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I just got back from a run. I’m amazed to admit this fact. I think it could have been ten years since I last did so. Yet I found out recently that I have elevated cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

This is the first time in my existence that my motivation to be active has been my health status. When I was younger, I exercised because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to manage nervousness – I was just running away from the anxiety, not addressing it. Sometimes, I ran because I aimed to enhance with jogging. That represented the definition to me back then to build a better life.

Exercising with new motivation currently sparked reflection about the ways I’ve connected with my physique throughout my life and its transformation as I move from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve honored my body, not truly. I’ve valued it only for its functions and the purposes it provided: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; achieving a quicker 5km. Up to now, I’ve not understood that I am my body, it is my existence, instead of an instrument for achievements.

A lot has been written through history about the split between body and mind – which it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize now. What has struck me most intriguing is Freud’s understanding that consciousness and physique are naturally unified right from the start, because physical development demands mental growth and vice versa. A baby’s bodily experiences – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – propel the brain to build the ability to perceive hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by eating; and the psychological solace and contentment regularly delivered by meal after meal nourishes the child’s mind similar to the nutrition fuels them physically. So too emotional occurrences – like the wish to stand up and attain a goal, and the persistence to try again and again – are the cause and means physical strength increases. Since infancy, our body and mind are interlinked in reciprocal evolution as integrated as DNA strands.

However It’s become clear, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique can be in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and more exploitative. My mind may employ my body to hold and manifest things that my psyche views unwanted or unacceptable. In my sessions we’ve become aware that there are certain emotions that I am afraid I can’t handle; in place of feeling these in my mind, I subconsciously shift them into my body, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – not connected to what I’d eaten, but was a form of bodily backlash of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest psychologically. This wasn’t a conscious choice, but when it was brought to awareness through therapy, and my anxiety and sensitivity and anger and panic were experienced and put into words in place of transformed into bodily feelings, it disappeared. I seldom experience from stomach problems today.

The most severe episode I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. It seemed I was slipping away from my sanity. I visited a general practitioner, who scheduled all sorts of examinations and assessments, but everything was corporally problematic. It turned out to be another doctor who told me that the cause could be emotional. My therapist did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also knew it was correct.

Whenever someone experiences a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting upon hearing that there might be a psychological cause. They might feel like disrespect, hearing that their condition isn’t real. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – some face their symptoms dismissed or incorrectly identified. However, sometimes it’s possible that the physical symptoms are real – without doubt – and the source is psychological, the inner mind using the body to convey some pain or rage or any feeling the conscious self cannot tolerate. Occasionally, it’s easy to think our feelings matters solely when it is expressed in physical form. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being personally, as a society and culturally; for what reason can we allow the shocking elimination of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

Life lessons have revealed that a superior lifestyle is unattainable while caught unconsciously in ways of relating, within ourselves and socially, that are rooted in devaluation, manipulation and dealings. Such patterns are often easier to identify “in the world” in the general public. It may be harder to consider their origins, and to recognise these forms within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the dynamics of our mental lives.

But it’s valuable to continue. After donning my running shoes again post a long hiatus, venturing out not for physical improvement, or to get rid of a feeling, or to beat a personal best, {it