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I have just returned from jogging. I’m amazed to write those words. I think it could have been a decade since I last did so. However It came to my attention that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts frequently.

This is the first time in my life that the driving force to be active has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I ran because I wanted to slim down. At times I ran to manage feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from those feelings, not addressing it. At other times, I ran because I wanted to enhance at running. That represented the meaning to me then to create a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation at present prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve related with my physical self throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I move from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve valued my body, not truly. I’ve prized it just for its functions and the purposes it provided: seeking approval; escaping emotions; running a faster five kilometers. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it is my life, rather than a tool for outcomes.

A lot has been explored over the centuries about the separation involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize here. What has struck me most fascinating is the Freudian perspective that mental and physical selves are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because bodily growth requires psychological development and the reverse is true. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – such as the physical sensation of hunger – motivate the brain to develop the capacity to recognise hunger as a feeling that can be sated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and contentment repeatedly brought by feed after feed feeds the child’s mind just as the milk nourishes them bodily. Likewise mental events – for instance the urge to stand up and attain a goal, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means the body develops power. Starting at birth, mind and body are intertwined in mutual development as integrated as a spiral.

Yet I’ve observed, in sessions with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique may exist in a distinct connection – one less integrated and more exploitative. My consciousness can use my physique to store and display elements that my consciousness considers unacceptable or unacceptable. In my sessions we’ve become aware how exist specific feelings that I fear I can’t handle; in place of sensing them mentally, I unconsciously shift them into my body, where they remain as bodily signs.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but acted as a type of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest in my mind. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but when it was brought to my attention through therapy, and my dread and sensitivity and frustration and alarm could be felt and articulated rather than transformed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems now.

The most severe episode I endured this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. I felt I was slipping away from my mind. I consulted a general practitioner, who organised all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found corporally problematic. It was an alternate medic who informed me that the cause may be psychological. My analyst concurred. I was stunned, but I also felt it was correct.

Whenever someone endures a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting upon hearing that there might be a mental root. They might feel like disrespect, being told that their condition is imagined. And of course it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their suffering discounted or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it might be that the corporeal issues are genuine – no question – and the origin is emotional, the inner mind employing the body to express some pain or rage or whatever emotion the conscious self cannot tolerate. Occasionally, it’s easy to think our emotions only has value if manifested through the body. We often undervalue our psychological well-being as individuals, collectively and within our culture; why else do we accept the shocking reduction of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

Personal insights have revealed that a better life cannot be built while caught unconsciously in ways of relating, internally and in relationships, that are rooted in disregard, exploitation and exchange. These dynamics are often easier to recognize “in the world” in wider society. It’s likely less comfortable to consider their origins, and to recognise these shapes inside us and among loved ones, in the economy of our minds.

But it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my trainers back on following many years, going outside not to get bodily change, or to get rid of an emotion, or to surpass a running record, {it