Satsang of Prabhushri Swami Amar Jyoti -- LOC 19#1.6

So attend to your body, whether it is in illness or health. Try to cure it if you can. There is nothing wrong with that. But do not get involved so much in your body, as if curing it or keeping it healthy is your life’s mission. Swami Vivekananda gave the example that a banyan tree lives for five hundred years—but it is still only a tree. If your whole life’s mission is keeping your health intact, your life is wasted. Pay about ten to fifteen percent attention to your body and then forget about it.
In meditation, what do we do? First we are physically conscious: trying to maintain the asana posture or sitting pose, quieting the body, then we go within. We don’t meditate upon the body! The body is a vehicle. You sit in it, keep quiet and then go within. But that ten to fifteen percent attention to body maintenance should be sincere, not haphazard. Let’s say you want to write something. You need a chair, a table, a pencil, a piece of paper. First you arrange these things and then you sit to do your writing. If while you are sitting you go on thinking about the table and chair and paper and pencil, you will not accomplish anything. In meditation you go beyond that to find your totality, your Spirit. And when you get near to the touch of your Spirit, do you think you will worry about your body? No. It’s left far behind.