Pain Points with Max Shen Jozef Frucek on Active Inference, Tai Chi, and the Future of Health
In this episode of Pain Points, I’m speaking with Jozef Frucek, a dear mentor of mine and a pioneer in the world of movement.
He uses embodied cognition to combine ideas from Tai Chi, wrestling, and physical theater to create a wholly unique approach to movement that he calls the Fighting Monkey Practice. We recently finished a paper called Beyond Biomechanics, Fighting Monkey and the Enactive Inference Approach to Health and Movement.
I'm really excited about this interview today because Jozef is, as you'll hear, an incredible storyteller. But more importantly, through his work he is articulating one of the most inspiring visions of health, which of course relates to my own work on pain. We begin by discussing his background, learning Tai Chi for 20 years in an experimental slovakian movement community before explicitly discussing our paper.
(You can read the transcript online)
“ Health is not absence of illness. Health may be described as your capacity to be connected to people . That's also being healthy, right? That's very important. I think we are too obsessed by staying healthy, trying to do everything right. We force our bodies and we stress our bodies enormously. We constantly follow some sort of protocol. We are constantly hearing what we should be, what exercise we should be doing, but we really forget how to listen to ourselves.
We rarely find our authentic voice. We only follow ideas of others, but we do not sense what actually is happening in our physiology.”
[00:00:00 - 08:00] Origins and Early Movement Journey
* Transition from basketball to acting
* Discovery of movement community in Slovakia
* Meeting Tai Chi masters and the 20-year journey with Ming Wong
[08:00 - 14:00] Philosophy of Teaching and Permission
* The importance of teacher permission vs. open learning
* "Stray dogs" approach to students
* Evolution doesn't create solutions, it creates problem-solving
[14:00 - 22:00] Theater, Sports, and Asian Philosophy
* How Tai Chi informed theatrical practice
* Table tennis and father-son relationship
* Journey through Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and Korean traditions
[22:00 - 33:00] Existential Pain and Storytelling
* Childhood encounters with mortality and darkness
* Theater as simulation and agency creation
* "I have something and I'm afraid of losing it" - the core of suffering
[33:00 - 45:00] The Question Dance
* Interactive dialogue experiment
* Exploring meaning, perception, and embodied understanding
* The power of questions over answers
[45:00 - 58:00] Scientific Philosophy and Embodied Practice
* Active inference and nested agency
* Extended mind and embedded cognition
* Breathing as autonomous intelligence
[58:00 - End] Health, Agency, and Creative Healing
* Health as agency rather than absence of disease
* Joy and pleasure as guides to healing
* The vision for more accessible creative movement practice
Links
Shen, Max, and Jozef Frucek. "Beyond Biomechanics: Fighting Monkey and the Enactive Inference Approach to Health and Movement." (2025). Link
About the Host
Max Shen is a former machine learning researcher turned pain and cognition researcher. After facing chronic pain in grad school, he now uses computational tools at MIT to explore pain from a systems and somatic lens.
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