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I just got back from a jog. It’s surprising to admit that statement. I think it might have been ten years since I last did so. Yet I found out recently that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts frequently.

This is the first time in my life that the driving force to exercise has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I jogged because I wanted to slim down. At times I ran to manage nervousness – I was merely escaping from the worry, not addressing it. At other times, I jogged because I sought to improve at running. This was what it meant to me then to create an improved existence.

Jogging with altered intent currently prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve connected with my physical self over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I move from youth to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it just for its functions and the purposes it served me: aiming to appeal; escaping emotions; completing a speedier 5K run. Up to now, I failed to grasp that my body is me, it is my existence, rather than a tool for outcomes.

A great deal has been explored for ages about the separation of mind and body – which you will be relieved to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What resonated most compelling is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are naturally unified right from the start, because physical maturation demands emotional evolution and the reverse is true. The infant’s bodily experiences – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate consciousness to cultivate the ability to perceive hunger as a feeling that is alleviated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and fulfillment regularly delivered by repeated nourishment supports the infant’s psyche just as the milk fuels them corporally. Similarly mental events – for instance the desire to get up and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the cause and means the body develops power. From our earliest moments, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in mutual development as unified as a spiral.

But I’ve observed, in treatment with my analyst, that my mind and body might experience an alternate dynamic – one less integrated and more exploitative. My consciousness might utilize my body to store and display elements that my psyche considers unwanted or intolerable. During therapy we’ve become aware that exist certain emotions that I worry I can’t handle; instead of experiencing them mentally, I subconsciously push them into my body, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with my diet, but acted as a form of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle in my mind. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but after it was introduced into my consciousness in sessions, and my anxiety and insecurity and rage and alarm were experienced and expressed verbally rather than converted to corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. I seldom experience from stomach problems currently.

The most severe episode I endured this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. I believed I was losing my mental stability. I went a general practitioner, who scheduled various scans and tests, but everything was physically wrong. It was an alternate medic who informed me that the origin may be mental. My therapist agreed. I was surprised, but I also knew it was accurate.

If an individual experiences a physical symptom, it can be upsetting if told that there might be a mental root. It can seem as invalidation, the idea that their condition is fabricated. And of course such cases occur – some face their symptoms dismissed or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it might be that the corporeal issues are genuine – no question – and the cause is psychological, the subconscious using the body to convey emotional hurt or rage or whichever sentiment the conscious self is unable to bear. At times, it’s easy to think our experience only has value only through expression through the body. We often undervalue our psychological well-being as individuals, as a society and as a culture; why else do we accept the appalling killing-off of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

Personal insights have revealed that an improved existence cannot be created while caught unawares in ways of relating, inside us and in relationships, that stem from disrespect, exploitation and transaction. Such patterns tend to be simpler to identify “in the world” in the general public. It’s likely harder to reflect on their origins, and to identify these patterns within ourselves and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our mental lives.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. When I put my jogging shoes again following many years, heading out without aiming for a better body, or to escape a sensation, or to improve a personal best, {it