Why Your Mind Needs Your Body

“We do not have bodies, we are bodies.”

Western Culture has long separated the mind from the body; and the mind, with its home as the brain, has been privileged as the source of intellect, with the rest of the body annexed as mere matter.

But the new field of ‘embodied cognition’, which draws on the latest advances in neuroscience and psychology, offers a richer, more holistic view of intelligence that involves the whole body.

At the RSA, author and education reformer Professor Guy Claxton introduces this new field, explores the far-reaching implications of the persistence of the Cartesian mind/body ‘error’, and reveals how an appreciation of the whole body’s intelligence can enrich all our lives.