INTEROCEPTION: LEARNING TO LISTEN TO THE VOICE OF THE BODY
Interoception: Learning to Listen to the VOICE of the Body
AND Why Interoception Matters for Health and Emotional Regulation
Most of us have been taught to trust our thoughts. Far fewer of us have been taught how to notice what our bodies are telling us. Yet every moment of every day, our bodies are quietly communicating with us.
A tightening in the chest before saying yes to something we'd rather decline.
A sinking feeling in the stomach when something doesn't feel quite right.
The warmth of contentment after spending time with someone we trust.
The heaviness that tells us we're exhausted, even when our minds insist we should keep going.
The gentle sense of enough after eating.
The pull towards a deep breath after holding tension for hours.
This ability to notice and make sense of our internal bodily sensations is known as interoception.
THE VOICE OF OUR BODY
Interoception (internal perception) is the process by which our brain senses and interprets signals originating from within our body, from the organs, tissues and vessels. This perceptive process is happing moment-by-moment, consciously and unconsciously. However, it is not simply the brain passively receiving messages from the body. Contemporary neuroscience increasingly understands it as an active, two-way process. The brain is continually sensing what is happening inside us, and - rather than merely restoring balance after something changes - interpreting those sensations in light of past experience and current context/scenario, and anticipating what the body may need next in terms of resources or ‘budget.’ This process is known as allostasis.
In other words, the “voice of the body” is not a simple stream of objective facts. What we feel is shaped by an ongoing conversation between bodily signals, our environment, our memories and what our brain has learned to expect.
Recent high-resolution brain-imaging research supports the existence of a widely distributed brain system involved in both interoception and allostatic regulation.
Far from being a niche area of neuroscience, interoception underpins many aspects of everyday life. It helps us recognise when we're hungry or thirsty, too hot or too cold, tired or energised. It contributes to how we learn from birth onwards to regulate emotions, establish boundaries, make decisions on courses of action and experience a sense of connection with ourselves and with others. And it explains why a racing heart can mean excitement to one person and imminent danger to another.
Stress, TRAUMA and DISRUPTED Interoception
Research has indicated that stress and trauma can significantly change our sensitivity to interoceptive signals. Neuroimaging studies of trauma demonstrate decreased activation in the prefrontal cortex, and brain areas related to interoceptive awareness (Herringa et al., 2012; Van der Kolk, 1994). Following trauma, survivors commonly experience a sense of disconnection between their mind and body (Van der Kolk et al., 2014).
Some people may become disconnected from bodily sensations, since they may be so used to detecting the feelings and behaviours of the threatening people around them - always on the alert for having to flee or defend themselves - to be able to notice their own inner world, while others become acutely aware of them because their nervous system is constantly on high alert, monitoring for danger. They may therefore do everything they can to suppress them and/or numb themselves from having to stay with those feelings in present-moment awareness, making them more susceptible to destructive coping-habits, such as addictions. These are understandable adaptations.
They also indicate that trauma may alter not only what we notice, but what our brain expects. More recent theoretical neuroscience is increasingly thinking about PTSD and complex PTSD a bit differently, through the lens of what are called ‘predictive-processing models’. Essentially, our brain does not simply wait for sensory information to arrive and then respond to it. Because it is always trying to budget our energy and make sure there is enough to go around for essential metabolic processes - keeping us as alive and well as possible - it also constantly makes predictions - partly based on previous experience (conditioning) - about what is likely to happen next.
After chronic threat or trauma, those predictions may understandably become biased towards danger. If someone's nervous system has repeatedly learned that the world, relationships or even sensations within their own body can signal danger, it makes sense that it may begin to anticipate threat.
A racing heart after exertion may therefore be interpreted not simply as a bodily sensation, but as a warning of imminent attack.
A tightening in the stomach may quickly become ‘this place i’ve walked into isn’t safe.’
Part of trauma recovery may involve gently creating new experiences that allow those predictions to become more flexible: discovering, over time, that a bodily sensation can be noticed without automatically meaning danger, and that there may be more than one possible response.
Bodies re-learn through re-experiencing.
This remains an evolving theoretical framework rather than a settled explanation of PTSD, but it offers an interesting way of understanding persistent hypervigilance and bodily threat responses.
How to Cultivate Interoception Through Mindful Practices
Contemplative practices, such as meditation, and the mindful movement with breath characteristic of postural yoga, have been shown to improve interoception. This is how Dr Bessel van der Kolk, renowned expert in the treatment of PTSD, author of global bestseller The Body Keeps the Score (see my Resources page) and co-developer of Trauma Center, Trauma Sensitive Yoga, an intervention that places strong emphasis on rebuilding interoception in the wake of trauma, describes it:
“The greatest frustrations I see in clinicians around the world trained in the treatment of trauma, is that people keep getting stuck. They get stuck in having too many feelings, overwhelmed by fear and feeling shut down and unable to engage. And so the greatest challenge with traumatised people is to help them be present in the here and now, and talking therapy alone generally does not do that.
So it’s necessary to explore how people can become still and focused and present, and a major avenue for this is Yoga and other traditions that come not from Western psychological traditions but that have been practiced in China and India and Africa for thousands of years.
