Santa Fe psychotherapist

I am currently in the process of taking an mPEAK meditation course (meditation for peak performance) with Kate Reynolds in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and one resource she shared with our class was on interoceptive awareness.

“Interoceptive awareness is the awareness of inner body sensations, involving the sensory process of receiving, accessing, and appraising internal body signals,” a quote from Pete Kirchmer, creator of mPEAK.

As a Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SPI) therapist, we are trained to use our own interoceptive awareness while with clients and to facilitate clients in tapping into or developing this ability. Through Kirchmer/Reynold’s teachings, I have a new appreciation of this skill, however, and it’s really nice to have some of the ties with mindfulness research and practices with SPI. Clients who have experienced trauma are often afraid of their body’s sensations because of the traumas they have experienced in their bodies.

The ability to sense, access as needed, and appraise our sensations in our body, and then DO what we need to do to feel “right” in our bodies (i.e., breath, move, shift orientation and awareness; which, by the way, is central in SPI therapy with clients), really re-programs the mind’s process AND the nervous system’s response. In a research study of elite BMX riders, Kirchmer, writes that the attention to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) becomes highly tuned to work with (receive, assess, and respond to) bodily sensations and interact with the environment (ie, think about that BMX rider navigating jumps and obstacles), while decreasing the connectivity with the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC).

A reduction in the connection to the PCC means a reduction to the Default Mode network and a reduction to the self-judging “storytelling” or being overly self-aware (Kirchmer, 2016). The PCC is responsible for creating self-consciousness (which we need a bit of), though clients who have experienced traumas are overly fused/attached to the negative self-appraisal, which keeps many of them feeling negative about themselves and/or feeling stuck.

In short, interoceptive awareness means sensations without story, according to Kirchmer. It’s  one of the most important pieces of the puzzle in terms of being mindfully aware of the present moment instead of being only in the story (and often a negative story at that, especially for clients who have experienced trauma). The elite BMX riders that Kirchmer studied already have high levels of interoceptive awareness at the beginning of the research, but the ones who went through mPEAK class were shown (in fMRI brain scans) to have stronger neurobiological connections to the ACC and reduced connections to the PCC, which allowed them to excel even further when in challenging/highly-difficult courses.

As I correlate this information to my work with clients who have experienced trauma, I see even more the ways in which Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and the mindfulness it promotes, works so much with interoceptive awareness. The more clients practice orienting toward the response that makes them feel safe, competent, masterful in the world (ie, the growth mindset of applying skills in the environment, masterfully)–in short, orienting toward the ACC; and away from the fear response (negative self-story, trauma)–in short, orienting away the PCC; the more they see they can DO something with the present moment rather than feel helpless or victim to the trauma story or a re-enactment of the trauma response.

I am always in awe and feel honored to see the human spirit; to see my clients who have experienced trauma take a risk and learn this process. I am very grateful for the work I get to do every day in this area.

Thank you, to Kate Reynolds and to Pete Kirchmer for their work with mPEAK!

Please read Pete Kirchmer’s full article to get the full details: “The Inner Landscape of the Body.”