🔗 Share this article

I have just returned from a run. It’s shocking to admit that statement. I think it could have been many years since I last did so. But It came to my attention that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts on a consistent basis.

For the first time ever in my existence that my motivation to exercise has been my physical health. During earlier years, I ran because I aimed to be thinner. I also jogged to cure my anxiety – I was merely escaping from the worry, without confronting it. At other times, I ran because I wanted to get better at running. It signified what it meant to me at that time to build an improved existence.

Running for a different reason currently got me thinking about the methods I’ve connected with my body over my lifetime and how this is changing as I progress from being a young person to midlife. I don’t think I’ve honored my own body, not truly. I’ve valued it solely for its roles and the aims it served me: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; completing a speedier five kilometers. Previously, I failed to grasp that I am my body, it embodies my life, as opposed to something that produces results.

A great deal has been explored for ages about the separation between body and mind – a topic it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize now. What I’ve found most intriguing is Sigmund Freud’s view that mental and physical selves are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because physical development demands psychological development and vice versa. The infant’s physical sensations – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – propel consciousness to cultivate the capacity to identify hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by a feed; and the emotional comfort and contentment consistently provided by repeated nourishment feeds the young mind in the same way the food fuels them physically. Likewise mental events – for instance the urge to get up and attain a goal, and the determination to try again and again – are the reason and method muscles grow stronger. From our earliest moments, our physical and mental selves are interconnected in mutual development as unified as a double helix.

But I’ve observed, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects can be in an alternate dynamic – a more separated and somewhat abusive. My psyche might utilize my physique to retain and display aspects that my psyche considers unwanted or unacceptable. In my sessions we realized how exist certain emotions that I fear I cannot bear; instead of experiencing them in my mind, I unintentionally shift them into my body, where they get stuck as corporeal issues.

I used to get this as indigestion – not connected to my diet, but acted as a type of physical reflux of the harsher emotions I failed to handle in my mind. This was not an intentional act, but after it was introduced to awareness by my analyst, and my anxiety and sensitivity and frustration and terror were experienced and articulated in place of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. I rarely suffer with digestive issues today.

The worst time I experienced this severe heartburn, I was unable to sleep for several nights in a row. I felt I was losing my mind. I visited my doctor, who arranged various scans and tests, but there was nothing medically abnormal. It turned out to be another doctor who told me that the origin might be emotional. My therapist concurred. I was surprised, but I also felt it was accurate.

If an individual is suffering a physical symptom, they can be offended at the suggestion that there might be an emotional origin. They can experience like disrespect, hearing that their symptom is imagined. And of course such cases occur – individuals may experience their suffering ignored or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it could be that the bodily signs are genuine – certainly – and the origin is emotional, the subconscious employing the physical self to convey certain suffering or rage or any feeling awareness fails to handle. At times, we may believe our experience is only valid when it is expressed in physical form. We often undervalue our minds on a personal level, in social contexts and as a culture; how else would we tolerate the appalling reduction of psychological therapies on the NHS?

My experiences have shown me that a superior lifestyle cannot be created while caught unconsciously in modes of connection, internally and with others, that stem from disrespect, exploitation and dealings. Such patterns tend to be simpler to spot “in the world” in the general public. It’s perhaps more challenging to reflect on how they got out there, and to see these shapes within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the dynamics of our mental lives.

Yet it’s worth persevering. When I put my running shoes back on following many years, going outside not for physical improvement, or to escape an emotion, or to beat a 5km time, {it