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The Art and Science of Interoception

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Today at a Glance

interoception, mindfulness, somatic practice

Become a fearless explorer of your inner landscape

What if I told you that you could turn up the dial of your everyday experience?

With sufficient practice, you could enhance your capacity to sense and track your internal state, as if upgrading from a 1960s television to experiencing the movie of your life at an IMAX in 4K.

This is the power of interoception—yet most people have never heard of it.

I’ve often talked about my major injuries and how complex the physical rehab process was.

Not only was it physically challenging, but also mentally and emotionally.

As I embarked on the long process of dealing with the pain, I began to explore parts of myself that had lain beneath my conscious awareness.

Growing up in the German education system, Somatic Practice 101—aka learning how to listen to your internal physical and biological feedback—was, unsurprisingly, not part of the core curriculum.

So over the past six years, I dedicated myself to exploring the physiological, psychological, and emotional terrain of my inner landscape.

This path has included hundreds of breathwork journeys, mindful movement sessions, and meditation on various topics.

I now feel like an entirely different person. I notice myself making more intuitive decisions, with less emotional reactivity and a sense of greater aliveness in my day-to-day experience.

"Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed."

We have more than just five senses

Most people think we only have five senses — sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.

But neuroscience has found that we have at least four additional senses—and the most underrated and practical of them is known as interoception.

The word has two parts: “intero–” refers to “internal” and “–ception” to “awareness.” In essence, it means awareness of our internal state.

Intero-ception can be contrasted with “extero-ception,” which involves receiving data through the external senses.

Research has shown that individuals with higher interoceptive awareness tend to have better emotional regulation, decision-making skills, and overall mental health. As someone who previously struggled with these aspects, this information was a revelation.

Three reasons to flex your interoceptive muscles

Make more informed decisions

Imagine you have a superpower that lets you listen to your body’s secret messages:

  • Feel when you’re getting stressed, so you can calm down before you get too upset
  • Know when you need sleep, just like your body tells you it’s hungry
  • Wake up and know if you’re ready for a big day or need more rest

It’s like having a wise friend who always gives you good advice – except that friend is you!

Avoid the burnout dump truck

Your body is a biomechanical machine. Constant stress wears it down, making it fragile. Worse, stress hormones numb us, so we stop noticing the damage. It’s like turning off the warning lights in your car!

We call this the “feather, brick, dump truck” effect. Many high-achievers ignore small signs of trouble (the feather), and push through bigger issues (the brick), until they hit total burnout (the dump truck). Only then do they start listening to their body.

How I know? I’ve been there myself in 2015.

An additional benefit: enhanced body awareness not only helps you but also improves your ability to understand and connect with others’ emotions—in other words, it boosts your capacity for empathy!

Enhanced emotional regulation

Often enough, frustration has ruined my entire day.

Let’s boil down productivity to emotional regulation for a moment, and intentional emotional regulation requires the ability to sense, track, and feel the sensations that get interpreted into emotions—the capacity to interocept.

When there is a lack of interoception, we’re unable to fully feel emotional sensations. Unfortunately, this means they remain beneath our conscious awareness and instead are projected onto others — or we overreact in ways that destroy our long-term goals.

Now that you know what interoception is and what it’s good for, you want to know how to develop (or improve) it. Then read on…

How to improve your interoception

Imagine that you’re learning how to cook. The process would require you to cultivate sensitivity in your palette that senses six basic tastes — sweet, sour, salty, bitter, savory, and umami. Along these lines, our interoceptive palette includes:

  • Mental (racing thoughts or foggy vs. calm and alert)
  • Awareness (expanded and receptive vs. narrow and protective)
  • Posture (open and relaxed vs. tense and collapsed)
  • Breath (deep, slow, and soft vs. shallow and rapid)
  • Emotion (gratitude, joy, sadness, etc.)

Just as with a chef composing a five-course tasting menu, there is an infinite number of flavor permutations within these categories.

As with training your flavor palette, interoception is a skill that can be cultivated through curiosity and intentional experimentation. And that’s our mantra at The Energy Lab.

There are three experiments that I’ve used to build my own interoceptive capacity.

Five-minute A.P.E. check-in

A.P.E. is an acronym that stands for “awareness, posture, and emotion”—the three critical components of your interoceptive capacity. All can be enhanced through training.

By paying attention to these three aspects, you’ll bring awareness to the state of your nervous system and, therefore, any subtle filters through which you’ll experience your day.

Students going through my training have reported noticeable changes from doing this for just five minutes a day for 30 days. Neuroplastic changes lead to increased receptivity, permanently enhancing your internal self-awareness. Here’s an example practice:

  1. How is your awareness (A) right now? If you’ve been reading this piece, you might have forgotten about the space above or behind you. Ask yourself if you feel distracted and eager to jump to other tabs or if your awareness is settled. Do you feel sleepy or alert? Focused or frantic?
  2. Turn your attention to P for posture. If you’re reading this on an iPhone, you might be hunched over with a rounded spine. Briefly scan your upper body to see if there are any points of tension. Don’t try to change anything for now—just notice. How does your head feel resting on your neck? How do your jaw, face, and eyes feel? Perhaps there’s some sensation behind the eyes. Can you feel your breath and notice its shape, and its rise and fall? Can you even feel your heartbeat?
  3. Finally, there is E for emotion. Imagine that you’re a scientist objectively reporting on internal sensations or a weatherman giving an update on the weather systems of your own body. Do you feel any noticeable emotions? Recent neuroscience tells us that emotions are just sensations plus context. What might be the emotional tone at this moment? Joy? Curiosity? Sadness? Frustration? Gratitude? Anger? It’s okay if you don’t connect to anything right now; this is only about listening intently to what is already present.

Be a scientist of your own experience

Now it’s over to you. How will you take these ideas and apply them to your life? The most effective way to learn is by tuning in to the subtleties of your internal experience during the vicissitudes of daily life.

This is especially true when you feel reactive, frustrated, or triggered by something or someone, as these are usually the moments when there is the most to sense, track, and feel.

Learning these practices has radically shifted my life as well as the lives of those I’ve worked with.

The real magic of interoception is that you can practice it at any moment—whether you’re exercising, sitting on a train, or walking through a park. As with physical training, you can train your ability to bring your attention inward and explore.

So, what do you do with all that information?

Well, I’d recommend you start with the A.P.E check-in and see how that goes.

However, don’t just try it once. To experience the magic, commit to doing it for 30 days straight.

That’s it for today.

Hope you enjoyed it (and learned something new).

As always, stay fit, stay active, and enjoy your life.

Ketty & Markus

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