Interoception and Proprioception: How the Body Learns, Self-Regulates, and Improves
Interoception and Proprioception: How the Body Learns, Self-Regulates, and Improves
Brain Bee Introduction (First-Person Consciousness)
When someone said they had “changed on the inside,” I used to think it was just a figure of speech.
But I began to notice that before any thought changed,
the body had already changed.
Breathing becomes different.
The chest tightens or releases.
Posture shifts without noticing.
So I became curious:
how does the body perceive itself?
That’s when I discovered two words that almost no one explains,
yet sit behind nearly every practice that claims to “heal”:
interoception and proprioception.
1. The body is not an object — it is a system that feels
In most of school, we learn to see the body as a thing:
a collection of organs,
a brain that “gives orders,”
a support for the mind.
Biologically, this is not how it works.
The body does not wait for commands from the mind.
It is constantly:
sensing,
adjusting,
anticipating,
self-regulating.
This process occurs before language, before reflection, and even before explicit awareness.
2. What interoception is (in simple terms)
Interoception is the body’s capacity to perceive what is happening inside.
Simple examples:
heartbeats
breathing
hunger and satiety
visceral tension
emotional sensations (tightness, emptiness, warmth, heaviness)
When someone says:
“I’m anxious,”
“I feel at peace,”
“I feel stuck,”
before it becomes a word, interoception is already at work.
Important:
Interoception is not thinking about the body.
It is feeling the body happening.
3. What proprioception is (and why it is often ignored)
Proprioception is the capacity to perceive:
body position in space
posture
balance
movement
muscular alignment
You use proprioception when you:
walk without looking at your feet
know whether you are slouched or upright
feel discomfort in a posture
sense that you are “off-center”
Proprioception organizes the body in space.
Interoception organizes the body from within.
Together, they form the foundation of conscious experience.
4. What happens when interoception and proprioception are disorganized
When the body lives under chronic stress, trauma, fear, or sensory overload:
interoception becomes “noisy”
→ everything feels like threat or discomfortproprioception loses reference
→ posture collapses, rigidity increases, breathing shortens
This generates what we call anergy:
tensions that are not metabolized
energy expenditure without functional return
a sense of blockage or being stuck
In this state, the body does not learn — it only survives.
5. Why so many body-based practices genuinely help people
Here is the key point of the series:
Practices said to work with “energy” are almost always reorganizing interoception and proprioception.
Examples:
conscious breathing → regulates internal signals
slow movements → restore bodily axis
body awareness → reduces interoceptive noise
touch or pressure → recalibrates body maps
The real outcomes are:
reduced anxiety
a sense of relief
greater mental clarity
the feeling that “something released”
The effect is real, even when the explanation is symbolic.
6. Where the words “energy,” “flow,” and “blockage” come in
These words appear because:
the body feels first,
the brain names later,
accessible scientific vocabulary is often missing.
Saying “blocked energy” often means:
chronic muscular contraction
restricted breathing
autonomic signals stuck in alert
a disorganized body map
The experience is real.
The language is metaphorical.
7. Why this is especially human (and organic)
Unlike non-organic systems:
humans learn through the body,
the brain changes with experience,
DNA adapts to environments over time.
Interoception and proprioception are bridges between:
body,
environment,
culture,
language.
That is why body-based practices work best:
away from screens,
in safe environments,
with a sense of belonging,
with time for the body to respond.
8. An important limit: feeling is not explaining everything
Acknowledging the power of these practices does not mean claiming that:
every disease is emotional,
every cure is energetic,
every experience is universal truth.
It simply means:
the body has real self-regulatory mechanisms that have been forgotten.
They work best when:
they do not become dogma,
they do not create dependence,
they do not require fixed belief.
Post-2020 Scientific References (Suggested)
Interoception & autonomic regulation
Berntson, G. G., & Khalsa, S. S. (2021). Neural circuits of interoception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(1), 17–28.
Khalsa, S. S., et al. (2021). Interoception and mental health. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 22, 63–76.
Seth, A. K., & Friston, K. J. (2022). Active interoceptive inference and emotion. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 377.
Proprioception & body maps
Proske, U., & Gandevia, S. C. (2021). The proprioceptive senses: their roles in signaling body shape, body position and movement. Physiological Reviews, 101(3).
McGlone, F., et al. (2021). The body matrix and interoceptive integration. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 128.
Embodied cognition & learning
Anderson, M. L. (2021). Embodied cognition and the predictive brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(6).
Barrett, L. F. (2020). Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. HMH.
