Your ability to sense yourself

Remember in grade school when you were taught that you have 5 senses? Well, that was wrong, or at least incomplete. You have way more than 5 senses and one of them, interoception, is incredibly important in your quest to understand your pain. Interoception is your felt sense about the inner workings of your body. Research shows that better interoception is correlated with less risk of developing chronic pain. It’s also associated with feelings of well being, greater compassion for self and others and, weirdly, time perception.

Here is the rub though. Research shows that people with persisting pain tend to score worse on interoception tasks. The good news is that you can improve this sense and that it can help you get your life back. It will take practice though!

This body scan is an awesome intro into the bliss of feeling oneself without judgement. It’s also really relaxing. I recommend that you do this practice a couple of times a day for a two weeks. I think you will notice a shift.