You might have heard the expression 'listening to your body' before, as a means of determining the limits that you can reach when exerting pressure or effort with respect to your physical capacity.
We sometimes go beyond our physical limits in the hopes of achieving a goal as quickly as we possibly can, or simply because we think that we can produce more results by exerting more effort, much like the adage 'no pain, no gain'. At times, we tend to ignore, for example, hunger and the signals that our body sends because we want to discipline ourselves in order to achieve our fitness goals.
But there is now a growing interest in what these signals actually mean, and how they work in the context of brain-body integration. Scientists and researchers have now placed quite a considerable amount of attention to this dynamic, which is called interoception, defined as the process of sensing internal bodily signals that give us an idea of our current physical and mental state or condition.
In The Conversation's weekly podcast above, Gemma Ware, executive producer for the show, interviewed neuroscientist Sarah Garfinkel from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University College London to learn more about interoception and how it works, and how we can use the knowledge of it to better take care of ourselves, both physically and mentally.
For example, Garfinkel's focus in her work is helping people with autism, particularly in regulating anxiety. People on the spectrum generally have difficulty in identifying sensations of hunger, satiety, and anxiety, so they are unable to course-correct before it becomes unbearable.
With interoceptive training, people with autism were able to become more attuned to their internal bodily signals so that they can respond with the proper course of action to prevent their anxiety from getting worse, among other things.
One particular exercise you can do to check whether you are in tune with your body's internal signals is to count the number of heartbeats you make without any physical contact, similar to the one done in the podcast. Using an oximeter, you can check how you fared, and that will give you an idea of how interoceptive you are.
There are sensations that our body gives off and sometimes we don't understand why we're feeling such or from where they're originating, but being aware of them is one path toward maintaining our health, physically and mentally.
The quote mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, I think, perfectly summarizes the point of interoception, and it was by René Leriche, "Health is life lived in the silence of the organs."
(Video credit: The Conversation/Youtube)
