mentally. This wasn’t an intentional act, but once it was raised to my attention through therapy, and my dread and sensitivity and rage and alarm could be felt and articulated instead of changed into bodily feelings, it vanished. I seldom experience from indigestion currently.

The toughest period I endured this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for many nights straight. I felt I was slipping away from my sanity. I went to the GP, who organised all sorts of examinations and assessments, but no issues were found physically wrong. The situation was a different physician who informed me that the cause might be mental. My therapist agreed. I was shocked, but I also knew it to be true.

Whenever someone is suffering a physical symptom, they can be offended upon hearing that there might be a mental root. They can experience as invalidation, hearing that their illness is fabricated. And of course such cases occur – individuals may experience their suffering discounted or incorrectly identified. However, sometimes it’s possible that the bodily signs are real – certainly – and the source is emotional, the inner mind utilizing the physical self to convey emotional hurt or rage or any feeling awareness cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we might assume our emotions only has value when it is expressed through the body. We often undervalue our psychological well-being personally, in social contexts and culturally; how else do we accept the appalling elimination of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Life lessons have revealed that an improved existence cannot be built if we remain trapped unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and in relationships, that stem from disrespect, use and transaction. Such patterns are often easier to spot “out there” in broader culture. It’s perhaps harder to think about their origins, and to recognise these forms within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the economy of our psyches.

However it’s worth persevering. After donning my running shoes back on after such a long decade, heading out not to get a better body, or to eliminate an emotion, or to surpass a personal best, {it