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I have just returned from a jog. It’s shocking to admit that statement. I think it might have been a decade since my last. Yet It came to my attention that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts on a consistent basis.

This is the first time in my life that the reason to exercise has been my physical health. During earlier years, I exercised because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to cure nervousness – I was merely escaping from those feelings, not addressing it. On other occasions, I jogged because I aimed to enhance in running. That represented what it meant to me then to build a superior lifestyle.

Running for a different reason at present sparked reflection about the ways I’ve related with my body over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I transition from early adulthood to midlife. I don’t think I’ve honored my own body, not deep down. I’ve prized it solely for its capabilities and the aims it provided: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; achieving a quicker 5km. Previously, I failed to grasp that my body is me, it is my existence, instead of an instrument for achievements.

A lot has been explored through history about the separation between body and mind – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis here. What has struck me most intriguing is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are naturally unified right from the start, because physical development demands psychological development and vice versa. The newborn’s bodily experiences – like the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the mind to develop the capacity to identify hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by a feed; and the emotional comfort and contentment consistently provided by feed after feed feeds the young mind just as the nutrition nourishes them corporally. Likewise psychological experiences – such as the desire to rise and reach for something, and the determination to persist through effort – are the cause and means physical strength increases. Since infancy, our physical and mental selves are intertwined in mutual development as unified as a spiral.

Yet I’ve observed, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects may exist in a distinct connection – a more separated and more exploitative. My psyche might utilize my physique to retain and display elements that my consciousness deems unwanted or unbearable. During therapy it emerged how exist specific feelings that I am afraid I can’t handle; in place of experiencing them in my mind, I unintentionally force them into my body, where they remain as bodily signs.

I often had this as indigestion – not connected to my diet, but acted as a form of physical reflux of the more acidic feelings I failed to handle in my mind. This was not an intentional act, but when it was brought to my attention through therapy, and my anxiety and insecurity and rage and terror were experienced and put into words in place of transformed into bodily feelings, it resolved. I rarely suffer from stomach problems now.

The toughest period I had this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for several nights in a row. It seemed I was slipping away from my mind. I consulted a general practitioner, who organised multiple diagnostic procedures, but no issues were found physically wrong. It turned out to be another doctor who told me that the origin may be psychological. My analyst did not disagree. I was surprised, but I also felt it was correct.

When a patient is suffering a physical symptom, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that there might be an emotional origin. It can seem as invalidation, being told that their symptom is fabricated. And of course that does happen – people can have their pain discounted or wrongly assessed. Yet occasionally it could be that the corporeal issues are genuine – without doubt – and the source is psychological, the subconscious employing the physical self to express certain suffering or rage or whatever emotion the mind cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we may believe our emotions only has value if manifested as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our mental states on a personal level, in social contexts and within our culture; why else can we allow the appalling elimination of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

Life lessons have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be created while caught unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and socially, that stem from disrespect, manipulation and transaction. These dynamics tend to be simpler to recognize “out there” in wider society. It’s likely more challenging to reflect on their origins, and to recognise these shapes within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our psyches.

However it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my jogging shoes again after such a long decade, heading out not for physical improvement, or to eliminate a feeling, or to surpass a personal best, {it