It is easy to ignore the existence and importance of bodies, simply because
they are so taken-for-granted as parts of ourselves: ‘We have bodies, but
we are also, in a specific sense, bodies; our embodiment is a necessary
requirement of our social identification so that it would be ludicrous to
say “I have arrived and I have brought my body with me”’ (Turner, 1996: 42).
When pain, sickness or discomfort is not felt, one’s body is relatively
unobtrusive. It is often not until illness or pain is experienced that the
body comes into conscious being; illness may then be conceptualized as
the body taking over, as an external environment separate to the self.