The Body
Appears in thirteen chapters
Where the image appears
The body is the hexagram's own hidden anatomy: whole hexagrams read themselves from bottom to top as a human figure, toes at the first line, head at the sixth, so that the progress of a situation becomes the ascent of a sensation through the flesh. 31 Hsien - Influence (Wooing) is the fullest example, tracing how feeling rises: "The influence shows itself in the big toe," then in the calves, then in the thighs, which "run after without a moment's hesitation" whatever the heart desires, upward through heart and neck until at the top it reaches mere talk, "The influence shows itself in the jaws, cheeks, and tongue," influence with nothing real behind it.
52 Kên - Keeping Still, Mountain quiets the same body part by part, calves, hips, trunk, jaws, and its Judgment turns anatomy into meditation instruction:
KEEPING STILL. Keeping his back still
So that he no longer feels his body.
Forgetting the body in stillness is the book's nearest approach to Chuang Tzu's sitting and forgetting. The darker hexagrams ascend the body too. In 21 Shih Ho - Biting Through escalating punishment consumes toes, nose, and ears; in 63 Chi Chi - After Completion and 64 Wei Chi - Before Completion the fox wets first tail and then head, so that the whole crossing is measured on an animal's spine.
The body also registers the cost of a divided will. The line "There is no skin on his thighs, And walking comes hard" appears verbatim in both 43 Kuai - Break-through (Resoluteness) and 44 Kou - Coming to Meet: a man flayed by his own halfway measures, unable either to sit or to walk. Where the hexagram is a body, every hesitation, every excess, and every stilling of the heart has its exact anatomical address, and reading the line means finding where in oneself the time is happening.