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I recently came back from jogging. It’s shocking to admit this fact. I believe it might have been a decade since my last. But I recently discovered that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

For the first time ever in my life that my motivation to be active has been my health status. In my youth, I exercised because I aimed to slim down. I also jogged to manage feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, without confronting it. At other times, I jogged because I wanted to enhance in running. It signified what it meant to me at that time to create an improved existence.

Exercising with new motivation now got me thinking about the methods I’ve interacted with my physical self throughout my life and its transformation as I move from youth to being a middle-aged person. I believe not I’ve valued my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it just for its roles and the objectives it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5km. Up to now, I’ve not understood that I am my body, it embodies my life, rather than something that produces results.

A lot has been discussed for ages about the split involving physical and mental aspects – which you will be relieved to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What I’ve found most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that consciousness and physique are innately connected right from the start, because bodily growth requires emotional evolution and vice versa. The infant’s corporeal feelings – for example the physical sensation of hunger – drive consciousness to build the capacity to recognise hunger as a sensation that can be sated by eating; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment supports the infant’s psyche just as the food nourishes them physically. Likewise mental events – for instance the desire to get up and attain a goal, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our body and mind are intertwined in shared growth as unified as DNA strands.

But I’ve observed, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects might experience a distinct connection – a more separated and more exploitative. My consciousness might utilize my physique to hold and manifest things that my consciousness views unacceptable or intolerable. In my sessions we realized how there are particular emotional states that I am afraid are too much for me; rather than sensing them psychologically, I subconsciously shift them to my physical self, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I used to get this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but was a kind of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest mentally. This wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced into my consciousness through therapy, and my anxiety and vulnerability and rage and alarm could be felt and expressed verbally in place of converted to physical sensation, it vanished. I rarely suffer from stomach problems now.

The most severe episode I endured this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I felt I was forfeiting my mental stability. I went my doctor, who organised various scans and tests, but there was nothing physically wrong. It was an alternate medic who suggested that the origin might be emotional. My analyst agreed. I was shocked, but I recognized it was accurate.

Whenever someone endures a physical symptom, they can be offended upon hearing that there might be an emotional origin. It can seem this as being disrespected, hearing that their illness isn’t real. Naturally that does happen – individuals may experience their pain discounted or incorrectly identified. However, sometimes it might be that the bodily signs are real – without doubt – and the cause is mental, the subconscious employing the physique to convey emotional hurt or rage or whatever emotion the conscious self fails to handle. At times, we might assume our emotions only has value when it is expressed in physical form. We continually disrespect our psychological well-being personally, collectively and culturally; why else do we accept the shocking elimination of psychological therapies through health services?

My experiences have revealed that an improved existence cannot be created if we remain trapped unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and with others, that stem from devaluation, exploitation and exchange. These dynamics are often easier to identify “out there” in broader culture. It may be harder to consider where they come from, and to see these shapes within ourselves and among loved ones, in the workings of our mental lives.

But persistence pays off. Upon wearing my jogging shoes back on post a long hiatus, going outside not to get physical improvement, or to escape a sensation, or to surpass a personal best, {it