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I just got back from a run. I’m amazed to state that statement. It seems it was likely many years since my last. But It came to my attention that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise frequently.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that my motivation to be active has been my physical health. During earlier years, I ran because I desired to be thinner. At times I ran to manage feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the worry, not addressing it. On other occasions, I exercised because I sought to improve with jogging. It signified the meaning to me back then to build a better life.

Exercising with new motivation now got me thinking about the methods I’ve interacted with my physique over my lifetime and its transformation as I transition from youth to midlife. I don’t think I’ve valued my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it just for its functions and the aims it provided: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; running a faster 5km. Previously, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my life, rather than something that produces results.

Much has been explored over the centuries about the separation of mind and body – which it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize now. What I’ve found most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mind and body are innately connected right from the start, because physical maturation demands emotional evolution and the reverse is true. The infant’s physical sensations – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the mind to develop the capacity to identify hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by eating; and the emotional comfort and contentment consistently provided by feed after feed nourishes the young mind just as the nutrition fuels them bodily. Similarly psychological experiences – for instance the desire to stand up and grab an object, and the determination to persist through effort – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as integrated as a spiral.

However I’ve observed, during therapy with my analyst, that my mind and body may exist in an alternate dynamic – a less unified and increasingly manipulative. My mind might utilize my body to retain and manifest things that my mind deems unwanted or unacceptable. During therapy we’ve become aware that there are particular emotional states that I worry I can’t handle; in place of feeling these mentally, I subconsciously push them to my physical self, becoming trapped as bodily signs.

I used to get this as indigestion – unrelated to my diet, but was a form of physical reflux of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest psychologically. This was not an intentional act, but after it was introduced into my consciousness through therapy, and my fear and vulnerability and anger and terror could be felt and put into words rather than changed into bodily feelings, it disappeared. I rarely suffer from stomach problems today.

The worst time I experienced this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. It seemed I was losing my mental stability. I went to the GP, who arranged multiple examinations and assessments, but there was nothing physically wrong. It turned out to be a different physician who informed me that the origin might be mental. My analyst agreed. I was stunned, but I recognized it was accurate.

If an individual is suffering a corporeal problem, they can be offended upon hearing that it could have an emotional origin. They might feel as invalidation, the idea that their symptom is imagined. Certainly that does happen – individuals may experience their symptoms ignored or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it might be that the corporeal issues are genuine – certainly – and the origin is mental, the subconscious using the physical self to convey certain suffering or fury or whichever sentiment awareness fails to handle. At times, we may believe our emotions is only valid only through expression in physical form. We persistently neglect our mental states personally, in social contexts and culturally; why else can we allow the terrible elimination of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

My experiences have taught me that a superior lifestyle is unattainable while caught unawares in ways of relating, inside us and in relationships, that stem from disrespect, manipulation and exchange. These interactions are often easier to spot “in the world” in wider society. It may be less comfortable to reflect on where they come from, and to identify these forms personally and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our mental lives.

However it’s valuable to continue. When I put my trainers once more following many years, venturing out not to get physical improvement, or to escape a sensation, or to surpass a personal best, {it