In an interview earlier this month, Robert Falconer shared an insight on the critical role of “interoception” in mental health and spirituality.
In essence, this is the ability to sense your own internal subjective state.
The higher your interoceptive skills, the more connected you are to what’s happening inside, and the more you can tune into the signals your body is sending you.
Falconer suggests this is why some autistic people flap their hands.
Due to low interoception levels, they‘re unable to feel where their hands are.
So flapping serves as a mechanism for sending additional information to the nervous system to “locate” them.
Interestingly, poor interoceptive capacity also correlates with eating disorders, anxiety, and major depressive disorder.
Which got me thinking…
If so many mental health difficulties are linked with poor interoception — could the opposite also be true?
That the people who are most content, most actualised, and most spiritually alive in this life, may have high interoception?
I.e. an unusually deep connection and attunement to their inner body?
This seems plausible to me.
In the interview, Robert also shared that interoception exists on a continuum.
And that it’s a trainable skill.
So by proactively strengthening it, we can increase our resilience and capacity for flourishing in this life.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt anxious or neurotic when I’ve been deeply rooted in and felt grounded in my body.
However, I can almost guarantee I will be if I spend too long up in my head, lost in thought.
For me, this has been a good reminder to focus on strengthening this connection every day.
Especially when doing cognitively demanding work, to take breaks throughout and frequently get back into and fully “inhabit” my body, so what I’m creating is coming from the depth and groundedness of my whole system, rather than the flightiness of my thinking mind.
