* Interoception: beyond the 5 senses *

Interoception is the ability to recognize the stimuli and sensations that our body sends us. It is the art of inhabiting and understanding this beautiful physical package so full of connections, receptors, cells and delicate tissues that send us the most varied messages, those that we do not always hear. However, practices such as mindfulness can help us to achieve it.

Some people say that deep down, we should be grateful not to have this sense as well developed or as perfectly tuned as it can be sight and smell. Nobody can be pleasant to hear how a leukocyte faces an infectious agent, how our gastric juices are segregated or how is the sound of a neuron when dying for example.

Understanding the meaning of interoception, of all those signals that our body sends us helps us to act in a healthy way in our day to day.

However, we must say that we do not have to go to these extremes to appreciate what the sense of interoception can really allow us. So and only as an example, something that was demonstrated in 2011, thanks to a study conducted by the psychophysiologist Hirokata Fukushima, is that this function is closely related to empathy.

When we connect with someone to understand their emotions, their needs or concerns, our body reacts in a very particular, almost fascinating way. The affective states of others are like stimuli that are almost never indifferent to us: the brain reacts and the heart reacts, sometimes even the skin.

Understanding in a deeper way the mysteries of the interoceptive function would allow us to know a little more about how the body and mind relate. Likewise, and not least, it would also help us to take better care of our health by understanding those indicators that sometimes warn us that something is not right inside us.

Interoception in our daily life

People dedicate a good part of our time to self-care. We take care of our hygiene, we feed ourselves in a balanced way, we exercise, we like to show good image, we choose clothes according to our style, we comb our hair, we make up, we take care of our skin and we try to have a restful night's sleep.

Now, curious as we may seem, there is something that we overlook in this routine: listening to our own body. We neglect what he says when he sends us, for example, a message of pain: tension accumulated in the never, a headache that hammered our temples in a crushed manner ... Our mind is stressed and the whole body reacts to this destabilizing emotion without it let us pay the attention it deserves, without our perceiving what really happens inside us.

Athletes, on the other hand, tend to have a well-developed sense of interoception. Good athletes are able to discern when a physical sensation is normal or pathological, when that pain in a twin can be due to a simple overload or be the sign of a muscle damage. Sometimes, they are even able to travel with pain for hours to reach the goal or give the best of themselves throughout a game. The mind-body connection in these cases presents an effective alliance to improve our performance when we need it.

Interoception and the insular crust

Interoception has been a very common field of study in the field of psychophysics, the psychology of emotions, learning and biofeedback. Thus, in recent years it is common to find every so often a new work with which to delve a little more in this special and at the same time important in the human being.

One aspect that is interesting to keep in mind is that basic processes such as thirst, hunger, sleep or the sensation of cold or heat are messages that our sense of interoception sends us. They are mechanisms that guarantee our survival and of which, we must be aware. Others, on the other hand, are more subtle and usually unnoticed.

If we ask now about what structure or area of

our brain regulate these processes, we can refer to a work published in 2012 in a neuropsychology journal. It is the insular cortex, a very deep area located on the lateral surface of the brain, where processes such as awareness of our emotions and bodily sensations are regulated.

The insular cortex is a control center where, in some way, that union is also always interesting and unknown to us between the mind and the body ...

Mindfulness and interoception

We pointed to it at the beginning: a way of becoming aware of our sense of interoception is through mindulness. This practice based on meditation and mindfulness allows us to connect with our physical sensations to relate much better with our own being and thus understand our mind, our needs and the way in which the environment and its processes impact our body.

Being able to listen and discern each of the signals that our body sends us daily is a way to invest in health and quality of life. We would manage stress much better, we would even anticipate indicators of possible pathologies (such as hypertension). In addition, we could for example be more productive by knowing our limits, being aware that we are not machines, but a wonderful but delicate network of cells, tissues and emotions ...

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        All the images were taken from the public domain

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                                       @joelgonz1982