Bodies

I'm going to shamelessly copy Sarah at Handmade Homeschool and designate Tuesdays as "A Quote and a Question" days.

"Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other."
- Henry David Thoreau.

I think about bodies and souls a lot. I work with bodies of course, as a massage therapist, both in the sense that I work with my body and work on other bodies. And I love what I do. I think about it all the time, how things might work better, try to uncover seemingly unrelated patterns of strain. I want people to leave my clinic with more function than they walked in with, and more often than not, that's how it works out.

One of the places all this thinking leads me is into the realm of, what is a body? What is a thought? What is a soul? Is there any difference? Do I think any less with my kneecap than I do with my brain? I'm serious on that. Not so much quantitative contribution, because obviously a person can lose an entire limb and maintain a whole personality, but in the sense that it's a group effort, no matter how small the group is.

I often feel the meridians of my own body, with their subtle energies and flows, and I feel it in my clients, and I know, I know, I know that this is somehow what we ARE. And there it is, like a holograph, the thought in the knee, the tears in the skin, the holy of holies in the in-between spaces that have no name.

But on the other hand, all my limitations flood me, and I can only focus on one thing at a time, and it causes me to break things down into little classifications. This is the body, that is the soul, this is where the pain is, that is where I feel well.

And about 18 months ago I saw the Body Worlds exhibit, and you know? There was nothing there. They were utterly lifeless. Whatever connect or construct between those molecules and the energy of life that had been, was no more. And in a situation like that, it's very easy to revert to viewing the body as a cloak that the "soul" (whatever that is) puts on and off as it sees fit.

So here's my question, and feel free to disagree with everything I've written above. I'm interested in opinions.

What is a soul? Is there such a thing? If there isn't, what's asking this question? If there is, what is its relationship to these fingers typing?


Edit: What a hoot! I just realized that it's actually MONDAY! Can you tell my days are all one very much like the next? Right then, MONDAYS are Q&Q days!... or however it works out....