If you're not familiar with the term, you're definitely familiar with the feeling. Some common examples of interoception in action are the growling in the stomach that tells you you're hungry, the goosebumps that tell you to put on a sweater, and the butterflies in your stomach that tell you you're nervous.¹ It’s an important sense to have—not only to ensure we’re meeting our body's needs—but also to make sound decisions, process emotions, and manage stress.²

However, when we're captivated by our screens and glued to our seats (as we often are at work) we lose touch with the innate embodied intelligence that makes a strong sense of interoception possible. Even momentary states of sedentary behavior are associated with decreases in interoceptive processing.³

The good news is, interoception can be trained. Movement—epspecially practices rooted in breath and mindful attention—improve interoceptive awareness over time.⁴

Benefits of Strong Interoception

Interoceptive awareness is associated with emotional experience, decision making, cognitive function, self-awareness, body trust, connection to others and the environment, stress reactivity, and much more.

Stronger interoceptive processing has been found to support emotional regulation, self awareness, wellbeing, stress response.⁵ Improvements in interoceptive awareness have been associated with greater use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal, as well as with reduced stress reactivity.⁶ Sharper interoceptive processing can act as a protective factor against negative mental health outcomes by improving emotional regulation and social functioning.⁷ Having a greater awareness of internal bodily signals makes us more aware of early signs of stress, enabling us to respond proactively.²

The ability to accurately perceive and be aware of our internal bodily states can significantly influence decision-making.² Studies employing decision-making and risk manipulation tasks show that reductions in the processing of physiological arousal are associated with disadvantageous and more risky decision behaviour. Interoception is associated with the self-regulation of behavior, giving rise to the somatic markers or “gut-feelings” that guide our decision making and behaviour.⁷ The activation of interoceptive representations and meta-representations of bodily signals supporting interoceptive awareness are profoundly associated with emotional experience and cognitive functions.⁵ Financial traders who were better at detecting their heartbeats (a standard test of interoception) made more profitable investments and lasted longer in their profession.⁹

Interoception isn’t just improved alone; it’s also improved in groups. Social encounters are a fundamentally embodied experience, as they involve the continual integration of sensory, motor, physiological, and affective signals. Changes in facial expressions, posture, and body language feed us crucial information for interpreting others' emotions and actions, as neural activity, autonomic physiology, and interoceptive processes continuously interact within and between individuals.¹⁰ Beyond enhancing social connection, interoceptive awareness is also a significant predictor of  nature connectedness.¹¹

Movement, Sedentary Behaviour, and Interoception

Momentary physical activity is associated with increased interoception. Short bouts of physical activity influence both interoceptive accuracy and self-reported interoception, by increasing attentional capacity to bodily signals, as well as salience of the signals themselves. This increased arousal narrows attentional resources to focus on internal physiological signals. There is a heightened focus on the body, whether that is in the monitoring of breathing to pace exertion, or in the positioning of the limbs in executing a movement sequence.³

During physical activity, sympathetic nervous system activation increases the salience of interoceptive cues beyond their resting-state limits, making body signals more discernable. Additionally, as physiological arousal increases, the number of cues that can be utilized decreases, filtering irrelevant stimuli from the environment. The increased arousal allows interoceptive sources of information to dominate our consciousness, honing attentional resources to focus on internal physiological signals.³

Sedentary behavior is associated with a decrease in interoception, leading to an untrained interoceptive pathway. Sedentary individuals have been found to display differences in their neurophysiological pre-conscious processing of heartbeats (a key indicator of interoception). Over time, the reduced brain-body communication resulting from being sedentary creates a mismatch between the actual and perceived state of the body.³

However, not all sedentary behaviour is created equal. Screen time behaviour is particularly damaging to interoception. Excessive screen time interferes with our embodied experience within the world, and is linked to reduced resting state functional connectivity in the insula cortex (a key region of brain, regulating interoceptive attention) as well as altered functional connectivity in the cingulate cortex, which draws our attention to external stimuli and away from interoceptive cues.³

Movement mind-body practices enhance interoception. Qigong is a traditional Chinese mind–body practice combining gentle movements, postural regulation, breath control, and mindful attention, aimed at enhancing mind-body integration and interoceptive awareness. Through a combination of intentional attention and embodied responsiveness, Qigong can influence psychological functioning by modulating proprioceptive and interoceptive processes.⁴

