The Bodies and health practices of children and young people is a contested area in research and within wider public debates and discourses (James 2000, Prout 2000, James & Hockey 2007, Colls & Hörschelmann 2010). Questions arise as to how young people are best prepared to deal with health issues, now and in their future lives, and how society impacts on young people’s perceptions of health matters (e.g. James & Hockey 2007, Lupton 2012). Furthermore, what role does the school play in relation to these issues (Jensen & Lund 2007).

This paper provides findings from a study concerning the perspectives of adolescents on health and health related issues. The particular objective of the research is to focus on embodiment in adolescence and investigate embodied experiences (Csordas 1994, Finlay 2008, Shilling 2012, Lupton 2012) as a conditional factor for adolescents taking part in school based health promotion as well as living healthy lives.

The study has its theoretical outset in child sociology (Prout 2000, James 2000), phenomenology/anthropology/sociology of the body (Csordas 1994, Shilling 2012, Lupton 2012) and health promotion research (McQueen & Kickbusch 2010, Dybbroe et al. 2012). The body is conceptualized as the basis of pre-reflexive being, life and experience. In this respect, humans do not only have but are lived experiencing bodies. The subjective body represents a particular embodied conscience; the subject's access to the world is through the body and bodily experience. Thus, the body conditions the subject's relation to the world (Finlay 2008). At the same time, human bodily experiences reflect and are influenced by social and cultural representations (Lupton 2012), which then, in relation to health, have an impact on how adolescents perceive health as a concept, health education in school as well as their own health practices.

The research questions are as follows:

What are adolescents' bodily experiences in relation to issues of health? And, how do these experiences influence adolescents' perceptions of and their conditions for participating in school-based health promotion.

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