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I have just returned from jogging. It’s surprising to write this fact. It seems it might have been ten years since I last did so. But It came to my attention that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and doctors suggested to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

For the first time ever in my existence that the driving force to be active has been my physical health. During earlier years, I ran because I wanted to lose weight. At times I ran to cure my anxiety – I was just running away from the worry, without confronting it. On other occasions, I exercised because I aimed to get better in running. This was the meaning to me back then to develop a better life.

Jogging with altered intent currently sparked reflection about the methods I’ve connected with my body over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I move from early adulthood to middle age. I don’t think I’ve respected my physical form, not truly. I’ve appreciated it only for its roles and the aims it served me: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; achieving a quicker five kilometers. Up to now, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it embodies my life, instead of something that produces results.

A lot has been explored through history about the separation of mind and body – which it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing in this piece. What has struck me most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mental and physical selves are innately connected from the beginning, because bodily growth requires psychological development and conversely. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – like the bodily feeling of hunger – propel the mind to build the skill to perceive hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and fulfillment regularly delivered by meal after meal feeds the child’s mind in the same way the milk nourishes them bodily. So too mental events – for instance the desire to rise and grab an object, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means physical strength increases. Since infancy, mind and body are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as integrated as DNA strands.

However I’ve observed, in sessions with my analyst, that mental and physical aspects can be in an alternate dynamic – a more separated and more exploitative. My psyche can use my body to retain and display elements that my consciousness considers unacceptable or unbearable. During therapy we realized that exist particular emotional states that I am afraid I cannot bear; instead of experiencing them in my mind, I subconsciously force them to my physical self, where they remain as bodily signs.

I used to get digestive discomfort – not connected to what I’d eaten, but acted as a kind of corporeal reaction of the harsher emotions I couldn’t digest mentally. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but once it was raised to awareness by my analyst, and my anxiety and insecurity and rage and panic could be felt and expressed verbally in place of converted to physical sensation, it vanished. I rarely suffer with digestive issues today.

The toughest period I experienced this severe heartburn, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. It seemed I was forfeiting my mind. I consulted to the GP, who organised various diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found medically abnormal. The situation was an alternate medic who told me that the root may be mental. My psychoanalyst did not disagree. I was stunned, but I recognized it to be true.

When a patient endures a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted at the suggestion that it may have a mental root. It can seem as invalidation, being told that their symptom is imagined. And of course such cases occur – people can have their suffering discounted or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it’s possible that the bodily signs are real – certainly – and the cause is psychological, the inner mind utilizing the body to express some pain or anger or any feeling the mind cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we might assume our feelings matters solely if manifested as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our minds personally, collectively and within our culture; how else do we accept the appalling reduction of psychological therapies on the NHS?

My experiences have taught me that an improved existence cannot be built if we remain trapped without realization in ways of relating, internally and with others, that originate in disregard, exploitation and dealings. These interactions are frequently more straightforward to identify “externally” in wider society. It’s perhaps less comfortable to consider their origins, and to see these shapes personally and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our minds.

But persistence pays off. When I put my jogging shoes back on after such a long decade, heading out without aiming for a better body, or to escape an emotion, or to improve a personal best, {it