Felt sense

No one ever talks about our sixth sense: interoceptive awareness.

This is what lets us “feel” what’s happening inside us. It senses things like our heartbeat, our breathing, whether we’re hungry or full, or when we’re feeling happy or scared.

Interoceptive awareness helps us make smart choices. For example, when you feel thirsty, that’s your interoceptive awareness telling you to drink water.

When you’re scared and your heart races, it’s preparing you to deal with a challenge.

It’s like your body’s own built-in alarm system, giving you important signals about how you’re doing on the inside.

When we deliberately develop interoceptive awareness, it has been shown to be associated with stronger emotional regulation, empathy, intuition, and better decision-making.

In other words, when we learn to pay attention to visceral sensations, we literally get more intelligent. We can catch our patterns of behaviour and act more consciously.

The problem is that in the modern world we are so distracted by external experiences and the 5 senses that we ignore our inner world.

This is a problem because our intuition often communicates through our desires - which are felt, not thought.

Much like how a bee is instinctively drawn to a flower, we are constantly guided toward our fundamental needs by strong, gut-level feelings.

Children naturally follow this kind of guidance without overthinking it. Their reasons for doing things often boil down to “because it feels good” or “because it doesn’t feel right.”

These seemingly irrational motivations can baffle logical adults. Their thinking is analytical and aims to find the most efficient ways to meet their needs.

If we are not connected to our feelings and inner wisdom, we become too reliant on our thoughts.

These are often influenced by the expectations of parents, peer groups, and, all too frequently, the influence of high-paying advertisers.

We need to learn the delicate art of discerning what you genuinely want from what you’ve been taught to want.