Rapid Consciousness Change Through Interoception

Rapid Consciousness Change Through Interoception

Our Unexpected Interoceptive Sensory Motor Resources

(Rapid as in realistically years rather than centuries.)

One way that we think about the relationship of the brain and the body is in terms of our sensory motor system. We understand that there is both perception and action, that we must be able to both be aware of our environment, including the other creatures in it, and we must also be able to respond to it. We can see this in even the most simple unicellular organisms. Within the human body we talk about two main channels of the nervous system, afferent and efferent, or our sensory and motor nerves.

It is important to recognize at this turning point in human history that we have made the very mistaken assumption that the five senses we are familiar with constitute the extent of our sensory awareness. We can call these senses exteroceptive, meaning that this is how we know the world around us and how we know ourselves from the outside in. We also believe very mistakenly that the extent of our motor responses is limited to the dynamic motor system that is associated with these senses. This primarily involves our extremities: the large and easily identifiable superficial muscles and the consciously volitional movements of our limbs and torso, head and neck. All of this is visible and palpable through our skin.

We understand our anatomy in this way and identify our body by the muscles and bones that are visible and palpable through our outer skin. We know ourselves from the outside in rather than the inside out in general and it is this exteroceptive perspective that informs science and modern reason as well as common sense.

Our interoceptive sensory motor system may be an unexpected but very rich adaptive resource as we face the challenges of the current context. Of course it makes perfect sense that there must be a very complex and multimodal system of sensory awareness for the workings of our inner self. This includes the complex chemical and hormonal workings of our organs and various physiological systems. However it is helpful if we focus on the biomechanics of our postural system.

There are a wide variety of different meditative and movement arts which approach this inner part of ourselves, including things like yoga, taichi and Feldenkrais. Modern anatomical science has not been particularly helpful in this regard because it has been resolutely reductionist and has objectified the body, removing it from our subjective experience.

Modern dissection practice required that we discard the connective tissue in order to reveal the separate muscles and bones and organs that are underneath it. This means that we have been unaware of the role that fashion has been playing in our bodies.

Fascia, our connective tissue matrix, is a highly sensitive membrane that is the equivalent of a complex layered system of inner skin. Just as our outer skin is of fundamental importance for allowing us to know ourselves from the outside in, our fascial system is a system of inner skin of fundamental importance for allowing us to know ourselves from the inside out. Without our connective tissue matrix we could not exist as functioning organisms. However by removing it in the process of dissection it has been absent from every anatomical image we have ever seen and so has been been absent from our awareness.

It is not actually absent from our bodies and the awareness it provides is neither arcane nor mysterious. Interoception is natural and instinctive. It’s anatomy is myofascial and we are at a point now that we can discuss it in specificity and detail. It is potentially a tremendous resource for rapid consciousness change.