Interoception is a sense. An important one, too. And one that a regular Kundalini Global practise can help you in exploring and, from there, bring the potential for massive change in how you experience yourself and your life.
Sit comfortably, where you are right now, and close your eyes.
Notice what you feel inside your body.
Can you feel your heart beating? Is it thumping, is it fast? Slow?
Is your digestive system noisy? Can you sense it moving?
Do you need to use the bathroom?
Can you feel any tension in your face? Around your shoulders?
Any noticing that was possible for you is made so by this extraordinary sense of interception.
What is the physiology?
Amongst all of our organs, within muscle, on our skin… even in our bones, we all have receptors that gather information from the inside of our body and send it to brain.
Our brains, generally, decipher all of these messages and allow us to feel… to feel hungry or tired or itchy or aroused.
This seems like a pretty simple concept in our sense of ourselves… that our digestive organs can send signals to our brains to tell us we should eat something.
What we don’t, so often, consider is that this ability, interoception, is also playing a huge (often unconscious) role in feeling our emotions.
As Carolyn Cowan can often be heard saying in classes and workshops, “we don’t think our feelings… we feel them!”
Our experiences of different emotions will express themselves in a huge variety of ways within our bodies. If you see or hear something that makes you angry, perhaps you are aware of heat rising upward… blood flushing inside your neck and head. Perhaps you sense your jaw tighten. Perhaps your heart rate changes. If you feel nervous, perhaps your heart is racing and perhaps you become hyper-aware of your stomach which is feeling particularly fluttery.
We may notice such sensations, or not. If we do not, it is more likely that we will not identify our emotions as accurately as if we did. And noticing how we feel is hugely important to all of us relative to our emotional and physical wellbeing.
Interoception and emotional regulation
If you have done any Kundalini Global classes, the teacher will have invited you, hopefully often, to check in with how you feel. They will invite you to soften after posture and breath, to stay inside, eyes closed, and notice. Notice how you feel.
Interoception is an aspect of living as a human being that is in direct relationship with our decisions to take action. When we feel, in our bodies, that in some way our sense of self isn’t ‘right’ it motivates us to act, to check, to eat if we are hungry, to use the bathroom when we need to pee… to… what? When we feel angry? Stressed out? Sad? Left out? Unsafe? Insecure?
The answer to that will be different for each of us, and likely bound by strategies we have set up for ourselves in childhood… but… when our powers of interception are worked with, when we build more conscious awareness of how we feel inside our bodies, it opens up all kinds of new possibilities.
One of them, one we really love, is this:
“I don’t like how I feel, my heart is pounding, blood feels like it is rushing to my face, I have tensed my jaw, my stomach feels tight… I am really angry…
What do I choose to do with that?”
You do have a choice…
Of course, if what we choose to do could continue to be to act out: shout or slam doors or send a curt email.
But to be aware, to create that pause, to register that the action taken is always a choice… it offers the possibility of making a different choice. One to take over the system… with a breath, with a stretch, with a cold glass of water (there are hundreds of ways you can do it).
And building a greater awareness of how you feel, and how you can change how you feel, is the start of this journey.
For some of us, interoception can go a little awry. An example may be that the increased heart rate that comes from sexual arousal may, unconsciously, make you think, ‘I am anxious… why am I anxious?’
This happens because the neural pathway relative to your system, your mind, associating that feeling in your body with sates of anxiety, where you may have spent a lot of time, gone toward countless times, has become hardwired. But it can be changed, over time. Again, the practise of noticing different states of being and of knowing you can bring change at will… it will bring change here. The more we notice the faster that longer-term change will come.
Come to a class and begin to notice how you feel inside your body
Interoception, and playing with this wonderful sense, holds hands beautifully with a Kundalini Global practise.
It is an excellent, inbuilt, sense and ability we all have. It also plays a huge role in being able to be self-aware and, from there, reflective. It is also in relationship with our problem solving abilities and ability to be empathetic and intuitive.
Come to a class with one of our teachers and play with your sense of interoception… notice how you feel. Notice how it feels, perhaps, to be in your body and not lost in your mind. That, in itself, may be a new experience for many. It is where most of us start our journey with Kundalini Global.
Interesting studies and resources:
Learn more about the Neuroscience of Interoception:
The Emerging Science of Interoception
Read about, and see, maps of emotional states and universal bodily sensations
Read a fascinating study on interoception and emotional regulation.
