Stick To Practice To Get Closer To The Tao: An Anthropological Interpretation Of The Bodily Practices Of Tao Gong Practitioners

Before the "body turn" in the Western humanities and social sciences in the1980 s,the body in philosophical discourse had been neglected and suppressed,and there was a long-standing theoretical dichotomy between mind and body.The establishment of the new field of "body studies" has,in a sense,challenged the traditional Western dualistic paradigm of theoretical research.Scholars began to reflect on their past indifference to the creative power of bodily existence.The subject of productive thought itself was "forgotten","indifferent" and "omitted".With the wave of the "body turn",the relationship between culture and the body can be re-examined.In response to this shift,this study combines body theory and martial arts to explore the relationship between the body and martial arts culture.Martial arts practice is a practice that takes place on the practitioner’s body,which acts as a medium to connect martial arts culture to the practitioner.They achieve their own physical fitness and martial arts pursuits through the practices that occur on their bodies.Therefore,it is a feasible research path to reconceptualize and reinterpret martial arts culture from the perspective of the body.Taking the martial arts practice of a contemporary folk martial artist as an example,this article attempts to use his personal experience and bodily feelings as an entry point to analyze in detail the process of forming the meaning of body and culture in martial arts practice through the lens of anthropological body studies.Based on the participant’s observation of the practitioner’s daily life and martial arts experience,the article further illustrates that martial arts and its practitioners give each other certain subjectivity in this activity by describing the individual experience and bodily perceptions in the process of martial arts practice.The detailed observation and description of the practitioner’s martial arts practice reveals that the practitioner,through the gradual generation of individual physical experience and perception,develops a mutual significance of subjectivity with martial arts culture and even the idea of Tao.This further explains the relationship between martial arts and the practice of martial arts.Through the discussion,this paper tentatively concludes that: firstly,martial artists do not passively absorb martial arts culture,but they comprehend it through their physical sensations in martial arts practice,accumulate certain physical experiences,and form their own body cognition,so as to reinterpret martial arts culture;secondly,physical experiences are dynamic and changeable,and martial artists will repeatedly revise their existing body cognition in martial arts practice,so as to develop Second,physical experience is dynamic,and martial artists will repeatedly revise their existing physical cognition during martial arts practice,thus developing a system of self-concept and further acting on it in martial arts practice,so that they can reach the martial arts realm they want to pursue,and then touch or reach the level of the martial way;third,martial artists use the body as a medium to compensate for the split between mind and body,so that they are in a dualistic and non-oppositional relationship.