Embodying Daoist Internal Arts: Walking the Line between the Reification and the Instrumental Use of Cognition

Abstract

Existing research into the body pedagogics of cultural practices emphasises tacit/pre-reflective/corporeal knowledge, yet the role of cognition requires further non-dualist/non-conflationist theoretical elaboration. This article contributes to this task through an ethnographic case study of Daoist Internal Arts (DIA) – eastern self-cultivation practices including neigong, qigong and tai chi. Daoist Internal Arts practitioners employ cognitive thought to facilitate a phenomenological shift from a Cartesian/dualist to a non-dualist mode of embodiment whereby mind and body are experienced in their ontological unity. Yet the effective use of thought in this process requires practitioners to walk a fine line between reifying cognition as a substance separate from corporeality, thus opposing mind and body, and utilising it as an instrument to address corporeality and foster mind–body unity. In underscoring this ambivalent character of cognition, I outline a sociological perspective of embodiment that avoids both dualist and conflationist accounts of cognitive and corporeal dimensions.