The body becomes the object of intense study and investigations with the modernity. But he was not the object of indifference. Even with the denial of the bodily pleasures that the average age undertook, the body was object of attention and normalization, being understood in a double meaning, the sacred and the profane. The relation body and nature gains different contours with the birth of modern science, giving rise to new dualities, between matter and spirit or psyche. Such dualities have produced enduring and persistent meanings in bodily practices and body conceptions. Physical Education as an area of knowledge and intervention that has in the body culture its privileged object, inherits and re-signifies such conceptions, reproducing or breaking with dualistic practices and understandings of the relation body and nature. This essay seeks to discuss the relationships between body and nature as well as its implications for the formation of the academic and professional field of Physical Education. We seek to reflect on the social-historical constructions on the body, especially those centered on biological aspects. We understand that the relationship body nature is an important point of understanding the uniqueness and continuities on the conceptions of body. In this way we undertake a qualitative, historical and sociological analysis centered on authors who elucidate these questions, such as: Corbin, Courtine e Vigarello (2010), Gélis (2010), Suassuna et al. (2005), Vaz (1999), Csordas (2008) and Le Breton (2003). Based on the elements discussed by the authors, we identify ruptures and continuities in relation to conceptions and practices with the body, remaining a desire for the split between body and spirit/mind.