Internal Consciousness: Interoception

While our sense of touch provides information from nerve endings on the exterior surface of our body, the interior of our body is also full of nerve endings. These internal nerves provide interoception or the sensing of internal stimuli within the body. 

Interoception is the sense that we use when we feel an upset stomach, a headache, a pounding heart, a toothache, or a sore muscle. If you massage that sore muscle, you are engaging in both exteroception and interoception, so a combination of both external and internal consciousness. You’ll feel exteroception from the nerve endings in your skin as your own hand touches your skin, and also feel interception from the nerve endings within your muscles as you massage it. You could say that interoception is both an external sense and an internal sense, because it is perceived internally, but deals with our physical body.

Interoception vs Proprioception

A special type of interoception is proprioception, which is your sense of spatial awareness and balance. Proprioception is critical to everyday life. Think of it as a combination of balance and your awareness of where your body is located in space relative to the objects around us.  

Without proprioception, we barely function at all in our physical body.  Proprioception completely breaks down in cases of vertigo, where the whole world starts spinning and all sense of orientation can be lost. It’s a completely debilitating condition.  Other forms of proprioception breaking down occur when you get motion sickness, or stand up too quickly and get dizzy for a few seconds due to a temporary blood loss to your brain.

Physical activity trains proprioception. Running, jumping, dancing, gymnastics, riding a bike, playing sports while we are children all develop our proprioception. As we move towards adulthood, many people drop these activities, usually because exercise and movement takes effort, and often does not contribute to our ability to do sedentary activities that are the focus of many people's working adult lives.  

Messing with PROPRIOCEPTION

Children love activities that mess with their proprioception. Who didn’t roll down a grassy hill as a child, then get up and stagger round with the world spinning around them?  When we temporarily mess up proprioception, we have problems sensing what is up and down, and even gravity seems to play tricks on us.

Training your awareness of both interoception and proprioception is critical in the study of consciousness. As our study deepens, we are refining all our senses and then starting to deliberately manipulate them.    　

Practice: Interoception and proprioception

Stand up in a space where you have room to move in all directions a bit without hitting someone or something else.

Start to slowly move your body. Swing your arms a bit, rock back and forth, take small dance steps, whatever you feel comfortable doing.

As you make these movements, direct all your attention to sensing what your body feels like in space as you make these movements. Tune in to your sense of balance, focusing just on how the pressure on your feet changes as you move.

Then switch to what your body feels like internally. Sense the subtle feelings inside your muscles, joints, chest, or stomach as you move. Notice the difference between the external sensation of your feet touching the floor and the internal sensation of weight shifting through your hips, knees, and spine. This is the bridge between proprioception and interoception.

Now begin to make your movements slower and smaller. Lift one arm and feel not just the movement itself, but the even smaller internal sensations that accompany it. Can you sense the stretch in the shoulder, the slight pull in the chest, the engagement of muscles you would not normally notice? Shift your attention to your breathing and heartbeat as you continue moving. Observe how movement changes what you feel inside.

Next, bring your body gradually toward stillness, with your arms loosely at your sides. Stand upright and allow yourself to settle. Keep your eyes open at first and simply notice your balance. Even when you think you are standing still, your body is constantly making micro-adjustments to remain upright. Tune into these tiny corrections. Feel the sway of your body, the pressure moving subtly across the soles of your feet, and the way your spine continually organizes itself against gravity.

Now gently close your eyes.

With vision removed, your proprioception becomes more obvious. Notice how much more strongly you become aware of your body’s location in space when sight is no longer helping you orient. Observe whether your balance changes. Do you feel steady, or do you notice subtle movements that were previously hidden by visual reference points?

No, shift your attention deeper into interoception. Feel the sensation of you. Notice your heartbeat, perhaps in your fingertips or chest. Sense the rise and fall of the breath inside your chest and abdomen. Feel the temperature within your body, the subtle pulsing in your hands, or the quiet hum of muscular effort that keeps you upright.

Now experiment gently with space itself.

Without moving, sense the volume your body occupies. Sense the distance between your feet, the height of your head above the floor, the width of your shoulders in the room. Then extend your awareness so that you can sense where your body ends and whatever is outside your body begins. Sense the space immediately around you as if your proprioception is no longer limited only to skin and muscle but includes your body's presence in the space around you.

This is where proprioception begins to shift toward a more abstract exploration of space.

Stay here for several minutes. If you feel any dizziness, simply open your eyes and return to ordinary visual orientation. There is no need to force the experience.

As you continue, notice whether your sense of “where you are” starts to shift. Does your body feel solid and precisely located, or slightly more diffuse? Some people notice a feeling of expansion, floating, or subtle movement even while standing still. These are natural effects of placing sustained attention on this consciousness sense.

When you are ready, slowly open your eyes again. Let your visual sense reconnect you with the room. Take a moment before moving.

Finally, reflect on the experience. Did your body feel more alive from the inside? Did your sense of balance become clearer? Were you able to feel the shift from the physical body to a more abstract sense of space?

With practice, this exercise becomes one of the fastest ways to transition from normal waking consciousness into deeper meditative states, because it trains the exact transition point between body awareness and internal, more abstract sense of space. The further you progress in your consciousness training, the more time you will spend in this internal, abstract concept of space.

Reflection: Interoception and proprioception

• Have you ever deliberately tried to improve your interoception and proprioception? For instance, with 3D visualization exercises, yoga, balance exercises, gymnastics, etc.

• Do you enjoy movement, sport, dance, physical activity etc, or do everything you can to avoid them?

• Are you scared of heights, falling, or swinging?

• Are you attracted to extreme sports that involve jumping, flying, or moving around obstacles with speed and precision?

• Have you ever been under a general anesthesia where all interoception was suspended? What was it like going into and out of that state?

• Do you enjoy looking up at the stars, or being on high places where you can see large distances and have an increased sense of space? 

• Have you ever had a serious breakdown of proprioception (balance)? What were the circumstances?

• When you are tired, hungry, thirsty or stressed, is your sense of space and balance affected?

• Overall, when you think of your sense movement through space, do you feel positive or negative?

Make some notes in your journal about your consciousness sense of interoception and proprioception.