Sensing Like Your Consciousness and Body Are Separate? Discover The Transformation When We Integrate Fully.

I recently came back from a jog. It’s shocking to write that statement. It seems it was likely a decade since my last. Yet I found out recently that my levels show somewhat raised cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts regularly.

For the first time ever in my existence that my motivation to be active has been my physical health. In my youth, I exercised because I aimed to slim down. I’ve also run to cure nervousness – I was just running away from the anxiety, instead of dealing with it. At other times, I ran because I wanted to improve in running. This was what it meant to me then to create a superior lifestyle.

Running for a different reason at present prompted contemplation about the methods I’ve interacted with my body throughout my life and its transformation as I progress from early adulthood to middle age. It seems unlikely I’ve respected my body, not truly. I’ve prized it only for its roles and the aims it served me: seeking approval; dodging sentiments; achieving a quicker five kilometers. Up to now, I hadn’t realized that my body is me, it is my life, rather than an instrument for achievements.

A lot has been written over the centuries about the split between body and mind – which it’s reassuring to know, I won’t summarize here. What has struck me most fascinating is Freud’s understanding that mental and physical selves are naturally unified right from the start, because physical maturation demands emotional evolution and the reverse is true. The infant’s physical sensations – such as the corporeal experience of hunger – drive the brain to cultivate the capacity to recognise hunger as an emotion that can be sated by a feed; and the psychological solace and fulfillment repeatedly brought by meal after meal nourishes the infant’s psyche in the same way the nutrition sustains them physically. Likewise mental events – such as the wish to stand up and attain a goal, and the resolve to attempt repeatedly – are the reason and method physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our body and mind are intertwined in reciprocal evolution as integrated as DNA strands.

However I have noticed, during therapy with my therapist, that my consciousness and physique may exist in a different kind of relationship – one less integrated and increasingly manipulative. My psyche can use my physique to retain and express things that my mind considers unwanted or unacceptable. In my sessions we’ve become aware how exist particular emotional states that I am afraid I cannot bear; instead of feeling these in my mind, I unconsciously force them to my physical self, where they get stuck as physical symptoms.

I previously experienced this as indigestion – unrelated to what I’d eaten, but was a type of bodily backlash of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest mentally. This wasn’t a deliberate decision, but once it was raised to my attention by my analyst, and my fear and sensitivity and frustration and terror were experienced and expressed verbally rather than converted to physical sensation, it vanished. I rarely suffer from stomach problems today.

The most severe episode I had this terrible acid reflux, I failed to rest for many nights straight. I felt I was forfeiting my sanity. I consulted my doctor, who arranged multiple scans and tests, but everything was medically abnormal. It turned out to be an alternate medic who informed me that the origin might be emotional. My analyst agreed. I was stunned, but I also felt it was accurate.

When a patient is suffering a physical symptom, they might feel insulted at the suggestion that there might be an emotional origin. They might feel as invalidation, hearing that their condition is imagined. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – individuals may experience their symptoms discounted or wrongly assessed. However, sometimes it might be that the physical symptoms are real – no question – and the origin is psychological, the subconscious employing the physique to convey emotional hurt or anger or any feeling awareness fails to handle. At times, it’s easy to think our experience matters solely if manifested through the body. We persistently neglect our psychological well-being as individuals, in social contexts and within our culture; why else would we tolerate the shocking reduction of mental health treatments in public healthcare?

Personal insights have revealed that a superior lifestyle cannot be built when we are stuck unawares in modes of connection, inside us and socially, that originate in disrespect, exploitation and dealings. Such patterns tend to be simpler to identify “in the world” in the general public. It’s likely less comfortable to reflect on how they got out there, and to see these shapes personally and in intimate connections, in the economy of our psyches.

But it’s valuable to continue. After donning my trainers once more post a long hiatus, going outside without aiming for bodily change, or to escape a sensation, or to improve a personal best, {it