quotations and passages about body

Bless your body always.
Speak no word of condemnation about it.

Rebecca Beard

Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that,
it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it
defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it
by encumbering it with remedies.

Lev Tolstoy

My body has taught me many things, all of them filled with soul: how to dance
and make love, mourn and make music; now it is teaching me how to heal.
I am learning to heed the shifting currents of my body--the subtle changes
in temperature, muscle tension, thought and mood--the way a sailor
rides the wind by reading the ripples on the water.

Kat Duff

William Blake says the body is "that portion of Soul discerned by
the five Senses." I live with that idea. I sit and look out
my window here in Canada and the autumn trees are golden
against the blue sky. I can feel their "food" coming into my eyes
and going down, down, down, interacting inside, and I fill up
with gold. My soul is fed. I see, I smell, I taste, I hear, I touch.
Through the orifices of my body, I give and I receive. I am not trying
to capture what is absent. It's that interchange between the
embodied soul and the outside world that is the dynamic process.
That's how growth takes place. That is life.

Marion Woodman

Many people treat their bodies as if they were rented
from Hertz--something they are using to get around in
but nothing they genuinely care about understanding.

Chungliang Al Huang

The body has its own way of knowing, a knowing that has little
to do with logic, and much to do with truth, little to do with control,
and much to do with acceptance, little to do with division
and analysis and much to do with union.

Marilyn Sewell

Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see
through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I see my body as an instrument rather than an ornament.

Alanis Morissette

If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.

Walt Whitman

Your body is precious. It is our vehicle
for awakening. Treat it with care.

The Buddha

When you coordinate your mind and body, you have unlimited access to the wisdom of the universe.

Koichi Tohei

The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office,
where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools
and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My body is so important to me. My face, my arms, my legs,
my hands, my eyes, everything. I use everything I have.

Monica Belluci

In Extremis

I saw my toes the other day.
I hadn’t looked at them for months.
Indeed, they might have passed away.
And yet, they were my best friends once.
When I was small, I knew them well
I counted on them up to ten
And put them in my mouth to tell The larger from the lesser. Then
I loved them better than my ears,
My elbows, and heart.
But with the swelling of the years
We drifted, toes and I, apart.
Now, gnarled and pale, each said, j‘accuse!—
I hid them quickly in my shoes.

John Updike

Your body is not who you are. The mind and spirit transcend the body.

Christopher Reeve

To keep the body in good health is a duty. . . otherwise
we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.

The Buddha

The body is the soul's house. Shouldn't we therefore
take care of our house so that it doesn't fall into ruin?

Philo Judaeus

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Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a wise and intuitive counselor
available 24/7? You're in luck--you already have one. Your body!
Our bodies carry ancient wisdom. We literally live within a temple
of intuitive and instinctive wisdom. Sometimes we pay attention
and access body wisdom; but unfortunately, the aphorism "Mrs. Smith
lived a short distance from her body" is sadly true for many of us.

Sue Patton Thoele

People make the mistake of identifying themselves with their body, then if
something happens to a person's body, they think something has happened
to the person. When you think about it, that's as ridiculous as saying
that if something happens to the clothing I'm wearing, something
has happened to me. Our body is just what we wear. . . We need
to take care of it, but it's not who we are.

H. Frederick Vogt

You are not your body. It is just something you wear for a while,
because living in the earthplane is infinitely more meaningful and more
involved if you are encased in its trappings and subject to its rules.

P.M.H. Atwater