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I recently came back from jogging. It’s shocking to state that statement. It seems it might have been many years since the previous time. Yet I recently discovered that my levels show slightly high cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts regularly.

For the first time ever in my life that my motivation to exercise has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I exercised because I aimed to be thinner. I also jogged to cure nervousness – I was just running away from the worry, without confronting it. On other occasions, I jogged because I sought to improve at running. It signified the meaning to me at that time to create a better life.

Running for a different reason now prompted contemplation about the methods I’ve interacted with my physique over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I move from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. I believe not I’ve valued my body, not truly. I’ve prized it solely for its capabilities and the aims it served me: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; running a faster 5km. Until today, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it is my life, as opposed to an instrument for achievements.

Much has been written through history about the split between body and mind – which it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What I’ve found most intriguing is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are developmentally integrated from birth, because physical development demands psychological development and the reverse is true. The infant’s bodily experiences – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the brain to develop the skill to identify hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by eating; and the psychological solace and satisfaction repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment feeds the young mind just as the nutrition nourishes them corporally. Likewise psychological experiences – like the urge to get up and reach for something, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Starting at birth, our physical and mental selves are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as integrated as a spiral.

However I’ve observed, in sessions with my therapist, that my mind and body may exist in a distinct connection – a less unified and somewhat abusive. My psyche may employ my body to retain and display things that my psyche views undesirable or unacceptable. In analysis we’ve become aware that there are specific feelings that I fear are too much for me; in place of sensing them in my mind, I subconsciously shift them into my body, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I used to get this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with my diet, but was a type of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest in my mind. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but after it was introduced to awareness through therapy, and my dread and sensitivity and anger and panic became palpable and articulated instead of transformed into physical sensation, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me with digestive issues now.

The most severe episode I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. I felt I was slipping away from my sanity. I visited my doctor, who organised multiple diagnostic procedures, but there was nothing medically abnormal. The situation was a different physician who told me that the root could be psychological. My therapist agreed. I was shocked, but I also knew it was accurate.

When a patient experiences a physical symptom, they might feel insulted upon hearing that there might be a psychological cause. They might feel like disrespect, being told that their condition is imagined. Naturally such cases occur – people can have their suffering dismissed or incorrectly identified. Yet occasionally it’s possible that the bodily signs are genuine – certainly – and the origin is emotional, the subconscious utilizing the physical self to manifest certain suffering or fury or whatever emotion the mind is unable to bear. At times, it’s easy to think our emotions matters solely when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our mental states personally, as a society and within our culture; why else do we accept the appalling reduction of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

Personal insights have shown me that an improved existence cannot be built while caught unawares in ways of relating, inside us and with others, that originate in disregard, exploitation and exchange. These dynamics tend to be simpler to recognize “out there” in broader culture. It may be less comfortable to consider where they come from, and to recognise these forms personally and among loved ones, in the workings of our psyches.

However it’s worth persevering. Upon wearing my jogging shoes once more after such a long decade, going outside not to get physical improvement, or to get rid of an emotion, or to surpass a personal best, {it