Image: Getty Images
In an age of negative news cycles and information overload, anxiety is just a click away. But an understanding of interoception, the sense that interprets bodily signals, can help us keep calm
Life in the 2020s can feel like a lot to deal with; one in four people now say they deliberately avoid the news to try to protect their mental health.
The scale may arguably be new, but there are signs that humans began to struggle with these feelings a long time ago. In 1860 the medic James Crichton-Browne complained that Victorian brains were feeling the strain of having to process more information in a month than their grandparents’ brains had in a lifetime. And the Victorians didn’t have social media and push notifications.
One thing that has progressed since Victorian times, however, is our understanding of the processes behind those feelings.
According to a growing body of research in neuroscience and psychology, the key to keeping your head in the modern world lies in learning how to reconnect it with the rest of your body.
This new approach comes from research into a little-known sense called interoception, the process by which the brain senses and interprets bodily signals.
Interoceptive signals provide information on how well we are coping with the world around us and what we need to do to increase our chances of survival.
They determine how we know when to eat, when to rest, and when we need to get away from danger fast.
These interoceptive signals are so important to the brain that they are rarely processed as just “information”, but are packaged into feelings, which act both as an executive summary of our current needs and a source of motivation to fix what feels bad or seek more of what feels good.
Even when they are not screaming for attention, the signals are constantly running in the background of our lives, providing a sense of what the late interoception pioneer Bud Craig called “how I feel now”.
As I explore in my book Inner Sense , whether they whisper or shout, interoceptive feelings form the foundation of everything we think, feel and do, and our awareness of them and interpretation of what they mean makes a huge difference to our mental and physical wellbeing.
Research shows even small changes in heart rate and breathing affect how we think and feel.
“Perceived threat is translated pre-consciously into bodily states of arousal and alertness that contribute to unease,” says Prof Hugo Critchley, who studies interoception and mental health at Sussex University.
Prof Sahib Khalsa, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who focuses on interoception at the University of California Los Angeles, says: “Our nervous system isn’t great at telling the difference between a real threat and a scary headline. Our body reacts as if danger is imminent, keeping us stuck in a loop of chronic low-level anxiety.”
The undercurrent of anxiety is not only draining. It can take a serious toll on our health, increasing the risk of everything from heart disease to anxiety and depression. In better news, interoception is turning out to be a skill that responds well to training and targeted interventions, many of which are relatively simple to apply to our everyday lives.
Most of this research has concentrated on the ability to feel our own hearts from within. Studies of heartbeat detection ability have shown that some people can feel their heart while sitting still, while others only become aware of it when they are exercising or under extreme stress. Research suggests that those who have clearer insight into what their heart is doing are better able to keep a lid on stress and anxiety.
In a series of studies in people with anxiety disorders, Critchley and Prof Sarah Garfinkel, now at University College London, have shown that it is possible to train people with poorer insight into their heartbeat signals to tune in more precisely. After a short period of heartbeat-detection training in the lab, many of the volunteers responded so well they no longer met the criteria of a clinical disorder after training. The benefits were still there a year after the study finished.
The research team is working on an app to bring the training out of the lab, but there are already ways to train your interoceptive sense at home. First, sit quietly and focus on the sensation of your heart beating in your chest. You may or may not be able to feel it. Then do a short burst of exercise until you can feel your heart pumping. Then stop and try to stay tuned in to your heart as it slows down again. Done regularly, or as an add-on to exercise you already do, you should find that you get better at tuning in to your heart.
People who have clearer insight into what their heart is doing are better able to keep a lid on stress
Another way to improve your interoception is via mindfulness techniques. Most forms of meditation involve focusing on the breath, which in itself is a key, stress-related interoceptive sensation. But body-focused, or somatic meditation takes the mind-body connection one step further.
Research by Prof Cynthia Price at the University of Washington suggests this kind of body-focused mindfulness, particularly when combined with therapy to help process difficult emotions, helps to boost powers of interoception and increase people’s confidence in their ability to identify and soothe symptoms of emotional distress.
Yoga, tai chi or pilates, or sessions in flotation tanks, all of which combine breath and movement with a focus on how the body feels from the inside, can play a part. A study published in 2024 by researchers from the University of Puglia found that an eight-week intervention that combined massage, team games, mindfulness and breathing exercises improved volunteers’ ability to detect interoceptive signals, and to use them to regulate their emotions.
Even with all this practice at tuning into your inner sense, there will be times when just noticing that you’re losing the plot isn’t enough to turn things around. When that happens, there are ways to take your interoceptive signals in hand and take steps to change the message at source.
The easiest way to do this is to take time out to slow your breathing to six breaths a minute (inhale for five seconds, exhale for five seconds). This is called “resonance breathing” after the Russian physiologist Evgeny Vaschillo, who discovered that this kind of slow breathing hits a physiological sweet spot that turns off the stress response by activating interoceptive sensors in the chest that signal that it’s safe to calm down.
Studies of resonance breathing have shown that just a few minutes a day can reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression and, over time can improve heart rate variability, a measure of how well the body is responding to stress.
For anyone who has an aversion to breathing exercises, technology is on its way. Researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands, for example, have designed an immersive virtual reality computer game to help police officers learn to regulate their stress levels while in a situation that mimics the stresses of policing.
So far the game has proven to be a hit among officers, and initial results suggest that it does indeed help them to regulate their stress responses. If confirmed in larger studies the hope is to make the game available more widely – including to teens and young adults, who are increasingly suffering from stress-related mental health issues and are in dire need of interventions that work.
As things stand, science is far from having all the answers to how to deal with a world that seems to keep dealing us things to worry about. But what research into interoception can offer is a new approach to mental health that gets us out of our overloaded heads and back in touch with our bodies. Then we might find that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we are more capable of keeping our heads than we think.
Caroline Williams is the author of Inner Sense: How the New Science of Interoception Can Transform Your Health (Profile Books, £18.99). Order your copy at observershop.co.uk to receive a special 20% launch offer. Delivery charges may apply
Social links
Copyright © 2025 Tortoise Media
All Rights Reserved
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.