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I have just returned from a jog. It’s shocking to write that statement. I believe it was likely a decade since the previous time. However It came to my attention that my levels show slightly high cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that the driving force to exercise has been my physical health. During earlier years, I jogged because I wanted to slim down. I’ve also run to manage feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, not addressing it. At other times, I ran because I sought to improve in running. It signified what it meant to me back then to create an improved existence.

Running for a different reason now got me thinking about the methods I’ve connected with my physical self throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I progress from youth to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my physical form, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it solely for its functions and the purposes it provided: seeking approval; avoiding feelings; achieving a quicker 5K run. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that my body represents me, it is my existence, as opposed to something that produces results.

Much has been discussed through history about the separation of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis in this piece. What has struck me most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that consciousness and physique are innately connected from birth, because physical maturation necessitates mental growth and conversely. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – for example the physical sensation of hunger – propel the brain to cultivate the skill to identify hunger as a sensation that can be sated by eating; and the psychological solace and contentment repeatedly brought by repeated nourishment supports the child’s mind in the same way the nutrition nourishes them corporally. Likewise emotional occurrences – for instance the urge to get up and reach for something, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method the body develops power. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are intertwined in mutual development as integrated as DNA strands.

However I’ve observed, in treatment with my analyst, that my mind and body may exist in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche can use my body to hold and display aspects that my mind considers undesirable or unacceptable. During therapy we realized how there are certain emotions that I am afraid I can’t handle; rather than experiencing them in my mind, I unconsciously shift them into bodily form, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I often had this with indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but represented a form of physical reflux of the sharper sentiments I failed to handle mentally. This was not a conscious choice, but when it was brought into my consciousness in sessions, and my anxiety and vulnerability and anger and terror were experienced and put into words rather than changed into corporeal symptoms, it resolved. I rarely suffer with digestive issues currently.

The worst time I had this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for several nights in a row. I felt I was forfeiting my sanity. I went to the GP, who organised all sorts of diagnostic procedures, but everything was physically wrong. It was a different physician who told me that the origin could be emotional. My analyst did not disagree. I was shocked, but I recognized it was correct.

Whenever someone endures a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that it could have an emotional origin. They can experience like disrespect, hearing that their symptom is fabricated. Certainly such cases occur – some face their symptoms dismissed or wrongly assessed. But in some cases it could be that the physical symptoms exist – certainly – and the source is mental, the unconscious employing the physique to express some pain or anger or whichever sentiment the conscious self cannot tolerate. Occasionally, we might assume our experience is only valid only through expression through the body. We continually disrespect our minds personally, in social contexts and as a culture; why else would we tolerate the shocking elimination of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Life lessons have shown me that a better life cannot be built while caught unconsciously in ways of relating, inside us and socially, that are rooted in disregard, use and exchange. Such patterns are often easier to identify “externally” in wider society. It may be more challenging to think about where they come from, and to identify these shapes inside us and within our closest relationships, in the workings of our psyches.

Yet it’s valuable to continue. When I put my running shoes again following many years, going outside without aiming for a better body, or to escape a feeling, or to improve a 5km time, {it