Into the Mountain: Challenging Hegemonic Discourses of Mountaineering and Expanding the Relational Field

Interoception can be broadly defined as the sense of signals originating within the body. As such, interoception is critical for our sense of embodiment, motivation, and well-being. And yet, despite its importance, interoception remains poorly understood within modern science. This paper reviews interdisciplinary perspectives on interoception, with the goal of presenting a unified perspective from diverse fields such as neuroscience, clinical practice, and contemplative studies. It is hoped that this integrative effort will advance our understanding of how interoception determines well-being, and identify the central challenges to such understanding. To this end, we introduce an expanded taxonomy of interoceptive processes, arguing that many of these processes can be understood through an emerging predictive coding model for mind–body integration. The model, which describes the tension between expected and felt body sensation, parallels contemplative theories, and implicates interoception in a variety of affective and psychosomatic disorders. We conclude that maladaptive construal of bodily sensations may lie at the heart of many contemporary maladies, and that contemplative practices may attenuate these interpretative biases, restoring a person’s sense of presence and agency in the world.

This study contends that modern colonialism is successful not only because the ruling country subjugates through superior technical and economic resources, but also because the rulers propagate cultural subservience of the subject people. Exploring the myths, fantasies and psychologicaldefenses that went into the colonial culture, particularly the polarities that shaped the colonial theory of progress, Nandy describes the Indian experience and shows how the Indians broke with traditional norms of Western culture to protect their vision of an alternative future.