Modalities of Body Experience in Illness and Health

Abstract

How do we experience our body in illness or health? This is a question that can easily comprise a book-length study. In this article, a selection of basic distinctions is explored that may be especially appropriate for pursuing this question. Increasingly the health science professional is becoming aware that people require not only health care assistance, surgical treatment, or pharmaceutical treatment, but that the professional be much more involved in the way that people experience and live with their problems in a different, sometimes deeply personal and unique manner. It is argued that nursing especially is involved in helping the patient, the elderly, the disabled, or the person whofor reasons of circumstance is out of step with the body to recover a livable relation with his or her psycho-physical being.