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I recently came back from a run. I’m amazed to admit this fact. It seems it was likely ten years since my last. But I recently discovered that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

For the first time ever in my life that the reason to be active has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I jogged because I desired to be thinner. I’ve also run to alleviate feelings of anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the worry, instead of dealing with it. On other occasions, I exercised because I aimed to enhance with jogging. This was the definition to me at that time to build a superior lifestyle.

Running for a different reason currently sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve interacted with my physique throughout my life and its transformation as I progress from early adulthood to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it just for its functions and the purposes it provided: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; running a faster five kilometers. Until today, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it is my existence, rather than a tool for outcomes.

Much has been discussed for ages about the separation involving physical and mental aspects – a topic you will be relieved to know, I’ll avoid detailing now. What I’ve found most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are innately connected from the beginning, because physical maturation requires psychological development and the reverse is true. The infant’s physical sensations – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – propel the brain to develop the ability to identify hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by eating; and the mental reassurance and contentment regularly delivered by meal after meal feeds the child’s mind in the same way the nutrition fuels them physically. Likewise psychological experiences – for instance the desire to rise and reach for something, and the persistence to try again and again – are why and how the body develops power. From our earliest moments, mind and body are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as integrated as a spiral.

But It’s become clear, in sessions with my therapist, that my mind and body may exist in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and somewhat abusive. My psyche might utilize my body to store and display elements that my consciousness considers unacceptable or unbearable. In analysis it emerged that exist certain emotions that I worry I can’t handle; instead of feeling these mentally, I unconsciously shift them into my body, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I used to get digestive discomfort – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but was a type of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I was unable to process psychologically. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but after it was introduced to awareness in sessions, and my fear and insecurity and anger and panic became palpable and expressed verbally rather than transformed into corporeal symptoms, it vanished. I seldom experience from stomach problems now.

The worst time I had this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was losing my mental stability. I went my doctor, who scheduled multiple scans and tests, but everything was corporally problematic. The situation was a different physician who informed me that the cause may be mental. My analyst did not disagree. I was stunned, but I recognized it was correct.

If an individual experiences a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted at the suggestion that it may have a psychological cause. They might feel as invalidation, hearing that their illness is imagined. Certainly such cases occur – some face their suffering discounted or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it might be that the bodily signs are genuine – without doubt – and the source is mental, the inner mind employing the body to express some pain or anger or any feeling the conscious self cannot tolerate. Sometimes, we may believe our feelings matters solely when it is expressed through the body. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being personally, in social contexts and within our culture; for what reason would we tolerate the appalling elimination of psychodynamic psychotherapy on the NHS?

Life lessons have taught me that a superior lifestyle cannot be created when we are stuck unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and socially, that originate in devaluation, exploitation and dealings. These interactions tend to be simpler to recognize “externally” in broader culture. It’s perhaps less comfortable to reflect on where they come from, and to identify these patterns within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the workings of our psyches.

Yet persistence pays off. Upon wearing my running shoes again post a long hiatus, heading out without aiming for a better body, or to get rid of an emotion, or to beat a personal best, {it