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I have just returned from jogging. It’s shocking to write that statement. I believe it was likely many years since the previous time. However I recently discovered that my levels show slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

This is the first time in my life that the reason to exercise has been my physical health. When I was younger, I ran because I aimed to lose weight. I’ve also run to cure my anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from those feelings, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I exercised because I wanted to enhance in running. It signified what it meant to me back then to create an improved existence.

Jogging with altered intent at present sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve related with my physique throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I progress from early adulthood to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it just for its functions and the aims it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5km. Up to now, I failed to grasp that my body represents me, it is my existence, rather than something that produces results.

A lot has been written through history about the separation between body and mind – which it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing now. What I’ve found most compelling is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because bodily growth demands emotional evolution and conversely. A baby’s corporeal feelings – like the physical sensation of hunger – motivate consciousness to build the capacity to identify hunger as a feeling that can be sated by eating; and the psychological solace and satisfaction consistently provided by feed after feed feeds the infant’s psyche just as the milk nourishes them corporally. Likewise psychological experiences – like the wish to rise and grab an object, and the resolve to try again and again – are the reason and method physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our body and mind are intertwined in shared growth as unified as a double helix.

But I’ve observed, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that my mind and body might experience an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and more exploitative. My mind might utilize my body to store and display aspects that my mind deems undesirable or intolerable. During therapy we’ve become aware that there are certain emotions that I am afraid I cannot bear; instead of experiencing them psychologically, I unconsciously push them to my physical self, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I used to get this as indigestion – not connected to food intake, but represented a form of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle in my mind. This was not an intentional act, but once it was raised into my consciousness through therapy, and my dread and insecurity and rage and panic could be felt and expressed verbally rather than transformed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. I seldom experience from stomach problems today.

The most severe episode I had this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for many nights straight. I believed I was slipping away from my sanity. I visited a general practitioner, who organised all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but there was nothing medically abnormal. The situation was an alternate medic who informed me that the root could be psychological. My therapist did not disagree. I was surprised, but I also knew it was accurate.

When a patient experiences a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted upon hearing that it may have a psychological cause. They can experience as invalidation, hearing that their symptom is imagined. And of course that does happen – individuals may experience their suffering dismissed or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it might be that the bodily signs exist – certainly – and the cause is mental, the unconscious using the physical self to manifest certain suffering or rage or any feeling the conscious self cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we may believe our feelings is only valid only through expression in physical form. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being as individuals, as a society and within our culture; why else do we accept the appalling killing-off of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

Life lessons have shown me that a better life cannot be built while caught unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and with others, that stem from disrespect, exploitation and transaction. These dynamics are often easier to spot “out there” in the general public. It’s likely more challenging to reflect on their origins, and to identify these patterns personally and among loved ones, in the workings of our psyches.

But it’s valuable to continue. After donning my jogging shoes once more post a long hiatus, going outside not for a better body, or to escape an emotion, or to surpass a running record, {it