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I just got back from jogging. I’m amazed to state this fact. I believe it might have been ten years since I last did so. Yet I recently discovered that I have somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to do sweaty exercise frequently.

For the first time ever in my existence that the driving force to be active has been my health status. During earlier years, I jogged because I desired to be thinner. I’ve also run to cure nervousness – I was just running away from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. On other occasions, I jogged because I aimed to get better in running. That represented the definition to me then to create a better life.

Running for a different reason at present got me thinking about the approaches I’ve related with my body over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I progress from early adulthood to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve valued my physical form, not deep down. I’ve appreciated it only for its roles and the purposes it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; escaping emotions; completing a speedier five kilometers. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it is my life, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

Much has been written through history about the separation of mind and body – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I’m not going to precis here. What I’ve found most compelling is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are naturally unified from the beginning, because physical development demands mental growth and conversely. The newborn’s physical sensations – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate consciousness to build the capacity to perceive hunger as a sensation that may be satisfied by eating; and the emotional comfort and contentment consistently provided by repeated nourishment supports the child’s mind in the same way the food fuels them physically. So too mental events – like the desire to stand up and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the cause and means the body develops power. Starting at birth, our body and mind are intertwined in mutual development as connected as DNA strands.

However I’ve observed, in sessions with my psychoanalyst, that my consciousness and physique may exist in a different kind of relationship – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My consciousness can use my body to store and display elements that my psyche views unacceptable or unbearable. In analysis it emerged that there are certain emotions that I worry are too much for me; rather than experiencing them psychologically, I subconsciously push them to my physical self, where they get stuck as corporeal issues.

I often had this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with my diet, but acted as a kind of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process in my mind. This was not an intentional act, but after it was introduced to awareness in sessions, and my fear and sensitivity and frustration and alarm became palpable and expressed verbally in place of changed into bodily feelings, it resolved. I seldom experience from stomach problems today.

The worst time I endured this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for several nights in a row. It seemed I was losing my sanity. I visited to the GP, who organised all sorts of scans and tests, but everything was corporally problematic. It was an alternate medic who told me that the origin could be psychological. My psychoanalyst agreed. I was stunned, but I also knew it was accurate.

When a patient is suffering a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that it could have a mental root. It can seem like disrespect, the idea that their symptom is imagined. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their pain ignored or incorrectly identified. However, sometimes it could be that the corporeal issues are real – certainly – and the origin is mental, the inner mind utilizing the physique to manifest certain suffering or rage or any feeling awareness fails to handle. Sometimes, we might assume our experience only has value if manifested as bodily symptoms. We often undervalue our minds on a personal level, as a society and as a culture; why else do we accept the shocking killing-off of psychological therapies on the NHS?

My experiences have shown me that a better life is unattainable while caught unawares in ways of relating, inside us and in relationships, that are rooted in devaluation, manipulation and dealings. These dynamics tend to be simpler to recognize “in the world” in the general public. It may be more challenging to reflect on where they come from, and to recognise these forms inside us and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our mental lives.

However persistence pays off. Upon wearing my running shoes back on after such a long decade, venturing out not to get physical improvement, or to get rid of a sensation, or to beat a personal best, {it