Consciousness is about Awareness and being Conscious. As that relates to the body and good health it finds its form in the practice, wisdom and skill of ‘Listening to the Body’.
Listening to the body is the cornerstone of health because when we ignore our bodies we get symptoms of discomfort and disease.
It goes something like this: You do something and your body gives you signals to say it doesn’t like that thing, or that it makes it uncomfortable, and if you’ve never thought to listen to your body you might not actually notice these signals at first, as they are very subtle. As you continue the behaviour, the signals become more noticeable, and let’s say you carry on doing the thing which caused them. The body then has to ‘shout’ even louder to get your attention, and the feedback from the feelings in the body is more clearly uncomfortable. What if you still ignore those signals? Well then the body has to ‘shout’ even louder still, and if the symptoms still aren’t listened to then soon they may become a full-blown illness or disease.
What traditionally happens then? We go to the doctor and take pills for the symptoms as if they were the cause. Why? Partly because we haven’t been taught to master our emotions, haven’t been taught to let go of self-judgements, haven’t been taught to listen to the body: All attributes of Conscious Living. And partly, again, because the health system is not currently separated from the profit system. But we all know that if we have rats because of a build-up of rubbish bags in the street, the solution is to get rid of the rubbish, not the rats. This is part of what’s known as ‘The Feedback Principle’. Life is always giving us feedback.
Aside from Infectious Diseases, congenital conditions and the like, symptoms and ill health are generally the consequences of continually ignoring the body.