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I just got back from jogging. It’s surprising to admit those words. I believe it was likely many years since I last did so. However I recently discovered that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts frequently.

For the first time ever in living memory that my motivation to exercise has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I jogged because I desired to be thinner. I’ve also run to manage nervousness – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, not addressing it. On other occasions, I ran because I sought to improve with jogging. It signified the definition to me then to create a better life.

Running for a different reason now prompted contemplation about the approaches I’ve interacted with my body over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I move from youth to midlife. I believe not I’ve respected my physical form, not deep down. I’ve appreciated it solely for its capabilities and the purposes it provided: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; achieving a quicker 5K run. Until today, I’ve not understood that my body represents me, it is my life, rather than something that produces results.

A lot has been discussed over the centuries about the division between body and mind – which it’s reassuring to know, I’m not going to precis in this piece. What has struck me most compelling is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are innately connected right from the start, because physical development requires psychological development and conversely. The newborn’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – propel the brain to cultivate the skill to identify hunger as a feeling that can be sated by a feed; and the psychological solace and fulfillment regularly delivered by feed after feed feeds the child’s mind similar to the nutrition fuels them bodily. So too psychological experiences – like the desire to get up and grab an object, and the resolve to persist through effort – are why and how muscles grow stronger. Starting at birth, mind and body are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as integrated as a double helix.

Yet I have noticed, during therapy with my therapist, that my mind and body may exist in a distinct connection – a more separated and more exploitative. My psyche might utilize my body to retain and display aspects that my consciousness views undesirable or unacceptable. During therapy it emerged that exist certain emotions that I fear I can’t handle; instead of sensing them psychologically, I unconsciously shift them into my body, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I used to get this as indigestion – unrelated to my diet, but acted as a form of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest psychologically. This wasn’t an intentional act, but once it was raised to awareness by my analyst, and my dread and insecurity and anger and panic became palpable and expressed verbally in place of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. I seldom experience from stomach problems today.

The most severe episode I had this terrible acid reflux, I was unable to sleep for many nights straight. I believed I was slipping away from my mental stability. I consulted a general practitioner, who arranged all sorts of scans and tests, but everything was physically wrong. The situation was another doctor who suggested that the root may be mental. My analyst concurred. I was surprised, but I also knew it was correct.

If an individual experiences a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that there might be an emotional origin. They can experience this as being disrespected, hearing that their condition is imagined. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – some face their pain dismissed or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it might be that the physical symptoms exist – no question – and the cause is psychological, the subconscious utilizing the body to express certain suffering or anger or whichever sentiment the mind fails to handle. Occasionally, we might assume our feelings only has value if manifested in physical form. We persistently neglect our mental states on a personal level, in social contexts and as a culture; how else would we tolerate the terrible reduction of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Personal insights have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be created when we are stuck unconsciously in patterns of interaction, inside us and in relationships, that originate in disrespect, exploitation and dealings. Such patterns tend to be simpler to identify “out there” in wider society. It may be less comfortable to reflect on how they got out there, and to identify these forms within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our mental lives.

However it’s valuable to continue. Upon wearing my running shoes once more post a long hiatus, venturing out not to get bodily change, or to escape a feeling, or to surpass a running record, {it