This paper approaches the difficulties faced by professionals and students to interpret cultural meanings and senses constructed from health practices. The main objective is to update the theoretical instruments that are available to the interpretative analysis of this construction process. A list of linked topics is provided, introducing two health-related paradigms: the classical one and that of vitality. Then we discuss a social structure design that, together with the practitioners and a set of elements, triggers reactions and social transformations. We explore the conception of perception as social construction and the concept of habitus as mediation between structure and praxis. We created figures to position the interpretative elements. The conclusion is that it is in the role of practitioner that we can build new meanings and senses and "be built" by them, and that health practices may produce new models to face the sanitary crisis, as if they were "escape points" within a reality of social inequalities.
Health practices; Meanings and senses; Theoretical instruments
