Feeling While Staying Connected: TCTSY and the Somatic Practice of Interoception

“I feel therefore I am.”— Eve Ensler

Our Essential Sixth Sense — Interoception

Have you ever been told to “connect with your body” — but not known how?

Our world is loud, restless, divided — and also full of beauty and resilience. There is so much to take in externally, and yet so much within that goes unnoticed.

Our inner sensing system — interoception — can become dampened by stress, trauma, logic, productivity culture, medication of normal body signals, constant distraction. We can become what I sometimes call floating heads — walking around detached from our bodies, disconnected from feeling… until pain or overwhelming emotion breaks through.

Kelly Mahler, OT and interoception specialist, describes it beautifully:

“When a person has muted or intense interoceptive experience, they may be missing important clues about their emotions. It can feel like navigating an emotional labyrinth without a map.”

Interoception is that map. It’s your internal GPS.

When Trauma Disrupts the Inner GPS

When you’ve experienced trauma, feeling safe in your body can be difficult. Even though we are taught to think things through, analyse, talk, reason — your nervous system may need something different.

Trauma often disrupts interoception — your ability to sense hunger, breath, muscle tension, temperature, emotional shifts. When this sixth sense is altered, it can feel harder to regulate emotions, harder to know what you need, harder to feel steady or in control.

Research now shows that disruptions in interoception are often present in anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and PTSD. So it makes sense that healing cannot happen through cognition alone.

We cannot think our way into safety.

The mind and the body need to reunite.

That’s yoga.

But not all yoga practices cultivate interoception.

Pratyahara and the Science of Inner Listening

In classical yoga, this inward sensing is called pratyahara — a gentle turning toward what is happening within. Neuroscience now uses the language of interoception.

Ancient wisdom and modern science are describing the same doorway.

Interoception is not dramatic. It is subtle.

It might sound like:

• I notice my breath is shallow.

• There is warmth in my hands.

• My jaw feels tight.

• Something softened when I exhaled.

  
  

This noticing is not about fixing or releasing trauma. It is about rebuilding relationship.

Why Trauma-Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY)?

Trauma-Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) is a clinical intervention for Complex trauma and PTSD and the original trauma-sensitive yoga that has been recognised within the family of third-wave psychotherapies — approaches that emphasise mindfulness, acceptance, and changing our relationship to experience.

TCTSY brings this into the body and into relationship — practising choice, presence, and agency in real time.

The intention of trauma-informed yoga is not to release trauma or fix it.Instead, it offers self-agency by rebuilding expansive body awareness — reawakening the sense of “my body.”

Language is invitational.

Choice is central.

Power is shared.

'You might sit. You might stand. You might rest your attention elsewhere.

Your body is your body'.

What Interoception Can Support

With practice, you may notice:

• Greater attunement to your body’s needs

• More intuitive and effective decision-making

• Increased emotional regulation

• More sensitivity to pain signals before they escalate

• A deeper sense of presence

• A growing feeling of embodiment

  
  

Personally, I’ve been leaning deeply into interoception while healing a tibia fracture — noticing when to rest, when to load, when to move. Two hours back on my bike, pain-free, came not from pushing — but from listening.

Interoception is not weakness. It is intelligence.

Trauma Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum

It’s important to say — trauma doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens within systems: cultural conditioning, productivity obsession, oppression, over-stimulation, disconnection from nature’s rhythms.

Rebuilding interoception is not about blaming yourself for disconnection. It is about reclaiming something that may have been muted for very good reasons.

You adapted wisely. Now you may choose to listen differently.

If you’re looking to:

• Befriend your body in a safe somatic space that values choice, accessibility, and community

• Experience yoga that is person-centred, research-informed, and explorative — not fitness-based

• Reconnect with yourself and others in ways that support nervous system regulation

• Be in a space that respects neurodiversity and honours different ways of processing

You’re invited to join the next 8-week TCTSY group course in Kingston or online.

Many participants return again and again. Deep healing unfolds in rhythm.

Sliding scale fees are available to support accessibility.

If group timing doesn’t suit you, private TCTSY packages are also available — including online access to a practice library you can move through at your own pace.

You’re welcome just as you are.