Theories on embodied knowledge such as Bourdieu, Dreyfus and Lave all have troubles about how to view the learning body from either a subjective or cultural perspective keeping the other part in mind. Departing from the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty,the ethics of Aristotle and the cultural ethnology of Thomas Højrup, I wish to argue for a different research approach on embodied learning. I shall argue that Bourdieu, Dreyfus and Lave all miss the dialectics of the embodied subject as interwoven with the cultural context. Consequently, their respective theories fail to account for how the subjective perspectives and cultural contexts are necessarily interwoven – as Merleau-Ponty puts it – or ethical – as Aristotle – would claim or interdependent – as Højrup argues. Being bodily interwoven both increases and sets certain limits to singular opportunities in the researches practice as the bodily presence projects meaning to the observed before any reflection. Educational research is conditioned by the structures of life modes and ethnocentrism of the researcher and the informant. The inclusion of subjective perspectives and cultural conditions enlightens educational research as a process of interpretation where the embodied and life mode structured observation both opens and closes ways of interpretation.