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I have just returned from a run. I’m amazed to state that statement. I think it was likely many years since my last. But I recently discovered that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

For the first time ever in living memory that the reason to be active has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I jogged because I desired to slim down. I’ve also run to manage feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from the worry, instead of dealing with it. Sometimes, I jogged because I wanted to get better with jogging. It signified the definition to me back then to create an improved existence.

Jogging with altered intent now got me thinking about the approaches I’ve connected with my body throughout my life and how this is changing as I progress from being a young person to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve valued my body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it solely for its capabilities and the objectives it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; dodging sentiments; completing a speedier 5K run. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that I am my body, it is my existence, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

A great deal has been written for ages about the split of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I’m not going to precis here. What has struck me most compelling is the Freudian perspective that mind and body are naturally unified right from the start, because bodily growth requires emotional evolution and vice versa. A baby’s corporeal feelings – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – propel the mind to build the capacity to identify hunger as an emotion that may be satisfied by a feed; and the psychological solace and contentment consistently provided by meal after meal supports the infant’s psyche just as the food nourishes them bodily. So too mental events – for instance the wish to stand up and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, mind and body are interconnected in mutual development as connected as a spiral.

Yet It’s become clear, in treatment with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects can be in a distinct connection – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness can use my body to hold and express things that my mind deems undesirable or intolerable. In my sessions it emerged that there are specific feelings that I am afraid I can’t handle; rather than sensing them psychologically, I subconsciously shift them into bodily form, where they remain as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced digestive discomfort – unrelated to my diet, but was a kind of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I was unable to process in my mind. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but after it was introduced into my consciousness through therapy, and my fear and vulnerability and rage and alarm were experienced and articulated in place of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it vanished. I rarely suffer from stomach problems now.

The worst time I endured this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I felt I was slipping away from my sanity. I visited a general practitioner, who organised multiple diagnostic procedures, but everything was medically abnormal. It turned out to be another doctor who suggested that the origin may be emotional. My therapist agreed. I was surprised, but I recognized it to be true.

When a patient endures a bodily issue, they might feel insulted upon hearing that there might be a psychological cause. It can seem as invalidation, hearing that their symptom is imagined. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – people can have their pain ignored or wrongly assessed. Yet occasionally it’s possible that the corporeal issues are genuine – without doubt – and the origin is psychological, the inner mind employing the physique to convey some pain or fury or whichever sentiment the mind cannot tolerate. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our emotions matters solely only through expression through the body. We often undervalue our psychological well-being on a personal level, collectively and as a culture; how else do we accept the shocking killing-off of psychological therapies on the NHS?

Personal insights have shown me that a better life is unattainable while caught unconsciously in ways of relating, internally and in relationships, that are rooted in devaluation, use and transaction. Such patterns are frequently more straightforward to identify “out there” in the general public. It may be less comfortable to reflect on where they come from, and to identify these forms personally and in intimate connections, in the workings of our mental lives.

However it’s valuable to continue. When I put my running shoes again post a long hiatus, heading out without aiming for bodily change, or to eliminate an emotion, or to beat a running record, {it