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I just got back from a jog. It’s surprising to write this fact. I believe it was likely many years since my last. But I recently discovered that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that the reason to exercise has been my physical health. When I was younger, I exercised because I desired to slim down. At times I ran to alleviate nervousness – I was merely escaping from those feelings, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I exercised because I sought to get better in running. This was the meaning to me then to develop a better life.

Exercising with new motivation currently got me thinking about the approaches I’ve interacted with my physical self over my lifetime and how this is changing as I transition from being a young person to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my own body, not truly. I’ve prized it only for its functions and the purposes it fulfilled for me: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5K run. Previously, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it embodies my life, instead of something that produces results.

A great deal has been explored through history about the split involving physical and mental aspects – a topic you will be relieved to know, I’m not going to precis here. What has struck me most compelling is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are developmentally integrated from birth, because physical maturation requires mental growth and conversely. The newborn’s physical sensations – like the bodily feeling of hunger – drive the mind to cultivate the skill to recognise hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by eating; and the psychological solace and contentment consistently provided by repeated nourishment supports the child’s mind similar to the food nourishes them bodily. 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. From our earliest moments, mind and body are interlinked in shared growth as unified as DNA strands.

But I’ve observed, during therapy with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique may exist in a distinct connection – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness might utilize my body to hold and display things that my psyche views unwanted or unbearable. During therapy we’ve become aware that exist specific feelings that I worry are too much for me; in place of feeling these mentally, I unintentionally force them to my physical self, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I used to get this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but acted as a kind of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process mentally. This wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced to awareness in sessions, and my fear and insecurity and anger and panic were experienced and put into words in place of converted to bodily feelings, it resolved. I seldom experience from stomach problems today.

The toughest period I experienced this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for many nights straight. I believed I was losing my mental stability. I consulted a general practitioner, who arranged all sorts of scans and tests, but no issues were found physically wrong. It was a different physician who suggested that the cause could be emotional. My psychoanalyst agreed. I was stunned, but I also knew it was accurate.

Whenever someone endures a bodily issue, they can be offended if told that it may have a mental root. It can seem this as being disrespected, the idea that their symptom is fabricated. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their suffering dismissed or wrongly assessed. But in some cases it might be that the physical symptoms exist – no question – and the origin is mental, the inner mind using the body to convey certain suffering or fury or whatever emotion awareness is unable to bear. At times, we might assume our emotions only has value when it is expressed in physical form. We often undervalue our psychological well-being personally, in social contexts and culturally; why else can we allow the shocking reduction of psychological therapies on the NHS?

My experiences have taught me that a superior lifestyle cannot be built while caught unconsciously in ways of relating, internally and socially, that originate in disregard, exploitation and dealings. These interactions are often easier to spot “out there” in wider society. It may be harder to think about where they come from, and to recognise these forms personally and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our psyches.

Yet persistence pays off. When I put my running shoes once more after such a long decade, going outside not for a better body, or to get rid of an emotion, or to improve a 5km time, {it