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I recently came back from jogging. It’s surprising to admit those words. I think it might have been many years since the previous time. Yet I recently discovered that my levels show elevated cholesterol, and I’ve been advised to engage in vigorous activity frequently.

For the first time ever in my existence that my motivation to work out has been my physical health. In my youth, I ran because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to cure feelings of anxiety – I was merely escaping from the anxiety, not addressing it. Sometimes, I exercised because I wanted to enhance with jogging. That represented the definition to me back then to build a better life.

Running for a different reason at present sparked reflection about the ways I’ve connected with my physical self over my lifetime and the way it’s evolving as I move from youth to midlife. It seems unlikely I’ve honored my body, not fundamentally. I’ve appreciated it solely for its capabilities and the aims it fulfilled for me: seeking approval; dodging sentiments; completing a speedier five kilometers. Until today, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it embodies my life, rather than something that produces results.

Much has been discussed over the centuries about the separation of mind and body – which it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing here. What I’ve found most fascinating is the Freudian perspective that mental and physical selves are developmentally integrated from the beginning, because physical development demands emotional evolution and conversely. A baby’s corporeal feelings – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the mind to build the ability to perceive hunger as an emotion that may be satisfied by eating; and the mental reassurance and satisfaction repeatedly brought by feed after feed feeds the young mind in the same way the milk nourishes them bodily. Similarly emotional occurrences – such as the wish to stand up and attain a goal, and the persistence to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our body and mind are interlinked in mutual development as integrated as a spiral.

But I’ve observed, in sessions with my psychoanalyst, that mental and physical aspects can be in a different kind of relationship – a more separated and increasingly manipulative. My consciousness might utilize my body to store and manifest aspects that my psyche views unacceptable or unbearable. In analysis it emerged that exist particular emotional states that I worry are too much for me; in place of sensing them mentally, I subconsciously shift them into my body, where they remain as bodily signs.

I often had this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with food intake, but represented a kind of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest psychologically. It wasn’t a conscious choice, but once it was raised to my attention by my analyst, and my fear and insecurity and anger and terror were experienced and expressed verbally instead of converted to corporeal symptoms, it resolved. It’s uncommon for me from indigestion today.

The worst time I endured this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was losing my mind. I visited a general practitioner, who scheduled multiple scans and tests, but there was nothing physically wrong. The situation was another doctor who informed me that the cause could be emotional. My analyst agreed. I was stunned, but I also knew it to be true.

When a patient endures a bodily issue, it can be upsetting if told that there might be a mental root. They might feel like disrespect, hearing that their symptom is fabricated. And of course that does happen – some face their symptoms discounted or misdiagnosed. But in some cases it’s possible that the corporeal issues are genuine – certainly – and the origin is mental, the subconscious using the body to express some pain or fury or whatever emotion the mind is unable to bear. Sometimes, it’s easy to think our emotions only has value when it is expressed as bodily symptoms. We continually disrespect our mental states on a personal level, collectively and as a culture; how else would we tolerate the terrible elimination of psychological therapies on the NHS?

My experiences have taught me that a superior lifestyle cannot be created while caught unconsciously in patterns of interaction, internally and socially, that originate in disrespect, exploitation and transaction. Such patterns tend to be simpler to spot “in the world” in the general public. It’s perhaps more challenging to think about their origins, and to identify these patterns inside us and in intimate connections, in the workings of our psyches.

But persistence pays off. After donning my jogging shoes back on post a long hiatus, going outside not to get a better body, or to escape a feeling, or to surpass a personal best, {it