🔗 Share this article

I have just returned from a run. It’s shocking to write that statement. I believe it was likely a decade since the previous time. Yet I found out recently that my tests indicate somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to engage in vigorous activity regularly.

It’s the initial instance in my existence that the reason to work out has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I jogged because I aimed to lose weight. At times I ran to manage my anxiety – I was merely escaping from the worry, without confronting it. On other occasions, I exercised because I wanted to enhance in running. It signified the definition to me then to develop a superior lifestyle.

Exercising with new motivation at present sparked reflection about the ways I’ve connected with my physical self throughout my life and the way it’s evolving as I transition from youth to middle age. I don’t think I’ve valued my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve appreciated it only for its roles and the purposes it fulfilled for me: trying to attract others; dodging sentiments; running a faster 5km. Until today, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it embodies my life, rather than an instrument for achievements.

Much has been written through history about the separation involving physical and mental aspects – a topic you will be relieved to know, I won’t summarize now. What I’ve found most fascinating is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are naturally unified right from the start, because bodily growth necessitates psychological development and the reverse is true. The infant’s bodily experiences – such as the physical sensation of hunger – motivate the brain to build the capacity to identify hunger as an emotion that may be satisfied by a feed; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction regularly delivered by feed after feed supports the infant’s psyche similar to the nutrition nourishes them physically. Similarly mental events – such as the desire to rise and grab an object, and the persistence to persist through effort – are the cause and means muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, mind and body are interconnected in shared growth as connected as DNA strands.

Yet I have noticed, during therapy with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects may exist in an alternate dynamic – a less unified and somewhat abusive. My consciousness can use my body to store and manifest things that my consciousness views undesirable or unbearable. In my sessions we realized that there are particular emotional states that I worry I can’t handle; rather than feeling these psychologically, I unconsciously push them into bodily form, becoming trapped as bodily signs.

I used to get this with indigestion – unrelated to what I’d eaten, but represented a kind of corporeal reaction of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest mentally. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but once it was raised into my consciousness in sessions, and my anxiety and insecurity and anger and alarm were experienced and articulated in place of changed into physical sensation, it vanished. I rarely suffer with digestive issues now.

The most severe episode I experienced this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. It seemed I was forfeiting my mental stability. I consulted a general practitioner, who arranged various examinations and assessments, but everything was medically abnormal. It was an alternate medic who suggested that the root may be mental. My therapist concurred. I was surprised, but I recognized it was correct.

Whenever someone is suffering a physical symptom, they might feel insulted upon hearing that it may have a psychological cause. They might feel this as being disrespected, being told that their condition isn’t real. Certainly it’s a real phenomenon – people can have their suffering ignored or incorrectly identified. Yet occasionally it’s possible that the corporeal issues are genuine – no question – and the source is mental, the subconscious using the body to convey some pain or rage or whatever emotion awareness cannot tolerate. At times, it’s easy to think our emotions matters solely only through expression as bodily symptoms. We often undervalue our mental states personally, as a society and within our culture; for what reason can we allow the appalling killing-off of psychological therapies in public healthcare?

My experiences have taught me that a better life cannot be built while caught unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and in relationships, that originate in disregard, exploitation and dealings. Such patterns tend to be simpler to recognize “externally” in the general public. It’s likely more challenging to reflect on how they got out there, and to recognise these shapes within ourselves and in intimate connections, in the workings of our psyches.

However persistence pays off. Upon wearing my jogging shoes back on post a long hiatus, venturing out not to get a better body, or to get rid of a sensation, or to improve a personal best, {it