Interoception and the Original Feeling: How the Body Learns to Be
Interoception and the Original Feeling: How the Body Learns to Be
By Jackson Cionek – Brain Bee Ideas / Inosciência
Introduction – The Body Feels Before It Thinks
Since I began studying the mind, I’ve realized the body always arrives first.
Before words, before belief, before reason, there is a silent feeling that organizes experience.
This feeling is not spiritual or intellectual — it is biological.
It’s how the body perceives itself from within: what neuroscience calls interoception.
It is here, in this invisible space, that consciousness begins — the body as a sensitive territory where being learns to exist.
1. The Mind Is Born from the Feeling Body
The Damasian Mind, proposed by Antonio Damasio, shows that consciousness arises from the integration of two streams:
Interoception — feeling the interior of the body;
Proprioception — sensing the body in space and time.
This integration creates the sense of “I” as continuity.
But this “I” is not an idea — it is a living process, sustained by electrical rhythms and biochemical and affective signals.
Consciousness doesn’t begin by thinking — it begins by feeling the body live.
Even before language, a baby already monitors its own states — hunger, warmth, breath, heartbeat.
Each sensation is a micro-dialogue between body and environment.
It is the first kind of knowledge — a wordless wisdom.
2. Interoception: The Invisible Map of the Self
Interoception translates the body’s internal state into brain activity.
It reports temperature, oxygen, digestion, pain, pleasure.
Yet beyond physiology, it shapes the sense of presence.
When the heart races, we name it emotion; when the stomach tightens, we call it intuition.
The body speaks — the brain only translates.
Recent studies identify the anterior insular cortex as the main hub for this integration.
Here, sensation becomes consciousness and emotion.
When this dialogue aligns, we enter Zone 2 — the state of fruição, calm, and clarity.
When it breaks, we fall into interoceptive noise: anxiety, disconnection, emptiness.
3. The Original Feeling – Time Before Time
In early life, the baby doesn’t separate inside from outside.
The mother’s touch is part of its own body.
That fusion is the origin of belonging — the moment the body learns that existence means being in relation.
This original feeling is the root of trust.
Every later form of faith, ethics, and creativity depends on this interoceptive foundation.
When culture imposes speed and distraction, the body loses its axis of coherence — and being becomes fragmented.
4. When Feeling Is Lost: Interoceptive Noise
We live in an age of overstimulation.
Screens, fast dopamine, and constant noise shift our attention outward.
The body stops listening to itself.
The result is what I call interoceptive noise — the brain receives contradictory signals, and the system loses coherence.
In this state, the body asks for rest while the mind demands performance.
Dopamine no longer regulates pleasure but addiction.
We don’t think too much — we feel too little.
And without genuine feeling, belonging fades.
5. Fruição: Restoring the Body’s Silence
Fruição isn’t meditation or effort — it is physiological listening.
It’s the moment when body and brain breathe together again.
Heart rate synchronizes, CO₂ stabilizes, and the mind stops competing with the body.
What arises is the simple pleasure of existing.
In Zone 2, doing becomes being.
Time slows down, and thought dissolves into gesture.
It is the creative state in which the entire body acts as consciousness — what ancient traditions called “sacred presence” and modern neuroscience calls neuro-coherence.
Fruição is both science and silence — the harmony of body, mind, and environment.
6. Belonging – The Body as Community
Every cell in the body lives in conversation with others.
Blood, rhythm, impulse — everything cooperates.
The body is a living community, and consciousness is the reflection of its belonging.
That same principle extends outward: we seek groups, affections, and meanings that mirror this internal harmony.
When the body feels whole, action becomes ethical and empathic.
When the body divides, the mind conflicts.
Healing — personal and social — begins when we feel the body again as our common home.
Conclusion – The First Knowledge Is Feeling
Before reason, there was the pulse.
Before the idea, the heartbeat.
Consciousness arises when feeling recognizes itself.
Interoception is the invisible root of mind — the wisdom that sustains every form of being.
When the body listens to itself again, the “I” stops searching outside for what was always within.
Fruição is that: the body remembering to be.
Post-2020 References
Berntson G.G. & Khalsa S.S. (2021). Neural Circuits of Interoception: Human Brain and Body Integration. Trends in Neurosciences, 44(7), 480–495.*
→ Maps the neural circuits of interoception and their role in emotion and consciousness.Craig A.D. (2021). How Do You Feel? Interoception: The Sense of the Physiological Condition of the Body (Updated Review). Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
→ Updates interoception theory as the basis of subjectivity.Critchley H.D. & Garfinkel S.N. (2022). Interoception and the Emotional Brain: New Directions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 23(6), 377–392.*
→ Links interoception, emotion, and autonomic regulation.Tsakiris M. et al. (2023). The Embodied Self: Interoceptive Inference and the Construction of Subjectivity. Frontiers in Psychology.
→ Proposes that the sense of self arises from interoceptive inference.Northoff G. & Huang Z. (2022). How Is Our Self Related to the Brain’s Spontaneous Activity? Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
→ Shows that conscious selfhood depends on the synchrony between body and spontaneous neural activity.Seth A.K. (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Penguin Press.
→ Describes the brain as an interoceptive simulator of bodily feeling.
Brain Bee Synthesis:
The first knowledge is not thinking — it is feeling.
Consciousness begins with a body that listens.
And when the body truly hears itself, being becomes peace.
