This paper explores the role of the lived body in maritime professional training. By focusing on how instructors include students’ subjective experiencing bodies as an educational resource and context for directives and demonstrations, the study aims at informing training of professionals for survival in emergency situations onboard ships. Drawing on a mobile video ethnography and on phenomenological analyses of the presence/absence of the body in experience, the study illustrates how instructors direct students’ attention towards or away from their appearing corporal field depending on the stage of the training. The article documents three instructional practices incorporating students’ lived embodiment during training: coping with distress by foregrounding the lived body, backgrounding the lived body for outer-directed action and imagining others’embodied experiences. The study contributes to our understanding of intercorporeal practices in instructional interaction and guidance in simulation-based vocational training. © 2021, The Author(s).