I have just returned from a jog. It’s shocking to write that statement. I think it might have been many years since the previous time. Yet It came to my attention that I have somewhat raised cholesterol, and the recommendation was to perform intense workouts regularly.
For the first time ever in my existence that the reason to exercise has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I exercised because I desired to lose weight. I’ve also run to cure my anxiety – I was just running away from those feelings, instead of dealing with it. On other occasions, I ran because I sought to get better in running. It signified the definition to me then to build an improved existence.
Exercising with new motivation at present prompted contemplation about the ways I’ve related with my physical self over my lifetime and its transformation as I progress from being a young person to being a middle-aged person. I don’t think I’ve respected my own body, not fundamentally. I’ve valued it solely for its functions and the objectives it provided: aiming to appeal; dodging sentiments; achieving a quicker five kilometers. Until today, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it is my life, rather than something that produces results.
Much has been discussed for ages about the split involving physical and mental aspects – which it’s reassuring to know, I’ll avoid detailing now. What resonated most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mind and body are developmentally integrated right from the start, because physical maturation necessitates psychological development and conversely. The infant’s bodily experiences – for example the corporeal experience of hunger – motivate the mind to cultivate the ability to recognise hunger as a sensation that is alleviated by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and satisfaction repeatedly brought by feed after feed supports the young mind in the same way the milk nourishes them bodily. Similarly psychological experiences – such as the urge to rise and reach for something, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the cause and means the body develops power. Starting at birth, mind and body are intertwined in mutual development as connected as a spiral.
However It’s become clear, during therapy with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique can be in a distinct connection – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche can use my physique to retain and display elements that my mind deems unacceptable or unbearable. In my sessions we realized how there are specific feelings that I am afraid are too much for me; instead of sensing them psychologically, I unintentionally force them into bodily form, where they remain as corporeal issues.
I previously experienced this as indigestion – which had nothing to do with what I’d eaten, but acted as a kind of bodily backlash of the sharper sentiments I couldn’t digest mentally. This wasn’t an intentional act, but after it was introduced into my consciousness through therapy, and my dread and insecurity and frustration and panic could be felt and put into words in place of changed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. It’s uncommon for me with digestive issues now.
The toughest period I had this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for many nights straight. I believed I was slipping away from my mind. I consulted a general practitioner, who arranged various diagnostic procedures, but everything was corporally problematic. The situation was an alternate medic who told me that the cause might be mental. My therapist concurred. I was stunned, but I also knew it was correct.
Whenever someone is suffering a physical symptom, they can be offended at the suggestion that it could have an emotional origin. It can seem as invalidation, the idea that their illness isn’t real. And of course such cases occur – individuals may experience their symptoms dismissed or incorrectly identified. Yet occasionally it might be that the physical symptoms are real – without doubt – and the cause is mental, the subconscious employing the body to manifest emotional hurt or rage or any feeling awareness cannot tolerate. Sometimes, we may believe our feelings matters solely only through expression as bodily symptoms. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being on a personal level, as a society and as a culture; how else do we accept the shocking killing-off of mental health treatments in public healthcare?
My experiences have taught me that a superior lifestyle is unattainable when we are stuck unconsciously in modes of connection, inside us and with others, that are rooted in devaluation, exploitation and dealings. These interactions tend to be simpler to spot “out there” in broader culture. It’s likely more challenging to consider how they got out there, and to see these shapes within ourselves and within our closest relationships, in the economy of our psyches.
But persistence pays off. When I put my trainers back on after such a long decade, heading out not for physical improvement, or to eliminate an emotion, or to beat a 5km time, {it
