By Pablo María Sorondo
Translations: Guy Simpson

For many centuries in the western world, men and women placed a distance between themselves and their bodies and learned to live as divided, dual beings, in two combined but opposite parts. The physical experience distanced itself from the mental, giving rise to an irreducible conundrum: is the body a prison for the spirit and thus deserving of disdain? Or should the body, as the only reality, be glorified in hedonism?
Many philosophers sought to resolve this question. Among these, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (author of Structure of Behaviour and Phenomenology of Perception), understood the body as a fundamental condition of existence, not subsidiary to it. The body is not, then, an object we possess, but the subject of experience. For Merleau-Ponty, I do not have a body: I am my body. MYRIADES 1 interviewed six people who live this premise, albeit in different ways. Circus, theatre, athletics, dance and physiotherapy are the areas in which they develop their vocations, from a recognition of a profound connection between body and spirit.