🔗 Share this article

I recently came back from jogging. It’s surprising to write that statement. I think it might have been ten years since my last. However I recently discovered that my tests indicate elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to perform intense workouts on a consistent basis.

For the first time ever in my life that the reason to work out has been my physical health. During earlier years, I ran because I wanted to be thinner. At times I ran to manage feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the worry, not addressing it. Sometimes, I jogged because I aimed to get better with jogging. This was what it meant to me then to build a better life.

Exercising with new motivation currently prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve connected with my physique during my years and its transformation as I transition from early adulthood to midlife. I believe not I’ve respected my own body, not deep down. I’ve prized it solely for its capabilities and the aims it served me: trying to attract others; avoiding feelings; completing a speedier five kilometers. Until today, I’ve not understood that I am my body, it embodies my life, rather than something that produces results.

Much has been written for ages about the split of mind and body – which you will be relieved to know, I won’t summarize here. What resonated most compelling is the Freudian perspective that mental and physical selves are innately connected from birth, because physical development demands psychological development and conversely. A baby’s bodily experiences – such as the physical sensation of hunger – drive the brain to develop the capacity to identify hunger as a feeling that is alleviated by a feed; and the mental reassurance and contentment consistently provided by feed after feed supports the young mind in the same way the milk fuels them bodily. So too emotional occurrences – for instance the urge to stand up and grab an object, and the resolve to persist through effort – are the cause and means physical strength increases. From our earliest moments, our body and mind are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as connected as a double helix.

However I’ve observed, in treatment with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique might experience a distinct connection – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My consciousness can use my body to store and manifest things that my psyche views unwanted or unbearable. During therapy we’ve become aware how there are particular emotional states that I am afraid are too much for me; in place of feeling these mentally, I unintentionally force them into my body, becoming trapped as corporeal issues.

I previously experienced this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but was a type of physical reflux of the harsher emotions I couldn’t digest psychologically. This was not a deliberate decision, but when it was brought to awareness by my analyst, and my anxiety and sensitivity and anger and panic became palpable and articulated rather than converted to bodily feelings, it vanished. It’s uncommon for me from stomach problems now.

The worst time I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was forfeiting my sanity. I visited my doctor, who arranged multiple scans and tests, but no issues were found medically abnormal. The situation was another doctor who told me that the root might be emotional. My analyst did not disagree. I was surprised, but I recognized it was correct.

When a patient endures a physical symptom, it can be upsetting at the suggestion that there might be a mental root. They might feel like disrespect, being told that their illness is fabricated. And of course such cases occur – individuals may experience their pain dismissed or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it could be that the corporeal issues are genuine – certainly – and the cause is psychological, the unconscious using the body to express some pain or fury or whatever emotion awareness fails to handle. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our emotions matters solely if manifested in physical form. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being personally, in social contexts and as a culture; for what reason would we tolerate the appalling reduction of psychological therapies through health services?

Life lessons have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be built when we are stuck without realization in patterns of interaction, inside us and with others, that are rooted in disrespect, exploitation and transaction. Such patterns tend to be simpler to spot “externally” in broader culture. It’s perhaps harder to think about where they come from, and to recognise these forms within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the dynamics of our psyches.

But it’s valuable to continue. When I put my jogging shoes again following many years, heading out not to get bodily change, or to escape a sensation, or to surpass a personal best, {it