The trouble with bodies ...

 I punish my body and enslave it ...
Paul
Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. "I do choose. Be clean." Immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean.
Bodies have always been troublesome for the spiritually aware. In truth, bodies have been troublesome for everyone.
Burping, farting, dumping ... bodily functions are the source of acute embarrassment and much merriment. The earliest humor I remember was the sing-song rhyme that began, "In days of old, when knights were bold, and toilets weren't invented ..." Little boys humor! But it doesn't stop with little boys. We have never been quite sure what to make of bodies and what bodies do.
And then there's sex. Most enjoy it. Some loath it. Most talk about it abstractly. Most keep their deepest thoughts, desires, and fantasies to themselves. The sexual body seems to have a mind of it own, and causes trouble for the "other" mind. The body's sexuality pops up at the most inconvenient time (pun intended, at least for male readers!)
Still, we love our bodies and when they get sick we try all we can to get them well again. We keep them clean (most of us). We beautify them as far as we can (hair styles, makeup, body sculpting, dieting, and clothes).
We are conflicted about the body. Many of us have a love-hate relationship with our embodiedness.
Spiritual traditions share the conflictedness. All the great traditions lean toward the ascetic (with disciplines such as fasting). Some go to extremes of self-denial and physical punishment (helped along by Paul's view of the body quoted above). All the traditiions urge moderation of the body's sexual appetites. Some go to the extreme of decrying sexuality as impure and any sexual activity as getting in the way of true spirituality.
At their best, the spiritual traditions give us a balance—a true appreciation of the body's innate goodness, together with an awareness that the body, at times, does need to be controled, its excesses reined in. The Buddha rejected the more severe forms of asceticism to take the middle way. St. Benedict designed a Rule for his communities that was not arduous—disciplined and demanding to be sure, but not extreme. The Laozi gives us the balance of yin and yang, which laid the foundation for the complex and beneficial body practices of  gigong. Jesus healed the sick bodies of those who came to him. And Jesus (God in a human body) rose bodily from death.
I'm a fan of the middle way.
+Ab. Andy
(Incidentally, I have an article coming out in the journal Social Philosophy Today later in the year, "Somaesthetics and Nonviolence," where I look at some of these issues in more detail.)