In this article, I address the Taoist conception of human life cycle from the perspective of an Anthropology of the body, that investigates not only beliefs and ideas about the body, but also bodily practice as embodied experience. According to Taoism, the coming of old age does not have to be lived as a time of decrepitude and illness, as Taoists recognise the possibility of reversing the movement that leads to death. Such traditional concern with health and longevity connects the Taoist practices, though exotic and highly unkown in Brazil, with the contemporary obsession with keeping young and having the perfect body in globalized societies. At the same time, contemporary embodied reinterpretations of Taoism can be understood as an alternative to consumers' bodies. Taoist longevity is an effect of an aesthethics of existence, embedded in a whole way of living, that contrasts with the dazzling speed of capitalist lives.
aesthethics of existence; embodiment; life cycles; Taoism
