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I just got back from a run. It’s shocking to state those words. It seems it might have been ten years since the previous time. However I found out recently that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise frequently.

This is the first time in my life that my motivation to work out has been my physical health. When I was younger, I exercised because I desired to slim down. I’ve also run to cure feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from those feelings, without confronting it. Sometimes, I jogged because I wanted to enhance in running. It signified the definition to me then to create a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation now sparked reflection about the methods I’ve interacted with my body during my years and how this is changing as I move from early adulthood to midlife. I don’t think I’ve honored my physical form, not deep down. I’ve prized it just for its capabilities and the objectives it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; escaping emotions; running a faster 5K run. Previously, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it embodies my life, instead of an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been discussed over the centuries about the split involving physical and mental aspects – a topic you will be relieved to know, I’m not going to precis here. What I’ve found most intriguing is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are naturally unified right from the start, because physical development necessitates psychological development and the reverse is true. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the mind to cultivate the skill to recognise hunger as an emotion that can be sated by nourishment; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction repeatedly brought by meal after meal supports the young mind similar to the milk fuels them bodily. Similarly emotional occurrences – such as the wish to get up and grab an object, and the determination to persist through effort – are the cause and means the body develops power. Since infancy, our body and mind are interlinked in shared growth as unified as a double helix.

However I’ve observed, in sessions with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique might experience a different kind of relationship – one less integrated and more exploitative. My mind can use my physical self to retain and manifest elements that my mind deems unacceptable or unacceptable. In analysis we realized how there are certain emotions that I worry are too much for me; in place of experiencing them in my mind, I unconsciously force them into bodily form, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I used to get this as indigestion – unrelated to what I’d eaten, but acted as a kind of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest mentally. It wasn’t an intentional act, but when it was brought to my attention by my analyst, and my dread and vulnerability and rage and alarm could be felt and expressed verbally in place of converted to bodily feelings, it vanished. I rarely suffer with digestive issues now.

The toughest period I endured this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for many nights straight. It seemed I was slipping away from my sanity. I visited my doctor, who organised all sorts of scans and tests, but no issues were found corporally problematic. The situation was an alternate medic who told me that the origin could be emotional. My psychoanalyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I also felt it was correct.

When a patient endures a bodily issue, they can be offended at the suggestion that it could have a psychological cause. They can experience like disrespect, being told that their condition is fabricated. Certainly that does happen – people can have their pain discounted or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it could be that the bodily signs exist – without doubt – and the source is emotional, the subconscious employing the body to convey some pain or fury or any feeling the conscious self cannot tolerate. Sometimes, we may believe our experience is only valid when it is expressed in physical form. We continually disrespect our mental states as individuals, in social contexts and as a culture; how else would we tolerate the shocking reduction of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

My experiences have revealed that a better life cannot be built when we are stuck unconsciously in modes of connection, within ourselves and with others, that stem from disrespect, exploitation and transaction. Such patterns are frequently more straightforward to identify “in the world” in the general public. It’s likely less comfortable to consider where they come from, and to recognise these shapes within ourselves and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our minds.

But persistence pays off. After donning my trainers again after such a long decade, heading out not to get physical improvement, or to eliminate a sensation, or to surpass a 5km time, {it