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I just got back from jogging. It’s surprising to admit this fact. I think it could have been ten years since I last did so. However I recently discovered that I have slightly high cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

For the first time ever in my life that the driving force to exercise has been my health status. In my youth, I exercised because I desired to slim down. I also jogged to alleviate feelings of anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the anxiety, without confronting it. On other occasions, I jogged because I sought to improve in running. This was the meaning to me then to develop a better life.

Jogging with altered intent now prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve connected with my physique over my lifetime and how this is changing as I transition from youth to midlife. I don’t think I’ve honored my physical form, not deep down. I’ve valued it only for its functions and the objectives it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; avoiding feelings; achieving a quicker 5km. Until today, I’ve not understood that I am my body, it is my life, rather than an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been discussed through history about the separation of mind and body – a topic you will be relieved to know, I’m not going to precis now. What has struck me most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are naturally unified right from the start, because bodily growth necessitates psychological development and vice versa. The newborn’s bodily experiences – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate the brain to develop the capacity to identify hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by a feed; and the psychological solace and satisfaction regularly delivered by repeated nourishment nourishes the young mind similar to the nutrition sustains them physically. Likewise psychological experiences – such as the desire to stand up and grab an object, and the determination to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our body and mind are interconnected in mutual development as unified as a double helix.

But It’s become clear, in sessions with my therapist, that mental and physical aspects can be in a distinct connection – a less unified and somewhat abusive. My consciousness can use my physical self to retain and manifest aspects that my mind considers unwanted or unacceptable. During therapy it emerged how there are particular emotional states that I worry I cannot bear; in place of feeling these in my mind, I unintentionally push them to my physical self, becoming trapped as bodily signs.

I used to get this as indigestion – not connected to what I’d eaten, but acted as a kind of bodily backlash of the sharper sentiments I was unable to process psychologically. This wasn’t a deliberate decision, but when it was brought into my consciousness in sessions, and my dread and insecurity and frustration and alarm were experienced and articulated rather than transformed into physical sensation, it vanished. I seldom experience from stomach problems today.

The most severe episode I endured this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for many nights straight. I believed I was losing my mental stability. I consulted my doctor, who arranged various scans and tests, but no issues were found medically abnormal. The situation was an alternate medic who informed me that the origin may be emotional. My therapist did not disagree. I was surprised, but I also knew it was accurate.

When a patient experiences a physical symptom, they can be offended if told that it may have an emotional origin. They can experience as invalidation, being told that their condition isn’t real. Certainly such cases occur – some face their symptoms discounted or incorrectly identified. But in some cases it might be that the corporeal issues are real – no question – and the cause is mental, the inner mind using the body to convey some pain or anger or whatever emotion awareness is unable to bear. At times, we might assume our experience only has value when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our mental states on a personal level, in social contexts and within our culture; for what reason would we tolerate the terrible reduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy through health services?

Life lessons have taught me that a superior lifestyle cannot be built when we are stuck unconsciously in patterns of interaction, inside us and in relationships, that originate in disregard, exploitation and exchange. These interactions are often easier to spot “in the world” in broader culture. It’s perhaps more challenging to consider where they come from, and to identify these patterns personally and in intimate connections, in the workings of our mental lives.

But it’s worth persevering. Upon wearing my trainers back on following many years, going outside not to get bodily change, or to escape a sensation, or to beat a personal best, {it