ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how suffering, embodiment and existential health relate to each other through a phenomenological analysis. The narrative quality of subjectivity should here be taken as a contrast to an atomistic, fragmented view of human existence currently touted as medicine by a bureaucratic health care. Acknowledgment, patience and narration are all equally important in the work of suffering as a part of the transformation of pain. One of the shortcomings of a Cartesian dualism when it comes to suffering is that it makes the relation between the body in pain and the suffering awareness of that pain extrinsic. Suffering is rather a dynamic being in the world where we achieve health through learning how to suffer. If suffering is not a passive sensation but actually an active cultivation of a particular relation to the experiences of pain and misfortune, then suffering is a work that aims at existential health and in a sense already is that kind of health.
