ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contemporary scientific and cultural modes of being that have led to the systematic marginalisation of the spiritual and the existential in how bodily movement is mostly represented, researched and discussed. It traces how medicalisation and healthism have taken over the field of exercise sciences. The chapter utilizes cultural constructions of distance running as an example of how an ever-increasingly mechanistic view on the body-self has become the dominant understanding of the sport. Although there are good reasons to view health as one central aspect of movement culture practices, our culture is witnessing a situation where health is becoming the primary or even the only purpose of exercise science and recreational sport practices. Although existential writers generally have had little to say about exercising for health, they have shared a concern about certain developments central to modernity and the alienation of human beings from the centre of their being and their world.
