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Kelly Mahler
MS, OTR/L

Hi there, I’m Kelly Mahler

Welcome! I’m Kelly Mahler. As a passionate occupational therapist that is fired up to change the world for the better, you'll find me with lots to share, plenty of resources, and helpful blog posts. I'm so glad you're here!

what is interoception

What Exactly Is Interoception?

Interoception is a sense that helps many people experience sensations from the inside of their body. These sensations are different for everyone. 

For example, interoception might enable someone to notice the condition of their stomach: is it growling or is it fluttery? Is it full or maybe nauseous? Or something else?

Or in another example, interoception might help someone to sense how their heart is feeling– is it pounding fast or beating slowly? Or maybe something else? 

Interoception can help many people to feel other areas of the body, like the lungs, muscles, bladder, brain, bones, and even the whites of the eyes.

 

Noticing these body sensations (or body signals) can be important because they give information about the condition of the body and what our body might need in the moment. For some people, these body signals can also serve as the foundation of what emotion they are currently experiencing. Again, the meaning of the body signals noticed will be different for everyone. The following are a few examples,

  • A empty, growling stomach could be a signal that a person is hungry.
  • A dry feeling in the mouth or throat could be a sign that a person is thirsty.
  • Loose muscles and a slowly beating heart might indicate a person is feeling relaxed.

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How Compliance-Based Approaches Damage Interoceptive Awareness & Self-Regulation

Hi everyone. Kelly Mahler, occupational therapist. I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about interoception, self-regulation and the detrimental impact that compliance-based approaches can have on the development of these critical areas. Compliance often teaches someone to ignore their own body signals/needs in order to comply with a demand and receive a reward. This is bad for so many reasons, including causing significant damage to interoceptive awareness which is the essential foundation of self-regulation.

Interoception & Self-Regulation

We know that interoception is a vital foundation of self-regulation. Most infants are born into this world noticing discomfort within their bodies. How do we know this? Think about when an infant notices interoceptive discomfort what do they do? Most of the time, their urge is to cry, which alerts the caregiver that something within the infant’s body feels off and they need help regulating their bodily needs. From day one of life, as an infant moves through the world, each and every single thing that they experience, their interoceptive system is responding. For every single experience, whether it’s a new environment or a new person or a new toy, their body is responding. They are noticing how each individual experience makes their body feel. Many times these bodily responses are not reaching their level of consciousness. Many times these reactions stay underneath the level of consciousness. But regardless, their interoceptive system is constantly responding to the world around around them.

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Interoception & Trauma: The Latest Science on Healing

Hi everyone, Kelly Mahler, occupational therapist. And I wanted to take the time to talk about interoception and trauma and why interoception is a must. It is a vital consideration when supporting clients that have a history of trauma. What we know from emerging research and literature is that the interoceptive system is impacted by trauma. A person’s interoception experience can be derailed as a result of trauma, whether that’s early life trauma, or perhaps even an acute trauma as an adult, either way, this trauma is impacting the body and our interoceptive experience.

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The Power of Interoception-Informed Yoga

Hi, everyone. Kelly Mahler here, occupational therapist, and I want to take the time to talk about the power of Interoception-Informed Yoga. Yoga is known by many people from all around the world. It’s an ancient, mind-body practice. There’s so many different forms of yoga and it is utilized in so many different settings from schools to therapy clinics, to formal yoga studios. Yoga is amazing because it can be adapted to meet the needs of a wide variety of learners in a wide variety of settings.

 

Yoga can be adapted for many different:

  • ages
  • learning styles
  • backgrounds and so forth

Research shows that yoga clearly has a lot of benefits. One of those benefits is improving interoceptive awareness, or nurturing that interoceptive awareness, and we wanted to give some tips on how to use yoga in an interoception-informed way, so that you can get the best interoception outcomes.

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6 Principles of The Interoception Curriculum

Hi everyone. I’m Kelly Mahler, Occupational Therapist. I want to take the time to talk about what makes interoception based supports so different then any other currently used approach out there when we’re talking about emotion regulation approaches or behavioral approaches. Interoception is so very different. I wanted to focus in on six principles that really sets the interoception based work, and our interoception curriculum apart from all of the other frameworks and approaches.

 

Principle #1

The Interoception Curriculum is set up to be a process where we are validating and honoring each person’s unique inner experience. What we know is that we all have very different inner experiences.

  • What your body feels like when you’re hungry is different than what my body feels like when I’m hungry.
  • What your body feels like when you’re anxious different than what my body feels like when I’m anxious.

Interoception based work is a process that is honoring and validating each person’s unique inner experience. This is quite different than other approaches that might be rooted in a process of trying to make someone more typical or having more typical experience or to act more typical. The interoception curriculum is completely against that notion and really it’s about honoring and validating our uniqueness.

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