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I recently came back from a jog. It’s shocking to write this fact. I believe it could have been ten years since my last. Yet I recently discovered that my levels show slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

This is the first time in my existence that the reason to work out has been my physical health. During earlier years, I jogged because I aimed to be thinner. I’ve also run to cure nervousness – I was merely escaping from the worry, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I jogged because I sought to enhance with jogging. That represented what it meant to me at that time to develop a superior lifestyle.

Jogging with altered intent currently sparked reflection about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body during my years and the way it’s evolving as I progress from early adulthood to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my body, not fundamentally. I’ve prized it solely for its capabilities and the aims it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5km. Up to now, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it embodies my life, instead of an instrument for achievements.

Much has been written through history about the separation of mind and body – which it’s comforting to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What resonated most fascinating is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are developmentally integrated right from the start, because physical maturation requires emotional evolution and the reverse is true. The newborn’s physical sensations – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the mind to build the ability to recognise hunger as a feeling that is alleviated by a feed; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction repeatedly brought by feed after feed feeds the child’s mind just as the nutrition nourishes them corporally. Likewise mental events – like the wish to stand up and attain a goal, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, mind and body are interlinked in mutual development as integrated as DNA strands.

But I’ve observed, during therapy with my analyst, that my mind and body might experience a distinct connection – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche may employ my body to hold and display aspects that my mind deems undesirable or unacceptable. During therapy it emerged how exist specific feelings that I am afraid I can’t handle; rather than sensing them mentally, I unconsciously force them into bodily form, where they remain as bodily signs.

I used to get digestive discomfort – which had nothing to do with food intake, but acted as a kind of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest in my mind. This was not a deliberate decision, but once it was raised into my consciousness in sessions, and my anxiety and sensitivity and frustration and panic could be felt and expressed verbally instead of changed into bodily feelings, it disappeared. It’s uncommon for me with digestive issues now.

The toughest period I had this severe heartburn, I didn’t sleep for several nights in a row. I felt I was slipping away from my mental stability. I consulted my doctor, who scheduled multiple examinations and assessments, but there was nothing physically wrong. It was another doctor who told me that the origin might be emotional. My psychoanalyst concurred. I was shocked, but I recognized it was correct.

When a patient is suffering a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting if told that it could have a psychological cause. They might feel as invalidation, being told that their illness is fabricated. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – some face their symptoms ignored or misdiagnosed. However, sometimes it could be that the corporeal issues are real – certainly – and the cause is psychological, the inner mind employing the physique to manifest certain suffering or rage or whichever sentiment the conscious self cannot tolerate. At times, we might assume our emotions is only valid when it is expressed in physical form. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being personally, in social contexts and within our culture; why else do we accept the shocking reduction of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

Life lessons have shown me that an improved existence cannot be created if we remain trapped unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and socially, that originate in disrespect, use and exchange. Such patterns are frequently more straightforward to spot “out there” in broader culture. It’s perhaps more challenging to reflect on how they got out there, and to recognise these patterns inside us and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our mental lives.

But persistence pays off. When I put my trainers back on after such a long decade, heading out without aiming for a better body, or to eliminate a sensation, or to surpass a 5km time, {it