When we are stuck in an immobilised (hypo) state it can be hard to feel what is going on in your body because our interoceptive capacity has been turned off. When we are in a hyper- alert state, we can feel too much, or nothing. This skill of interoception is something that comes on and offline depending on what state we are in.
It’s not much use teaching people stuck in an immobilised state to cognitively try and work out what’s happening in their body – because they can’t! They can’t because the body and nervous system are not in the right physical state. We literally can’t feel things or ‘know’ things about our internal state when we are in shut-down. If we’ve always been in shut-down, we’ve probably never learnt to do this.
When we teach the body how to be in a more relaxed and composed state, this function can come online. Body cognition is about learning how to listen to your body, how to respond to it with kindness and to build a relationship with it, so you can feel you have mastery over your system and get to live the life you want to live.
