Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:11] Hello and welcome to Deep in your yoga practice. I am Lauren leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga in Kansas City, Missouri. And today we will deepen our yoga practices by talking about interoception and proprioception. So we will be talking about the science of embodied awareness. So we will explore what interoception and proprioception actually are, how they relate to yoga practice, why they matter for safety, depth and nervous system regulation, and how to train them off and on the mat. So first, know that yoga is about awareness so much more than it's about movement. Have you ever been in a pose before and realized you had no idea where your foot was? Or have you ever felt off in your body without quite knowing why? Maybe you've noticed at some point that breath awareness changes everything about your practice. What do these all add up to and mean? Know that yoga is often described as a practice of awareness. But awareness isn't just something that's happening mentally. It is something sensory. Two of the most important senses in yoga are interoception and proprioception. To put it very simply, interoception is sensing what is happening inside your body. And proprioception is sensing where your body is in space. So let's go a little bit more deeply. What is interoception? Interoception is the ability to send sense internal bodily signals. So examples of things you might witness within your body are breath, heartbeats, hunger and fullness, temperature, maybe muscular tension. You might notice emotional sensations that might be things like somatic reactions to emotions like tightness in the chest or butterflies in the stomach or feeling of heaviness.
[00:02:12] All of these things are linked to interoceptions. We're noticing these internal experiences. This is processed in the insula, which is a region of the brain that is linked to emotional awareness, self awareness, decision making and nervous system regulation. Interoception is the foundation of emotional intelligence and nervous system regulation. In yoga, we can practice interoception by noticing the quality of our breath, by feeling effort versus strain. Maybe by sensing subtle shifts in energy, we can recognize emotional responses and postures. Maybe we're understanding our own fatigue or hunger or stress. Maybe we're feeling the difference between stretch and pain. So we can think of interoception as this skill of listening inward. And this is such an important part of practice is tuning inward and understanding what is happening within us. This gives us so much important information for self connection. And we experience this through so many different practices that we call yoga, such as meditation, pranayama, or asana or posture. And in a world where we become more and more disconnected with ourselves due to use of technology, due to stress, due to just over demand and overload, interoception becomes this vital skill because information is empowering. It empowers us to make better choices for ourself, even when the world is pressuring us to make choices that work best for the world around us. Now let's shift to proprioception. Proprioception. Proprioception is the body's ability to sense position and movement and spatial orientation. So this is knowing where your limbs are without looking. Maybe it's balancing without staring at your feet. Maybe it's this ability to adjust your posture automatically. And maybe it's even things like walking without having to watch or think about every single step. Our proprioceptors live in our muscles, in our tendons, in our joints and in our fascia. And they constantly send information to the brain about joint angle, muscle length, movement direction and speed. So it is like the body's internal gps. We build proprioception through our yoga practice. So this might be finding alignment without mirrors, knowing when your hips are level.
[00:04:57] It's feeling the weight distribution through the posture. Maybe it's something like balancing and tree pose or adjusting in your transitions. Maybe it's the ability to refine your posture with subtle cues. Proprioception is the skill of locating yourself in space. And without proprioception, yoga becomes guesswork again in a world that is quite stressful. And if one has experienced experienced trauma, this can disrupt interoception and proprioception by keeping the nervous system in a chronic state of fight, flight or freeze. And this manifests as dissociation, muted sensations, maybe overwhelming bodily signals at times. We might not be able to feel where our body is in space. Or you might be even over attuned at times to our internal sensations. And then it becomes very difficult to regulate our emotions and ensure our safety. And that's why practices like yoga are so vital for this modern age. So let's talk about first the difference. So we'll clarify a difference between interoception and proprioception and then why these senses matter so much in yoga. So interoception occurs inside the body and proprioception is noticing your body in space. Space interoception will cue you into your breath, heart, hunger and emotion. And proprioception aligns you with your position and movement. Interoception is internal awareness. Proprioception is spatial awareness. For interoception. You might ask yourself, how do I feel? For proprioception, you're asking where am I? So these senses matter so much in yoga. First for safety. So being attuned to our interoception and proprioception help prevent injury. They help you recognize strain versus stretch. They support a sustainable practice as well. I also spoke to the nervous system. They help with nervous system regulation.
