Why is Interoception (Feeling Your Body) So Important in Trauma Healing?

“Our bodies know that they belong; it is our minds that make our lives so homeless.” - John O'Donohue

At its core, the self is bodily. As psychiatrist Russell Meares wrote, severe trauma is felt in “the totality of self, which includes the body.”

Trauma doesn’t live in words — it lives in sensations, affects, and impulses to act (Howell, 2020). Instead of forming coherent memories, traumatic experiences are often recorded in the body as flashes of feeling — a pounding heart, a tightening gut, a surge of dread. When something in the present echoes past danger, the body remembers, even if the mind doesn’t. The result is a deeply embodied memory system that speaks without words (Shapiro, 2001; Heim et al., 2023).

The Story Our Bodies Tell

Our nervous systems tell the story of how we learned to survive. From infancy, interoception — our ability to feel and interpret signals from within the body — develops through safe, attuned relationships. When those relationships are unsafe or neglectful, the neural circuits that support body awareness can be disrupted (Shapiro, 2001).

Modern neuroscience shows that trauma alters the brain regions that help us interpret and regulate experience, such as the insula and HPA axis (Van der Kolk, 2014).

In the face of overwhelming threat, the body adapts. As Stephen Porges describes in his Polyvagal Theory, trauma can trigger a dorsal vagal shutdown — a state of immobility and disconnection. Allan Schore calls this a hypoaroused dissociative response; Bruce Perry calls it tonic immobility; Van der Hart, a state of total submission. Whatever the name, the body learns to protect itself by numbing, disconnecting, or disappearing.

When the Body Feels Unsafe

As Bessel van der Kolk wrote, “the body keeps the score.” People who’ve experienced trauma often feel chronically unsafe inside their own skin. Their bodies send constant danger signals, so they learn to ignore, suppress, or numb these sensations — to hide from themselves.

It makes perfect sense. When your environment is unsafe, turning away from the body can be a brilliant survival strategy.

Over time, the senses become finely tuned to threats in the external world instead:

• listening for footsteps in the hallway,

• the sound of a car pulling into the driveway,

• the subtle shift in a caregiver’s tone of voice.

The body learns: stay alert, stay outwards. But even long after the danger has passed, that orientation remains. The sound of a car still sends the body into panic. The result? A life lived outwardly vigilant, inwardly disconnected.

What is interoception?

Interoception is our ability to sense the internal landscape of the body — the heartbeat, breath, hunger, tension, warmth, thirst. It’s what lets us know when to rest, when we’re full, when something feels “off,” and when something feels just right.

When interoception is disrupted — as it often is after trauma — we lose reliable access to our inner compass. Research has shown disrupted interoception across several trauma-related conditions, including PTSD, dissociative disorders, and borderline personality disorder (Heim et al., 2023).

Reconnecting with the body, gently and safely, allows us to rebuild that internal trust. Interoception supports:

• Self-care (knowing when to rest, eat, or stop),

• Emotional regulation,

• Body awareness and intuition,

• Connection with others,

• Resilience and healing.

When we can listen to the signals within, we begin to reinhabit ourselves.

When Interoception is Blocked

Interoceptive awareness can be disrupted for many understandable reasons:

• If you’ve had to stay on alert for threats outside yourself, you may have learned to ignore needs inside.

• If your needs were ignored, you may have learned they weren’t worth feeling.

• If expressing needs led to danger or rejection, you may have learned to suppress them.

And when we can’t feel what we need, it’s hard to care for ourselves:

If you don’t feel thirsty, you won’t drink.
If you can’t feel full, you’ll keep eating.
If you can’t feel it’s too much, you’ll keep going until you break.
If you can’t sense “this person feels wrong,” you may move too close.

This is why rebuilding interoceptive capacity is an essential part of trauma recovery.

Reconnecting: How to Cultivate Interoception

Just like the body can be trained, so can awareness. Interoception grows slowly, through noticing, allowing, and staying with body sensations in safe, tolerable ways.

When we notice a sensation as just that — a flutter, a warmth, a vibration — and not as a threat, the body begins to learn safety again. This builds self-regulation, the ability to influence our inner state.

Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TSY)

TSY offers a gentle way to practice this. Through choice-based movement and mindful noticing, participants can begin to rebuild trust in their bodies. Over the past five years of facilitating TC-TSY groups for survivors of sexual abuse, I’ve witnessed how this practice — though uncomfortable at first — can become profoundly empowering and healing.

It’s not always easy. Sensations can evoke memories or discomfort, which is why safety, pacing, and choice are crucial. Interoceptive work is not about forcing presence, but inviting it, little by little.

By noticing the rise and fall of sensation — the beginning, middle, and end — we learn that feelings are tolerable, transient, and trustworthy. We start to experience ourselves not as broken, but as whole.

Coming Home to The Body

Rebuilding interoceptive awareness is, at its heart, an act of coming home.
It’s how we re-enter the living conversation between mind and body — how we learn to listen inwardly again.

When we reconnect with the felt sense of the body, we reconnect with life itself.

You’re welcome to reach out if this speaks to you.