Dive deeper with body awareness

Your body systems and processes beat to a rhythm typically outside of conscious awareness. For instance, being able to accurately count how many times your heart beats in a minute, without touching your skin, or knowing the relative fullness of your bladder can help you understand your body’s needs for balance and efficiency. Other more elusive processes, such as the rate of digestion of food and the level of oxygenation of your blood are just a few examples of how your body manages life every day without your awareness. These processes, which scientists refer to as interoception, are foundational to sustenance.

Meet interoception: a look from the inside

Interoception means to look inside. It is a process of the nervous system to sense, interpret, and modulate signals within the body. Subtle body processes, such as the rate of respiration, digestion, and processing of pain, can go unnoticed unless they become problematic. Other experiences have been included as interoceptive processes including hunger, thirst, fatigue, muscle tension, itch, tickle sensation, slow caress (like gently stroking skin), inflammation and skin temperature (Nord & Garfinkle, 2022).

Interoception awareness is important because the more you notice aspects about your body, the better you will be at making wise decisions in caring for it.  For instance, choosing when and how much to eat to support vitality, knowing how much exercise is enough or too much, or responding to signals of danger or safety for yourself and others. Harnessing these rhythms may also enhance your intuitive skill set.

Interoceptive body and mind reading

Interoception is a process that starts with new information taken in by the body, in a “bottom-up” communication. Signals from your skin and organs are called afferent neurons, which collect data that are sent to the spinal cord and brain. The brain then collects, interprets, and responds by sending information to the body via neurons from the central nervous system to the motor neurons, muscles, and glands. These efferent neurons send information in a “top-down” communication. The up and down flowing of information is a constant feedback loop. It forms an internal ”sixth sense“ which guides your choices, experiences, perceptions, and interpretation of reality.
 
 

Benefits of interoception awareness

Research studies have found that people who are more aware of their interoceptive functioning have better emotional processing, adaptability, and resilience. They also are found to have improved emotional regulation, decision making, empathy and behavioral regulation (Gibson, 2019).The mind’s ability to understand and respond to information produces clearer thinking, quicker response time and greater flexibility among varying states of arousal quickly and accurately.

Cautions about interoception awareness

There are times when the greater body and mind awareness called for with interoceptive processes may create or exacerbate distress or overwhelm. This may be due to mislabeling cues from the body, or responding in an exaggerated way. When this happens, including confusing the past with the present, people may become overly alert (hypervigilance) and fearing the worst (catastrophizing). Pay attention to these signals, as there may be important information which needs to be respected and addressed.

A word of caution: do not proceed with interoceptive awareness with those who find it stressful or who become emotionally unstable. There may be a history of abuse, trauma, or neglect impacting self-awareness. In other cases, symptoms of dissociation or emotional numbing may arise. It may be important to seek support from trained mental health providers and a team of care professionals to find solutions that are helpful rather than harmful. Check out ACEP’s directory of energy practitioners for assistance near you.
 
 

Interoception training

If focusing on the body and mind is safe and welcoming, there are many ways to build greater awareness and accuracy with interoception processes. Contemplative mental training and some forms of breathwork which incorporate attunement to bottom-up and top-down processes can be beneficial, as long as the mind and body are relaxed. Practices which result in increased heart rate variability (such as HeartMath) and increased vagal tone have also been shown to be successful when enhancing interoceptive awareness (Gibson, 2019).

Suggestions for practice

If you want to explore your interoception awareness, you can:

• Track your breath frequency, quality, pacing and movement in your body. Try to guess how many breaths you are taking per minute. Then use a timer to count your breaths to see if you are accurate. Find ways to increase your sensitivity to fluctuations in breathing patterns.

• Count heartbeats per minute with and without touching your wrist or chest for sensory feedback. Try measuring with both resting and active states.
   
• Focus on areas of tension or relaxation in the body including pain, itch, or temperature differences. Some areas of the body may be more sensitive or harder to identify.

• Notice states of hunger and thirst throughout the day. You could also set an alarm to check in with your body at various times.

If you become agitated or tense while doing interoception practices, stop. Instead, you may want to try some simple calming exercises like these from ACEP’s Resources for Resilience, particularly those suited for soothing and connection: soothing butterfly hug, simplified self-havening, calming hug or calming breathing. The Resources for Resilience page includes videos and printed instructions which describe each calming exercise.

Use your best judgment about whether to try interoceptive awareness tools another time, or let it go for now. There may be other things to focus on before interoception awareness is right for you.

At your service

One of the beautiful aspects of living is that the body’s natural health-promoting processes continue with or without your direct awareness. Interoceptive body processes will be engaged in silent and dedicated work on your behalf, so you can survive and thrive. If the time is right, a deeper conversation with your sixth sense of interoception through internal body awareness may be waiting for you.

Learn more about interoception and its relationship to intuition from author Lori Hops’ online classes on Embodied Intuition. If you want to learn how researchers report about intuition, listen to this podcast on the theory and science about intuition, and an article in ACEP’s Energy Field magazine on models of intuition. You can also explore how to work with your subtle energy centers or chakras and intuition as described in this blog.

Author

Lori Chortkoff Hops, PhD, DCEP is a licensed psychologist in Westlake Village, California, USA. She is certified in Comprehensive Energy Psychology and Logosynthesis. Lori is a past ACEP president (www.energypsych.org) and is a Reiki master. Learn more about Lori at www.drlorihops.com. Lori teaches online intuition classes and offers personal intuition consultation.

References

Gibson, J. (2019). Mindfulness, Interoception and the body: A contemporary perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02012.

Nord, C.L., & Garfinkel, S. N. (2022). Interoceptive pathways to understand and treat mental health conditions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26, 499-513. doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.03.004