[00:07:03] Interoception supports emotional awareness and proprioception supports a sense of grounding and stability, also a sense of friendliness with your body. Interoception and proprioception also create more depth in your practice. It helps move yoga from an external experience to one that's more internal. They help build a sense of self trust. They can enhance our meditation as well. And just a reminder that interoception can feel challenging for people with anxiety, with trauma, with chronic stress. But yoga can help rebuild tolerance gradually. So it might be a bit uncomfortable to explore interoception, but we can become more resilient to it. And it can become this beautiful tool to build this window of tolerance. Interoception is a skill that we can develop, not just something that we innately have, especially again if we experienced trauma, if we have chronic anxiety, stress, et cetera. So yoga is really wonderful at training interoception and proprioception.
[00:08:13] It can train interoception through breath awareness, body scans, slow movement, pauses between postures, and an invitation to notice sensations without reacting or judging. We also can experience interoception through meditation. And proprioception is trained through things like balancing poses, slow transitions, things like resistance, like pressing into the floor, maybe by using varied terrain. So practicing on a mat in a studio is wonderful. But practicing yoga outside or on different surfaces can be a wonderful thing to to train your proprioception as well. And weight shifts and stability work are so good for training this as well. For my yoga teachers out there, a couple tips to help train proprioception are cueing sensation, not just shape. I also highly recommend cueing directionally to points in the room or your environment and not just with the body.
[00:09:14] It can help build proprioception to think of reaching your arm toward the front of the room instead of just saying reach your arm forward or extend your arm forward. Training our proprioception and interoception on the yoga mat applies to everyday life as well. So it can help so much. Particularly, interoception helps with emotional regulation, knowing when to rest, recognizing burnout. It can help with tuning into our hunger cues and eating more intuitively, being aware of our stress and then making choices around that. And training our proprioception can help with our coordination with preventing injury. It helps with posture and therefore breath. It helps athletic performance and helps us age well as well, so we can stay agile and mobile as we age, which is so important.
[00:10:09] So these senses don't just make you better at yoga, they make you better at living in your body. So how can we improve our interoception and proprioception? To build interoception, you can do things like pause and feel your breath. And you can do this on the mat or off. You might do a body scan before bed, just noticing your body and its internal sensations from head to toe. Before you go to sleep, you can notice your emotional sensations again, practicing on the mat or off in different situations. And you can pause at different times and ask yourself, what am I feeling right now? So instead of constantly being pulled by external forces, we can pause and do an internal check in. We can also build our proprioception. This might be practice balancing. Maybe we are moving more slowly and intentionally in our daily lives. Maybe on the mat we close our eyes if we feel safe in different postures and train where we feel our body is in space. Without that visual input, maybe we can press our hands and feet into surfaces to feel that feedback. And maybe we explore different movement patterns. This might be exploring different movement practices or exercises. And it can also be really simple things like noticing if you always carry your bag on one side of your body and then taking it to the other and noticing how that affects your movement. Maybe you're noticing how you bend down to pick things up during the days and you decide to bend your knees. You can be more conscious and aware of how you use your body in a way that is safe and maybe that is playful and that moves through various ranges of motion. So before we close, let's do a short practice. So if you're not driving, if you're somewhere safe, you might close your eyes for a moment or let them soften and take a moment to feel your breath.
[00:12:11] And then taking a moment to also feel your body in space and take a moment to ask, how do I feel?
[00:12:22] Then where am I?
[00:12:27] You can open up your eyes. My invitation for you is to take more moments of awareness today to do this. Check in, how do I feel and where am I? Know that interoception and proprioception are the hidden senses that transform yoga from exercise into embodiment, that help you feel more connected with yourself, with your body, and with the world around you. So thank you so much for taking this quick dive into interoception and proprioception with me today.
[00:13:02] I love talking about movement and what is going on behind the scenes in a yoga practice. And if you would like to learn more about this, let me know. I'm happy to do future episodes and I would love to see you in class to experience this together.
[00:13:20] Thank you so much for joining me. Until next time. Om Shanti Om Peace.
