Most of us have no trouble identifying our five senses. They are after all, the ones we depend on to see, hear, smell, touch and taste our way through life. But hands up who knows their three further senses? Proprioception and Exteroception aside, there is another, hidden sense that is key to mental wellbeing.
Interoception is our ability to have a sense of how we feel inside our bodies at any given moment.
Signals from deep within the visceral connective tissue (also known as Fascia) communicate with the brain when, for instance our body temperature, blood sugar levels, heart rate or blood pressure needs adjusting.
This all happens subconsciously, so that without needing to think about it, we always have an optimal balance in our physiology to maintain health. Some interoceptive signals however, are conscious, at least some of the time. We can feel, with full awareness, when our muscles are tense, our stomach feels in knots, we feel nauseous, ticklish, hot, cold, hungry or aroused.
Interoception, at its most basic level, addresses the question: 'How do I feel?' .
These conscious interoceptive signals (also known as somatic markers) from deep within our bodies have an affective and motivational quality, meaning they interact with the brain to impact our emotional state, so causing us to take action in order to maintain a sense of psychological and physiological safety and equilibrium.
Ever been at a gig where your mammoth effort to find that golden spot near the stage was scuppered by a creeping need to pee 5 minutes before the band is on? The desperate negotiation between your full bladder and your brain weighing up the consequences of leaving your spot that ensues is the interoceptive communication-loop in overdrive.
Maintaining a healthy relationship between our internal feeling states and our emotions is vital to our health, new research is increasingly showing. Interoceptive awareness is key in helping us regulate our emotions, and makes us less susceptible to anxiety and depression.
Conversely, a huge body of research is currently showing ways in which these conditions can be treated through interoceptive exposure therapy and mindfulness training to help modulate emotional response, memory recall and decision making.
So does bodywork have a role to play in helping us cultivate the embodied awareness necessary to heal and maintain mental wellbeing?
Myofascial Release therapy may be an effective resource for those of us struggling with our emotional wellbeing.
80% of the peripheral nerves found in fascia are free nerve endings and 90% of these are interoceptive. The fascia is now known to be our most important sense organ (having more sensory receptors than the skin), helping us, amongst its many other functions, to have a sense of self as embodied awareness.
A Fascial Release treatment helps us to slow down and make contact with barriers of tension that might have accumulated through years of restriction and tellingly, also through repressed emotion.
The force, or pressure used during a treatment never aims to break down restrictions, but instead helps us bring awareness to the places we brace and hold ourselves, allowing subconscious holding to become integrated and to release naturally.
In this way, as we gradually get to know ourselves from the inside out and learn to map what (and how) we feel in our bodies, we gain not only physical ease and increase movement, but also broaden and deepen our connection and relationship with ourselves.
Myofascial release, when adapted to include, nurture and expand emotional intelligence, is a vital part of the armory in treating anxiety, dissociation and depression naturally.
Pieter offers myofacial release massage at Healing Space Mondays to Saturdays.
£71 for 1 hour / £96 for 90 mins