Simon Cox on the Subtle Body

Simon Cox is a scholar and practitioner whose work traces the history of the subtle body across Taoist, Tibetan, medical, alchemical, and Western esoteric traditions. He studied history at Oxford, spent six years training in a Taoist context at Wudang Mountain, and later wrote his dissertation at Rice on the genealogy of the subtle body. In this conversation, we talk about internal maps of the body, Taoist and Tibetan somatic cartographies, the challenges of translating contemplative practice across cultures, and how different ways of inhabiting the body may open into different experiences of reality. Toward the end, we touch on the ontology of pain, cultural differences in interoception, and embodied cognition.Timestamps00:00:00 – Intro and Background Context00:03:50 – Development of Internal Maps00:08:00 – The Neijing Tu and Practice-Based Internal Cartography00:11:30 – Porting Taoist Practice to the West00:14:00 – Qigong, Neigong, and Modern Chinese Practice Categories00:17:20 – Taoist Diversity and Tibetan Subtle Body Maps00:21:10 – Medical vs. Spiritual Maps00:25:10 – Paradigms, Tibetan Medicine, and the Three Turnings00:27:30 – Two Unsatisfying Views of the Subtle Body00:32:20 – Novel and Inevitable Syncretisms 00:35:00 – Historicizing and Genealogies00:38:10 – Reality, Truth, and Embodiment00:40:00 – Awareness, Inhabiting the Body, and Taoist Theories of Mind00:43:20 – The Mind Outside the Body00:46:00 – Fate, Ancestors, Purpose, and Lines of Affinity00:49:00 – Polyontology, Political vs. Policing, Frequency Resonance00:54:20 – Esalen, Western Somatics, and Theory vs. Practice00:56:50 – Paradigm Shift, New Materialisms, Distributed Agency/Intelligence01:00:50 – Ontological Pluralism and Eurocentrism01:05:30 – Mutual Vulnerable Knowing and Minds Knowing Minds01:09:30 – How Scientists and Technologists Can Contribute, and The Ontological Turn01:15:10 – Embodied Mathematicians01:20:00 – Technology with Different Ontologies, Tsien Hsue-shen, Cybernetics01:26:30 – A Genealogy of Pain01:31:20 – Ontology of Pain, Christian Suffering vs. Buddhist Suffering01:35:00 – Biocultural Disease and the Social Transmission of Pain01:40:00 – Simon’s Current Projects: Esalen, Harvard, Energy, and Qi01:43:10 – Eugene Gendlin and Therapeutic ProcessExcellent interview with Simon Cox on The Integral Stage where they actually talk more about the subtle body as a term.The Subtle Body: A Genealogy by Simon Cox This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit essays.debugyourpain.com