Sensing Like Your Consciousness and Physical Self Are Divided? Here’s The Transformation When We Become Whole.

I just got back from jogging. It’s surprising to admit this fact. It seems it might have been a decade since the previous time. Yet I recently discovered that my tests indicate slightly high cholesterol, and doctors suggested to perform intense workouts frequently.

This is the first time in my existence that the driving force to exercise has been my bodily well-being. In my youth, I ran because I desired to slim down. I’ve also run to manage feelings of anxiety – I was just running away from those feelings, without confronting it. At other times, I jogged because I aimed to get better in running. This was the definition to me back then to build an improved existence.

Exercising with new motivation at present got me thinking about the ways I’ve interacted with my physical self throughout my life and its transformation as I transition from youth to being a middle-aged person. It seems unlikely I’ve valued my physical form, not truly. I’ve appreciated it solely for its functions and the purposes it served me: trying to attract others; escaping emotions; running a faster 5K run. Previously, I’ve not understood that my body is me, it is my existence, as opposed to a tool for outcomes.

A great deal has been explored through history about the division between body and mind – which you will be relieved to know, I’m not going to precis here. What I’ve found most compelling is the Freudian perspective that consciousness and physique are innately connected from birth, because physical maturation requires psychological development and the reverse is true. A baby’s corporeal feelings – like the corporeal experience of hunger – propel consciousness to build the capacity to perceive hunger as a feeling that may be satisfied by nourishment; and the emotional comfort and fulfillment consistently provided by meal after meal feeds the young mind just as the nutrition sustains them corporally. So too emotional occurrences – for instance the desire to get up and attain a goal, and the resolve to persist through effort – are the cause and means physical strength increases. Starting at birth, our body and mind are interconnected in shared growth as integrated as DNA strands.

However It’s become clear, in sessions with my analyst, that mental and physical aspects can be in an alternate dynamic – a less unified and somewhat abusive. My psyche may employ my physical self to retain and display aspects that my consciousness deems unwanted or unbearable. In analysis we realized that there are specific feelings that I am afraid are too much for me; rather than feeling these psychologically, I unintentionally push them to my physical self, becoming trapped as physical symptoms.

I used to get digestive discomfort – unrelated to my diet, but was a type of corporeal reaction of the more acidic feelings I couldn’t digest mentally. This wasn’t an intentional act, but when it was brought to awareness in sessions, and my dread and insecurity and rage and panic became palpable and articulated instead of transformed into corporeal symptoms, it disappeared. I seldom experience with digestive issues now.

The worst time I had this terrible acid reflux, I didn’t sleep for multiple consecutive nights. I believed I was slipping away from my mental stability. I consulted my doctor, who arranged multiple diagnostic procedures, but there was nothing physically wrong. The situation was an alternate medic who told me that the cause may be mental. My psychoanalyst concurred. I was stunned, but I recognized it to be true.

If an individual is suffering a corporeal problem, it can be upsetting upon hearing that it could have a psychological cause. They might feel this as being disrespected, hearing that their illness is fabricated. Naturally it’s a real phenomenon – some face their pain discounted or misdiagnosed. Yet occasionally it might be that the physical symptoms exist – without doubt – and the source is emotional, the unconscious employing the physical self to convey certain suffering or rage or whichever sentiment awareness is unable to bear. Occasionally, we might assume our experience matters solely only through expression through the body. We persistently neglect our minds on a personal level, collectively and culturally; for what reason would we tolerate the shocking reduction of mental health treatments through health services?

My experiences have taught me that a superior lifestyle cannot be created while caught without realization in modes of connection, within ourselves and socially, that are rooted in devaluation, use and exchange. Such patterns are often easier to identify “externally” in broader culture. It’s perhaps more challenging to consider their origins, and to see these patterns within ourselves and among loved ones, in the dynamics of our minds.

Yet persistence pays off. Upon wearing my trainers back on after such a long decade, heading out without aiming for bodily change, or to get rid of a feeling, or to surpass a 5km time, {it