Stewardship of one's body is an essential responsibility accompanying the gift of life. Listening to one's body and doing one's best to discern and provide what it needs is part of that responsibility.
Without breath and circulating blood, the human body is inanimate flesh. With them, the body is both puppet and partner of an individual's personality, intellect, and spirit. While we have the gift of life, your body and mine are like our spirits' Charlie McCarthy marionettes in that they do our bidding as best we have trained them to do and they bear our mistreatment and neglect. But our bodies are, and deserve, much more: our consciousness, intellect and spirit depend on our bodies for all physical senses of perception, all physical pleasures, every action in the physical world, and all spiritual growth, fulfillment and pleasures in this life.
