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I have just returned from jogging. It’s shocking to admit those words. I think it was likely a decade since the previous time. Yet I found out recently that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts frequently.

It’s the initial instance in living memory that the driving force to work out has been my physical health. In my youth, I ran because I desired to lose weight. I’ve also run to alleviate feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I jogged because I sought to improve with jogging. It signified the meaning to me then to develop an improved existence.

Running for a different reason now sparked reflection about the ways I’ve related with my physical self over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I progress from being a young person to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it solely for its capabilities and the purposes it served me: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; achieving a quicker 5km. Up to now, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my existence, rather than an instrument for achievements.

A lot has been written over the centuries about the division between body and mind – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What resonated most compelling is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because physical development necessitates psychological development and the reverse is true. A baby’s bodily experiences – for example the physical sensation of hunger – drive the brain to cultivate the ability to identify hunger as a sensation that can be sated by a feed; and the psychological solace and contentment consistently provided by feed after feed feeds the child’s mind just as the food nourishes them bodily. Similarly emotional occurrences – like the desire to get up and grab an object, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, mind and body are interconnected in shared growth as unified as a double helix.

But I’ve observed, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique may exist in an alternate dynamic – a less unified and more exploitative. My consciousness might utilize my physique to store and express things that my consciousness views unwanted or intolerable. During therapy we realized that exist specific feelings that I am afraid I cannot bear; instead of sensing them mentally, I unconsciously shift them into bodily form, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I used to get this as indigestion – unrelated to food intake, but acted as a kind of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process mentally. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but once it was raised to awareness through therapy, and my anxiety and vulnerability and frustration and panic were experienced and expressed verbally rather than changed into bodily feelings, it resolved. I rarely suffer from stomach problems currently.

The most severe episode I endured this intense reflux, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. I believed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I went my doctor, who organised multiple diagnostic procedures, but everything was physically wrong. It turned out to be an alternate medic who told me that the origin may be psychological. My analyst concurred. I was shocked, but I also knew it was accurate.

If an individual endures a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting upon hearing that it may have a mental root. They might feel this as being disrespected, the idea that their illness isn’t real. Naturally such cases occur – individuals may experience their suffering dismissed or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it could be that the bodily signs are real – certainly – and the cause is mental, the unconscious utilizing the body to manifest some pain or fury or any feeling awareness cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we may believe our feelings is only valid only through expression in physical form. We often undervalue our psychological well-being as individuals, collectively and within our culture; for what reason can we allow the shocking reduction of mental health treatments through health services?

My experiences have taught me that a superior lifestyle is unattainable when we are stuck without realization in patterns of interaction, inside us and in relationships, that stem from disrespect, use and exchange. These dynamics tend to be simpler to recognize “externally” in wider society. It’s perhaps harder to consider where they come from, and to recognise these patterns within ourselves and among loved ones, in the workings of our minds.

But persistence pays off. After donning my jogging shoes once more post a long hiatus, venturing out not to get physical improvement, or to get rid of a sensation, or to beat a personal best, {it