Bodily Practices In the Primary Health Care

The bodily practices in the primary attention in health expand the possibilities of finding, listening, observing and mobilizing sick people in the caring process, especially with respect to constructing bonds and autonomous, innovative and socially inclusive relations in order to value and to optimize the use of the public spaces for living together and the production of health. In this direction, the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, governments, non-government organizations and the civil society have alerted the population, professionals and managers of the service and education about the consequences of having a sedentary life linking it to the increase of chronic diseases, they have also stimulated and fostered initiatives and strategies towards the promotion of health. However, our research in Basic Units of Health and with programs of physical activity in Brazil points out the lack of information and knowledge of health professionals and users of the services in regard to the nature and quality of the practices. The bodily practices are components of people’s body culture; they are concerned to the moving human being, to their gesture and their ways of expressing themselves bodily. These practices allow a differentiated dialogue between the user, the community and the health service because they make possible the discovery, the consciousness and the understanding of the importance of the care with the body. Our objective is to expand the ways of interpreting this contemporary movement towards the care with the body, calling attention for the bodily practices in order to relate them with the promotion of health, especially in the time and space of the basic attention in health giving the importance, the relevancy and the complexity of the theme in question.