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Know Yourself

Interoception!


This is your seventh sense. We are starting here because this is where human beings begin life— by asking, what’s happening inside my body?


Am I hungry? Am I overfull? Do I have gas or indigestion? Am I overheated or chilled? Am I short of oxygen? Am I sleepy? Do I need to use the bathroom? Am I about to throw up? … you get the picture, this is internal information we know people have.

Nerve cell

Did you know that almost all the information we have about other people is interoceptive? You know the phrase, “I had a gut feeling…”. That is real! We do have a “brain” in our gut. It is a complex, branching nerve that carries sensory information. 80% of that information is headed up to our brain because it is so vital for our functioning, both internally and in the world.



This nerve is called the vagus.



It helps the central nervous system monitor and control the internal organs, e.g., heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, digestion, and certain reflexes like sneezing or coughing. Because these functions are so necessary to life, interoceptive messages often have a big red URGENT flag attached to them:

  • I can’t breathe, MOVE!

  • My stomach is getting upset and I am sweating… PUKE!

  • My heart is beating so fast, I have to REST!

  • I just got water in my windpipe, COUGH!

  • I have been awake for three nights with a colicky baby, SLEEP!

Sensory information comes into the brain from the vagus and is processed much faster than the thinking brain can manage. The vagus nerve is a major player in our hyper-fast circuit to detect other “dangers,” called neuroception. 1 For example:

  • Someone is hostile even though they are smiling (relational)

  • Someone has been injured (relational/physical)

  • I am about to poop my pants, find a bathroom! (social)

  • Someone is not pleased with my behavior (social)

As you can see from these few examples, the social and relational red flags from the vagus can signal us to withdraw, protect our bodies, shut down, or run!


Our early experience in the world develops a database of information about how to “be” a self in our family. Our brain is an incredible set of processors and databases with interconnectivity that baffles our attempts at Artificial Intelligence. Here is a radical pair of truths, summarized from the work of Stephen Porges 2 and Dan Siegel: 3


The human being is not a “thinking, rational self.”

The human being is coherent body-brain-environment functions. 4


We are set up to seek physical safety and relational harmony, or we might say, “coherence inside and outside.” This coherence allows us to understand how to use all our capacities together, for the well-being of ourselves and those we love—and beyond. We can operate on all cylinders, if we don’t forget the body.


Three cheers for the vagus!




Notes & more information:

1 Stephen Porges describes neuroception

2 Stephen Porges (1998) Love: an emergent property of the mammalian autonomic nervous system. Psychoneuroendocrinology 23, 837-861.

3 Dan Siegel describes the emergent mind.

4 I freely admit I do not understand how spirituality fits into this picture. My best guess is, it is an emergent property of several emergent properties of the complex system, body-brain-environment.

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