These practices have to do with ‘interoception’. Noticing yourself, feeling yourself and learning to calm yourself down - through movement, through breathing - practices that help us to calm down and come into the present. So someone, whenever they feel, may become so freaked out that they cut themselves. But when, in a [trauma sensitive] Yoga class, the Yoga teacher says, “notice your leg,” or “notice your abdomen when you twist,” the calm voice of the teacher and the quiet encouragement to just focus and not dissociate and to notice feelings and that they keep changing, that they feel different when focusing on different parts of the body, means that person becomes more aware of what goes on in their body.
And the next time someone doesn’t say good morning to them, or they’re working very hard, they don’t get overwhelmed by their feelings. They might notice what’s going on in their body, and instead of cutting, may take time to breathe and restore that inner sense of calm without mutilating themselves or popping a pill. It’s a function of learning to trust yourself and know yourself, but it can only happen if you practice regularly and eventually establish a sense of ownership over your own body.”
I relate strongly to the scenario Dr van der Kolk describes, since for about 12 years I lived with bulimia. Instead of feeling, I would binge - emotionally eat - and then purge, rather than giving space to try to understand where the deeply uncomfortable feelings I was experiencing were coming from and what they were trying to tell me. Developing a regular yoga practice - a practice of moving mindfully, noticing and developing my capacity to stay with what was present - was my path to full recovery.
Meditation, Yoga and Breathwork for Interoceptive Awareness
Body-breath-mindfulness-based practices can help us develop awareness of - and greater capacity to stay with - the sensations arising within the body.
The research into exactly how this happens is still developing, but our understanding has become considerably more nuanced. Rather than simply making us “better” at detecting internal sensations, practices such as yoga and meditation may help change the quality of attention we bring to those sensations: noticing without immediately judging, suppressing or reacting to what we feel.
A 2025 systematic review examining 33 studies of yoga and body awareness found an overall trend towards improvements following yoga interventions. Of the studies comparing yoga with a control group, around three quarters reported significant differences favouring yoga. Interestingly, improvements were more consistently detected when researchers measured body awareness as a multidimensional capacity - not simply how accurately someone could detect an individual bodily signal.
This distinction matters.
Because in fact, one 2024 study found that ten weeks of yoga did not improve participants' ability to detect specific cardiac or gastric signals, suggesting that the effects of yoga on interoception may be more complex than simply making us more accurate sensors of our bodies.
Meanwhile, a 2025 meta-analysis of 29 studies found that mindfulness-based interventions produced measurable improvements in self-reported interoception, with those changes also associated with improvements in psychological distress. Research specifically involving people with trauma-related symptoms has similarly found small-to-moderate improvements in both interoception and trauma symptoms following mindfulness-based interventions, although researchers caution that we don't yet know whether improved interoception is itself one of the mechanisms causing those therapeutic changes.
One emerging possibility is that these practices help us develop not simply body awareness, but a different relationship with bodily experience.
We practise noticing.
Staying curious.
Recognising that sensations change.
Discovering that discomfort doesn't always require an immediate reaction.
It's important to note that there's no one-size-fits-all, and what works for one person may not work for another. For some trauma survivors, becoming aware of their body once again can initially feel overwhelming. It's something that needs to be built gently, in tolerable doses, a straegy known as ‘pendulation’ in some somatic therapy practices, or ‘titration’ in others. Moreover, re-building interoception in the context of trauma recovery is not about becoming hyper-aware of every sensation we experience. Rather, it is about gradually developing a more trusting relationship with our bodies, learning to recognise their signals with curiosity rather than judgement.
It's recommended to start small and with guidance, if possible, and to be consistent. In my own teaching, I aim to equip clients with simple tools that they can use by themselves anywhere and anytime, and encourage the development of an at-home self-practice, so that they are empowered to self-regulate.
Why Interoception Matters for Health and Emotional Regulation
Again, earlier research often spoke about interoception as though having more bodily awareness was automatically better. The picture emerging from more recent research is considerably more nuanced.
Interoception is not one single ability. We may differ in how accurately we detect bodily signals, how much attention we pay to them, how we interpret them, and how safe or threatening those sensations feel. Someone experiencing anxiety, for example, may be acutely aware of a racing heart while interpreting that sensation as evidence that something terrible is about to happen. Someone experiencing dissociation may barely register bodily signals at all.
The path, therefore, is not necessarily to become more sensitive to every syllable of ‘the voice of our body.’ It is, rather, to develop a more flexible, curious and nuanced relationship with what it is telling us; with those signals. For example, to be able to notice them, interpret them in the wider context of a scenario in front of us in the present, rather than reacting from the past, and rather to decide how we wish to respond. And the response we choose may over time be different to the knee-jerk reaction that for years we habitually had. Meaning, ultimately, different potential outcomes, life playing out differently.
The value of interoception isn't simply that we become better at noticing what's happening inside us. It's that those sensations become a broader palette of information we can respond to, empowered to make different choices.
We notice fatigue before burnout.
Anxiety before overwhelm.
Hunger before irritability.
Relief before we rush on to the next thing.
Awareness doesn't automatically change anything, but it can, over time, create a little more space between what we feel and what we do next.does give us more choice about what we do next, which means more flexibility, more adaptability - in the face of life’s uncertainties.
Interoception is one of the capacities I explore within my body-led work with stress and trauma—gently developing greater awareness, agency and choice through the body rather than simply trying to think our way into change.
Further reading on the practice and principles of TRAUMA CENTER, TRAUMA SENSITIVE YOGA
Further reading on WHY SOME TRAUMA THERAPIES START WITH THE BODY INSTEAD OF THE STORY