Qigong practice is linked to increased bodily awareness, greater emotional clarity, and reduced alexithymic traits. Improvements in interoceptive awareness have been associated with greater use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal, and with reduced stress reactivity.⁴

A 12-week Qigong program significantly improved multiple dimensions of interoceptive awareness (including body listening, trusting, self-regulation, emotional awareness), and enhanced emotion regulation, mindfulness, and psychological wellbeing among university students. Participants reported increased Body Listening, demonstrating a more acute tendency to depend on bodily cues as sources of guidance and information. Participants also displayed higher levels of Trusting, showing a greater perception of the body as a safe and reliable reference. Overall, these changes suggest a more adaptive, functional relationship with bodily experience.⁴

Body Electric Findings

One of the ways interoception shows up at work is by telling us when we need to take a break. Yawning, brain fog, low energy, and stiff muscles are all physiological signals that it's time to take a break. However, when we ignore these signals and 'push through', our abilities to accurately detect and respond weaken. Scheduling regular reminders to take movement breaks throughout the day help restore this brain-body communication.

In the Body Electric study from Dr. Keith Diaz (Columbia University Medical Center) and Manoush Zomorodi (NPR), movement-based breaks emerged as a successful strategy for restoring interoceptive ability. In just a couple weeks, participants were able to transition from needing reminders to take their breaks, to being able to read the cues from their own body that it was time for a break.

"What we saw in our study was that people started by using timers to make sure that they took their breaks. But by the end, many people said, 'I don't feel like I need a timer anymore because my body now tells me like I feel it." Manoush Zomorodi, Author: Body Electric

Make a move for Interocepetion

Movement breaks are an easy way to introduce frequent short bouts of physical activity into the flow of the day, breaking up excessive sedentary behaviour and screen time—which as demonstrated in the research above, serves to improve interoception.

Breakthru helps you train your interoception throughout the day. With guided movement and breathing-based microbreaks, we help you get back in touch with your interoception. To get started, set regular Reminders to move (the more the better!), and then experience how your ability to simply listen to your body gets sharper over time?

1. Interoception: Definition, Symptoms & How to Improve. (2025, February 19). Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/interoception
2. Barca, L. (2025). The Inner Road to Happiness: A Narrative Review Exploring the Interoceptive Benefits of Exercise for Well-Being. Healthcare, 13(16), 1960. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare13161960
3. Amie Wallman-Jones, Carina Nigg, Valentin Benzing, Mirko Schmidt, Leave the screen: The influence of everyday behaviors on self-reported interoception, Biological Psychology, Volume 181, 2023, 108600, ISSN 0301-0511, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108600.
4. Ciacchini, R., Lazzarelli, A., Papini, G., Viti, A., Scafuto, F., Orrù, G., Gemignani, A., & Conversano, C. (2026). Mind the Motion: Feasibility and Effects of a Qigong Intervention on Interoception and Well-Being in Young Adults. Healthcare, 14(2), 202. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare14020202
5. Paulus, M.P.; Stewart, J.L.; Haase, L. Treatment Approaches for Interoceptive Dysfunctions in Drug Addiction. Front. Psychiatry 2013, 4, 137.
6. Füstös, J.; Gramann, K.; Herbert, B.M.; Pollatos, O. On the Embodiment of Emotion Regulation: Interoceptive Awareness Facilitates Reappraisal. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2013, 8, 911–917.
7. Feldman, M.J.; MacCormack, J.K.; Bonar, A.S.; Lindquist, K.A. Interoceptive Ability Moderates the Effect of Physiological Reactivity on Social Judgment. Emotion 2023, 23, 2231–2242.
8. Herbert, B. M., & Pollatos, O. (2012). The body in the mind: On the relationship between interoception and embodiment. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4(4), 692–704. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01189.x
9. Kandasamy, N., Garfinkel, S., Page, L. et al. Interoceptive Ability Predicts Survival on a London Trading Floor. Sci Rep 6, 32986 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep32986
10. Lettieri G (2026) Integrating neural, physiological, and interoceptive measures in social interaction. Front. Neurosci. 20:1771470. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2026.1771470
11. Branham L (2024) Embodied earth kinship: interoceptive awareness and relational attachment personal factors predict nature connectedness in a structural model of nature connection. Front. Psychol. 15:1400655. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1400655