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

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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

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

Koichi Tohei

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

Anyone who works at a high level of physical skill--as a good woodcarver,
athlete, or instrumentalist does--must trust his or her body implicitly, which
is tantamount to "forgetting."  A shortstop or concert pianist who wonders
for even a split second whether his or her hands are correctly positioned
will flub that hard-hit ground ball or falter in the middle of
that fast-moving Chopin riff.
  When we "forget" the body in this way, we learn the true meaning of the old
saying that "the body has a mind of its own."  Even those of us who play neither
baseball nor a Steinway  must learn to trust bodily knowledge as part of our
inner guidance.  As we do so, we, like the woodcarver, become less responsive
to external commands and more responsive to the inner teacher.
We start to live in closer conformity to our own souls.

Parker J. Palmer
A Hidden Wholeness

We have a physical body, which is a wonder.  But this physical body
will one day disintegrate.  That is the truth we have to accept.  On
the surface, there is birth and death, being and nonbeing.  But if you
go more deeply, you recognize that you also have a cosmic body that
exists outside of birth and death, being and nonbeing.  A wave on the
ocean doesn't last very long.  A waves physical body lasts five, ten, or
twenty seconds.  But the wave has her ocean body, because she comes
from the ocean and she will go back to the ocean.  If you walk mindfully,
if your concentration and insight are powerful, with every step you can
touch your cosmic body and you will lose all your fear and uncertainty.

Thich Nhat Hanh
How to Walk

In general, however, human beings have ceased to develop the instruments
of the body. More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means
of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious
thinking rather than unconscious “know-how.” This is much less to our
advantage than we like to suppose. . . . we have been taught to neglect,
despise, and violate our bodies, and to put all faith in our brains.

Alan Watts
The Wisdom of Insecurity

To keep the body in good health is a duty, for otherwise
we shall not be able to trim the lamp of wisdom, and
keep our mind strong and clear.  Water surrounds
the lotus petal, but does not wet its petals.

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

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

Professionals at living would not mar their day's run of the human machine,
as most of us do, would not impair its marvelous expression, its output, by
overeating or undereating, or by irregular living.  They would not allow
themselves to be crippled for days by burning out its delicate brain and
nerve cells with the fires of hot temper, by shocks of hatred, jealousy,
fear or worry.  Instead, they would protect this marvelously delicate and
sensitive mechanism from its multitude of physical and mental enemies.

Orison Swett Marden
The Joys of Living 

The body enjoys a great share in our being, and has an eminent place in it.
Its structure and composition, therefore, are worthy of proper consideration.

Michel de Montaigne

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than
the intellect.  We can go wrong in our minds.  But what our blood
feels and believes and says, is always true.

D.H. Lawrence

The body says what words cannot.

Martha Graham

If you are feeling tired or ill, rest.  Your body will always want rest and ease
if it's sick.  When you become quiet, ask your body what you need to do
in order to heal yourself.  Your body may tell you to change certain habits,
eat more wholesome food, express some feelings, quit your job, see a
doctor, or it may have some other message for you, but there is always an
answer available to you.  The key is to ask and then listen honestly for a response.

Shakti Gawain

You have to stand up and be a human.  You have to honor the man or
woman that you are.  Respect your body, enjoy your body, love your
body, feed, clean, and heal your body.  Exercise and do what makes
your body feel good.  This is a puja to your body, and that is a communion
between you and God. . . . When you practice giving love to every part of
your body, you plant seeds of love in your mind, and when they grow,
you will love, honor, and respect your body immensely.

Don Miguel Ruiz
The Four Agreements

Wherever you are, whether in a work meeting, sitting with your partner,
holding your child, or writing a report, you can relax any part of your body
that feels tight, release any tension that you may be holding on to.  And
because mind and body are one, by becoming aware of your body and
by learning to let go of the tension that it holds within it,
your whole being becomes calmer and more serene.

Tal Ben-Shahar
Choose the Life You Want

You take your car in for checkups more than you take your body in for
checkups.  And you change the oil in your car more than you change
some of your habits, and some of the things you're putting into your
body.  So, for heaven's sake, take better care of your body.

Neale Donald Walsch
Little Book of Life

If it ever occurs to people to value the honour of the mind equally with
the honour of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort.

Dorothy L. Sayers
Gaudy Night

Your body instinctively understands the energy of words.  You can benefit
from this inner knowledge by paying attention to words that describe the
feeling of your physical symptoms.  Always ask yourself if the word you use
to describe your symptom also describes another aspect of your life.
“Aching, stiff joints” may reflect an inflexible work schedule or relationship,
while a headache that feels like “constant pressure” may describe your
current financial situation.  In such cases, your body is begging you to take
notice of what’s happening in your life.  Just recognizing that the symptom
applies not only to your body but also to your life shatters your ability to
ignore the unhealthy situation and motivates you to make the changes you need.

Bernie Siegel
No Endings, Only Beginnings

If you think you are a body only, you are ruled by its demands and
restrictions, and your life is reduced to a daily struggle to get enough.
You think you are here to simply eat, sleep, have sex, protect your
territory, and fight for stuff.  You identify with your smallness and
overlook your magnitude.  But if you know there is more to you than
what’s encapsulated by your skin, you have access to infinite
resources and rewards that bodies alone cannot grasp.

Alan Cohen
The Tao Made Easy

Everyone should consider their bodies as priceless gifts from one whom they
love above all, a marvelous work of art, of indescribable beauty, and
mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that a word, a breath,
a look, nay, a thought may injure it.  Uncleanliness, which breeds disease
and death, is not only a self-destructive but highly immoral habit.

Nikola Tesla

But if one observes, one will see that the body has its own intelligence;
it requires a great deal of intelligence to observe the intelligence of the body.

Jiddu Krishnamurti
The Flight of the Eagle

Everybody has a part of their body that they don't like, but
I've stopped complaining about mine because I don't want
to critique nature's handiwork. . . My job is simply to allow
the light to shine out of the masterpiece.

Alfre Woodard

And yet a lot of the time many of us completely forget we have a body.
Our body is there, but our mind is somewhere else, not with the body.
Our mind is alienated from the body.  It is with our projects, our worries,
our fears.  We can work on a computer for hours and completely forget
our body, until something starts to hurt.  But how can we say we’re truly
living our life if we’ve forgotten we have a body?  If our mind is not with
our body, we cannot say that we’re fully present.
We cannot say that we’re truly alive.

Thich Nhat Hanh
The Art of Living