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I just got back from a run. It’s shocking to admit this fact. I think it could have been a decade since I last did so. However I recently discovered that my levels show slightly high cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to do sweaty exercise regularly.

It’s the initial instance in my life that the reason to exercise has been my health status. During earlier years, I ran because I wanted to lose weight. I also jogged to manage my anxiety – I was merely escaping from the worry, not addressing it. At other times, I jogged because I sought to enhance at running. That represented the meaning to me back then to create a better life.

Running for a different reason currently prompted contemplation about the methods I’ve connected with my body during my years and how this is changing as I move from youth to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve respected my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it only for its capabilities and the aims it fulfilled for me: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5km. Previously, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it is my existence, rather than something that produces results.

Much has been written through history about the separation involving physical and mental aspects – which it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What has struck me most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are naturally unified right from the start, because bodily growth requires psychological development and vice versa. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – such as the physical sensation of hunger – motivate consciousness to build the skill to recognise hunger as an emotion that may be satisfied by a feed; and the psychological solace and contentment consistently provided by repeated nourishment supports the child’s mind in the same way the nutrition nourishes them corporally. So too psychological experiences – like the wish to get up and reach for something, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method the body develops power. Since infancy, mind and body are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as unified as a double helix.

But I have noticed, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that my mind and body might experience a distinct connection – one less integrated and more exploitative. My consciousness may employ my body to store and manifest elements that my consciousness deems unwanted or unacceptable. In analysis we’ve become aware how exist specific feelings that I worry I cannot bear; instead of sensing them mentally, I unintentionally shift them into my body, where they get stuck as bodily signs.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – not connected to what I’d eaten, but acted as a kind of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest psychologically. This was not an intentional act, but after it was introduced to my attention through therapy, and my fear and vulnerability and rage and terror were experienced and expressed verbally instead of transformed into physical sensation, it resolved. I seldom experience with digestive issues today.

The toughest period I had this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for many nights straight. It seemed I was losing my mental stability. I visited my doctor, who arranged all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but everything was medically abnormal. It was another doctor who told me that the origin could be mental. My psychoanalyst concurred. I was surprised, but I also knew it was correct.

Whenever someone is suffering a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted at the suggestion that there might be an emotional origin. They can experience as invalidation, being told that their condition is imagined. And of course it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their suffering dismissed or wrongly assessed. But in some cases it’s possible that the bodily signs are real – no question – and the cause is mental, the subconscious using the body to express some pain or fury or whatever emotion the conscious self 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 personally, collectively and within our culture; how else do we accept the appalling killing-off of mental health treatments through health services?

Personal insights have taught me that a superior lifestyle cannot be built when we are stuck without realization in ways of relating, internally and with others, that are rooted in disrespect, exploitation and dealings. Such patterns are often easier to recognize “externally” in broader culture. It may be less comfortable to consider how they got out there, and to identify these forms within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the dynamics of our minds.

Yet it’s worth persevering. Upon wearing my jogging shoes again following many years, heading out not to get physical improvement, or to escape a sensation, or to surpass a personal best, {it