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The phenomenological understanding of the body, which Merleau-Ponty (1963) calls the "living envelope of our actions" (p. 188), is central to the human lifeworld, and thus central to phenomenological method. For him, the body and behavior are bearers of meaning that are known immediately as well as reflectively by the body. "The body is the basis for reflection and there is no possibility of pure reflection" (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 62). Shapiro (1985) points out that the study of language and the development of linguistic methods in the past few decades have influenced all fields including phenomenology and have resulted in an "assertion of the primary and pervasive influence of language in experience" (p. xiv). He argues against the exclusive use of language-centered reflection as the core of the phenomenological method of inquiry. Instead, his work attempts to show how an "investigator can avail himself or herself of reflective modes and moves that are largely explicable in terms of a phenomenology of the body" (p. xvii), which he defines as the embodiment of our consciousness.

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