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I recently came back from a run. It’s surprising to admit that statement. I think it was likely many years since I last did so. But I found out recently that I have elevated cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts frequently.

This is the first time in living memory that the reason to be active has been my health status. During earlier years, I ran because I wanted to slim down. I also jogged to manage my anxiety – It was an avoidance tactic from the worry, not addressing it. At other times, I jogged because I sought to get better in running. This was what it meant to me back then to build an improved existence.

Running for a different reason currently got me thinking about the approaches I’ve related with my physique over my lifetime and how this is changing as I move from youth to middle age. I believe not I’ve respected my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it only for its roles and the objectives it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; completing a speedier five kilometers. Previously, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it embodies my life, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

Much has been written over the centuries about the separation involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis now. What I’ve found most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are innately connected from birth, because physical maturation demands emotional evolution and vice versa. A baby’s bodily experiences – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the brain to cultivate the skill to identify hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by eating; and the psychological solace and fulfillment regularly delivered by repeated nourishment nourishes the young mind similar to the nutrition nourishes them corporally. So too psychological experiences – for instance the wish to stand up and reach for something, and the determination to try again and again – are why and how muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are interconnected in shared growth as connected as a spiral.

However I’ve observed, in sessions with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique may exist in an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and more exploitative. My consciousness may employ my physical self to store and manifest things that my consciousness deems unwanted or intolerable. During therapy we realized that there are certain emotions that I am afraid are too much for me; in place of experiencing them in my mind, I unconsciously force them to my physical self, where they get stuck as bodily signs.

I used to get digestive discomfort – not connected to what I’d eaten, but acted as a type of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle in my mind. This was not a conscious choice, but when it was brought to awareness in sessions, and my anxiety and sensitivity and frustration and alarm were experienced and articulated rather than converted to physical sensation, it resolved. It’s uncommon for me from indigestion now.

The worst time I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. It seemed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I went to the GP, who arranged all sorts of examinations and assessments, but everything was physically wrong. The situation was a different physician who informed me that the cause may be psychological. My analyst agreed. I was stunned, but I also felt it was accurate.

When a patient experiences a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted if told that there might be an emotional origin. It can seem this as being disrespected, being told that their condition is imagined. Naturally that does happen – individuals may experience their pain discounted or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it could be that the physical symptoms are real – without doubt – and the source is psychological, the inner mind employing the physique to express emotional hurt or anger or whatever emotion awareness is unable to bear. Occasionally, we may believe our emotions only has value only through expression in physical form. We continually disrespect our minds as individuals, as a society and within our culture; for what reason can we allow the appalling killing-off of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

My experiences have taught me that an improved existence cannot be created if we remain trapped unconsciously in modes of connection, internally and in relationships, that are rooted in disregard, exploitation and transaction. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to spot “externally” in wider society. It may be harder to reflect on how they got out there, and to recognise these shapes inside us and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our psyches.

But persistence pays off. When I put my trainers back on after such a long decade, going outside not for physical improvement, or to get rid of a feeling, or to surpass a running record, {it