Interoception – The Hidden Sense That Can Change Your Performance
- Brainz Magazine
- Nov 12
- 6 min read
Written by Susan L Williams, Clinical Hypnotherapist
Dr. Susan L. Williams, also known as Dr. Sue, is a pioneering clinical hypnotherapist with a unique expertise spanning athletes, sports teams, executives, and entrepreneurs. In her thriving practice, now in its fourth year, Dr. Sue employs innovative hypnotherapy techniques to help athletes overcome barriers such as negative mindsets, limiting beliefs, and the psychological impact of injuries and setbacks.
We’re pretty fluent in the five big senses – sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. Some of us know about proprioception (where your body is in space). But there’s another sense quietly running the show that most people have never heard of, interoception.
Interoception is your ability to notice and interpret signals from inside your body, such as your heart rate, breath, hunger, fullness, temperature, tightness in your chest, butterflies in your stomach, and that “something’s off” feeling before you crash. When you get better at listening to these signals and making sense of them, you unlock a surprisingly powerful performance tool for sport, leadership, and everyday life.
This isn’t woo. It’s a fast-growing area in neuroscience, psychology, and even sports science. Let’s translate it into plain English and practical steps.
So, what exactly is interoception?
A simple medical definition I like comes from the Cleveland Clinic, interoception is your understanding of your body’s internal senses, things like hunger, thirst, needing the bathroom, feeling your heart pound, or noticing you’re overheating. Their piece on it is very readable if you’d like a basic overview. Visit Interoception – Cleveland Clinic.
Harvard Medical School’s magazine puts it this way. Interoception is the perception of internal signals from your heart, lungs, gut, and more, just as vision and hearing help you read the outside world.[1]
If you’ve ever:
Felt your heart hammering before a big presentation,
Realised “Wow, I’m actually starving” mid-afternoon,
Noticed a subtle “nope” feeling in your chest before agreeing to something.
You’ve already met interoception. The trick is moving from accidental to intentional use.
Why this “hidden sense” matters for how you feel and perform
Interoception sits right at the intersection of body and emotion. The American Psychological Association describes it as awareness of internal sensations – heart rate, respiration, hunger, fullness, temperature, pain, and notes its growing importance in understanding mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and trauma-related issues.[2]
When your interoception is reasonably tuned:
You notice stress rising before you snap.
You recognise “nervous but excited” vs “my body is screaming no”.
You catch early signs of under-fuelling, dehydration, or overtraining.
You can match recovery (sleep, downtime, nutrition) to what your body actually needs.
When it’s under-tuned, you might:
Missed hunger or fullness signals and swing between under- and overeating.
Push through pain or fatigue until your body forces a shutdown.
Live from the neck up. Good at thinking, not so great at sensing.
When it’s over-tuned, you might:
Feel flooded by bodily sensations (every flutter feels like a heart attack).
Struggle with anxiety or panic when your body ramps up for perfectly normal reasons (walking into a meeting, starting intervals).
Spend a lot of time scanning for danger inside your own body.
A 2020 review in Frontiers in Psychology pulled this together nicely, both interoception and vagal tone (often measured via HRV) play key roles in emotion regulation. In simple terms, people who can notice and work with body signals, and whose nervous systems can flexibly shift between “on” and “rest,” tend to regulate emotions better and have better overall wellbeing.[3]
For performance, whether it’s sport or running a business, that’s gold.
Interoception as a performance superpower
Let’s be clear, this isn’t about being “more sensitive” in a fluffy sense. It’s about becoming a better translator between your body and your brain.
When you tune this sense, a few things happen:
You pace better. You can feel the difference between “I’m warming into this, keep going,” and “this is the wrong kind of pain, adjust now.”
You fuel and hydrate smarter. You recognise early cues (dry mouth, foggy focus, low-level irritability) rather than only noticing when you hit the wall.
You recover on purpose. Instead of “I should rest,” you can say, “My heart rate, tension, and mood are telling me I genuinely need a down day.”
You lead with more presence. You spot when your shoulders are up around your ears or your gut is clenched in that meeting, and you have tools to downshift in real time.
Research in athletes is starting to show that they often have higher interoceptive accuracy than non-athletes, and that training this skill (for example, via heartbeat detection tasks with feedback) can improve how people regulate effort and tolerate exercise.[4] You don’t need to do lab tasks to benefit, but it’s reassuring to know the science lines up with what many performers already feel intuitively.
