🔗 Share this article

I have just returned from a jog. It’s shocking to write that statement. I think it could have been many years since I last did so. However I recently discovered that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts frequently.

For the first time ever in living memory that my motivation to be active has been my bodily well-being. When I was younger, I exercised because I wanted to lose weight. At times I ran to manage feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from the anxiety, not addressing it. Sometimes, I jogged because I sought to enhance in running. This was the meaning to me then to create an improved existence.

Jogging with altered intent now prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve connected with my physical self over my lifetime and how this is changing as I move from youth to being a middle-aged person. I believe not I’ve honored my body, not truly. I’ve appreciated it just for its roles and the purposes it provided: aiming to appeal; avoiding feelings; completing a speedier 5K run. Previously, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it embodies my life, instead of an instrument for achievements.

A great deal has been written for ages about the split of mind and body – a topic it’s comforting to know, I won’t summarize here. What I’ve found most compelling is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are naturally unified from the beginning, because physical development necessitates emotional evolution and vice versa. The newborn’s corporeal feelings – for example the bodily feeling of hunger – propel the mind to build the skill to identify hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by nourishment; and the psychological solace and contentment repeatedly brought by feed after feed nourishes the young mind just as the food nourishes them corporally. Likewise emotional occurrences – like the urge to rise and reach for something, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means muscles grow stronger. Since infancy, our body and mind are interconnected in reciprocal evolution as unified as a spiral.

Yet It’s become clear, in treatment with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique may exist in a different kind of relationship – one less integrated and somewhat abusive. My mind can use my physical self to retain and express aspects that my mind views unacceptable or unbearable. During therapy it emerged that exist certain emotions that I fear are too much for me; rather than sensing them in my mind, I unintentionally force them to my physical self, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced this with indigestion – not connected to what I’d eaten, but acted as a form of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I failed to handle psychologically. This wasn’t an intentional act, but once it was raised to my attention by my analyst, and my dread and vulnerability and anger and alarm could be felt and articulated in place of transformed into physical sensation, it resolved. I rarely suffer with digestive issues now.

The most severe episode I endured this intense reflux, I didn’t sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was forfeiting my mind. I consulted my doctor, who scheduled various diagnostic procedures, but there was nothing medically abnormal. It was another doctor who informed me that the root might be psychological. My therapist did not disagree. I was stunned, but I recognized it to be true.

If an individual experiences a corporeal problem, they might feel insulted at the suggestion that it could have an emotional origin. They can experience this as being disrespected, the idea that their condition is imagined. And of course that does happen – some face their pain dismissed or incorrectly identified. However, sometimes it’s possible that the bodily signs exist – no question – and the origin is emotional, the unconscious using the physical self to manifest certain suffering or rage or whichever sentiment the mind is unable to bear. At times, we might assume our experience is only valid when it is expressed through the body. We persistently neglect our mental states as individuals, collectively and within our culture; for what reason do we accept the terrible killing-off of psychological therapies through health services?

Life lessons have taught me that a better life is unattainable while caught without realization in patterns of interaction, inside us and with others, that are rooted in disrespect, use and dealings. Such patterns are often easier to identify “out there” in broader culture. It’s likely more challenging to reflect on how they got out there, and to see these shapes within ourselves and among loved ones, in the workings of our minds.

However it’s worth persevering. When I put my jogging shoes back on post a long hiatus, venturing out not to get bodily change, or to eliminate a feeling, or to beat a personal best, {it