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I have just returned from a jog. It’s shocking to write this fact. It seems it might have been many years since I last did so. But I found out recently that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity on a consistent basis.

This is the first time in my existence that the driving force to exercise has been my health status. When I was younger, I exercised because I desired to lose weight. At times I ran to alleviate my anxiety – I was merely escaping from the worry, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I exercised because I aimed to enhance with jogging. That represented what it meant to me then to create a better life.

Exercising with new motivation currently prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve related with my body during my years and its transformation as I transition from early adulthood to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve appreciated it just for its capabilities and the purposes it served me: aiming to appeal; avoiding feelings; achieving a quicker five kilometers. Previously, I’ve not understood that I am my body, it is my existence, rather than something that produces results.

A great deal has been discussed through history about the split involving physical and mental aspects – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing in this piece. What I’ve found most fascinating is Sigmund Freud’s view that mind and body are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because bodily growth requires mental growth and vice versa. A baby’s physical sensations – such as the bodily feeling of hunger – motivate the mind to develop the ability to identify hunger as an emotion that is alleviated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and contentment consistently provided by feed after feed feeds the infant’s psyche in the same way the food fuels them corporally. So too mental events – for instance the desire to stand up and grab an object, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, our body and mind are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as connected as a double helix.

But I’ve observed, in sessions with my therapist, that mental and physical aspects can be in a distinct connection – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My mind may employ my physical self to hold and express aspects that my consciousness views undesirable or unacceptable. During therapy we’ve become aware how there are particular emotional states that I worry I cannot bear; rather than experiencing them in my mind, I unconsciously push them into my body, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I used to get this as indigestion – not connected to my diet, but acted as a type of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I failed to handle psychologically. This wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced to my attention by my analyst, and my dread and sensitivity and anger and panic were experienced and articulated in place of changed into bodily feelings, it vanished. I rarely suffer with digestive issues currently.

The most severe episode I endured this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. I believed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I visited my doctor, who organised various examinations and assessments, but everything was physically wrong. It turned out to be an alternate medic who informed me that the cause could be psychological. My analyst did not disagree. I was surprised, but I recognized it was accurate.

Whenever someone is suffering a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that there might be a mental root. They might feel as invalidation, the idea that their condition isn’t real. And of course that does happen – individuals may experience their suffering dismissed or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it’s possible that the bodily signs are real – without doubt – and the source is mental, the inner mind employing the physical self to manifest some pain or rage or whichever sentiment the mind is unable to bear. Occasionally, we may believe our experience matters solely when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our minds personally, collectively and within our culture; why else do we accept the shocking killing-off of psychological therapies through health services?

Personal insights have revealed that a better life is unattainable while caught without realization in modes of connection, internally and in relationships, that are rooted in disrespect, use and transaction. Such patterns tend to be simpler to spot “externally” in wider society. It may be more challenging to think about how they got out there, and to identify these patterns personally and among loved ones, in the workings of our psyches.

But it’s valuable to continue. After donning my running shoes once more post a long hiatus, going outside not for a better body, or to eliminate an emotion, or to surpass a personal best, {it