How interoception goes off-track (and why it’s not your fault)
Life can scramble this sense. A few examples:
Chronic stress or burnout: you get very good at overriding body signals to “just get through the day.”
Diet culture and chaotic eating: you learn to ignore hunger and fullness cues.
Pain or illness: you understandably tune out of your body because it doesn’t feel like a safe place.
Trauma: your nervous system may decide “less feeling = more survival,” dulling internal signals or making them feel scary.
If any of that resonates, you’re not broken, you’ve adapted. The good news is that interoception is “plastic”, it can be trained, gently, with the right support.[4]
If you have a history of trauma or an eating disorder, it’s important to work with a trauma-informed therapist or clinician as you explore this. For everyone else, simple, non-threatening experiments are a great place to start.
Simple ways to train your “inner dashboard”
You don’t need special equipment. Think of these as tiny “interoception reps” you can sprinkle through the day.
1. Two-minute body check-ins
Set a quiet alarm 2-3 times a day. When it goes off, pause and ask:
What’s my breath doing (fast, slow, shallow, deep)?
How does my chest feel (open, tight, fluttery, heavy)?
What’s happening in my gut (hollow, knotted, calm, bloated)?
Do I feel hot, cold, or just right?
Name what you notice in neutral language, “My chest is tight and my breath is shallow,” not “I’m freaking out.” That tiny wording shift calms the system.
2. Heartbeat awareness (with feedback, not judgement)
Once or twice a week, sit or lie down for a minute and see if you can feel your heartbeat without touching your pulse. Then check your watch or pulse for feedback. This isn’t a test you pass or fail, it’s simply teaching your brain, “Oh, that’s what my heart feels like at this speed.”
Studies using heartbeat detection tasks suggest that interoceptive ability can improve with feedback, and that this can support better emotion regulation and exercise tolerance.[4]
3. The 60-second “body budget” before you say yes
Before you take on another task, another training session, another favour, try this:
Notice energy (0–10).
Notice mood (one word).
Notice body tension (main hotspots).
Then ask, “Do I genuinely have the budget for this, or am I spending tomorrow’s energy?” Saying no from your body, not just your calendar, is a game-changer.
4. Interoceptive anchors for performance
Pick a few reliable internal cues that mean “I’m in my zone.” For example:
Breathe smoothly and low in the ribs.
Jaw unclenched.
Hands warm, not icy.
Heart rate elevated, but not pounding out of your chest.
Before a presentation, race, ride, or tough conversation, you can check and nudge these, a few low, slow breaths, a quick shake out of arms and jaw, maybe a short walk to let your heart rate settle into a “ready” rhythm. Over time, your body learns, “When I feel like this, I perform well.”
When to get extra support
If tuning in makes you feel more distressed, not less, or you notice big spikes in anxiety, panic, or old trauma memories, that’s your cue to get support rather than pushing through alone. Remember the APA’s point, interoception is deeply tied to mental health, difficulties here are common in anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and trauma-related conditions, and they’re absolutely valid reasons to get help.[4]
A good therapist, psychologist, or trauma-informed coach can help you find a pace and approach that feels safe.
Bringing it all together
Interoception isn’t a fancy add-on for biohackers. It’s a sense you already have, quietly shaping how you feel, decide, move, and recover. When you start listening in a more deliberate way, you:
Catch stress earlier.
Pace and fuel more intuitively.
Choose a recovery that actually fits your needs.
Lead and perform from a more grounded place.
You don’t need perfection, you just need a little more conversation with the body that’s already trying to talk to you.
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Susan L. Williams, Clinical Hypnotherapist
Dr. Susan L. Williams, also known as Dr. Sue, is a pioneering clinical hypnotherapist with a unique expertise spanning athletes, sports teams, executives, and entrepreneurs. In her thriving practice, now in its fourth year, Dr. Sue employs innovative hypnotherapy techniques to help athletes overcome barriers such as negative mindsets, limiting beliefs, and the psychological impact of injuries and setbacks. She also empowers executives and entrepreneurs to overcome self-doubt and ingrained limitations, guiding them towards achieving a 'millionaire mindset'. Her approach shows that hypnosis caters to different audiences and the core methods are complementary and equally transformative.
References:
[4] PMC+1
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