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L i s te n to T h e A B M P Po d c a s t a t a b m p.co m /p o d c a s t s o r w h e reve r yo u a cce s s yo u r favo r i te p o d c a s t s 91 willingness, of course; and such invitations also invite curiosity, as well as stimulate the insula's self-awareness capabilities. Our client's nervous system learns from the act of trying to answer the question—whether the answer is "It gets a little easier" or "That's hard," the question has helped exercise the "self-awareness muscle" of the insula. WHOSE INTEROCEPTION IS IT, ANYWAY? As practitioners, we are constantly "getting a feel" for our client's interoceptive experience. We can feel tissue qualities with our tactile sense, but we "feel" the client's interoception with our own body's response to the client's nonverbal signals and cues. This happens mostly below the level of our conscious awareness, but skilled practitioners commonly use their own empathetic interoceptive sense, along with their tactile sensitivity, to great effect in their work. Our instincts and intuitions about where to work, what pressure, or which direction to use are largely informed by our own interoceptive sense. However, those intuitive gleanings that may be amazing to the client ("How did you know to work there? That's right where I feel it!") are our body's responses, and shouldn't be confused for the client's perceptions. Our client's perceptions are sure to be different from ours given their unique history, associations, and make-up. We want our work to align with our client's body sense, not just our own. Of course, the surest way to fi nd out about the client's actual inner experience is simply to ask a question. SENSING IS THERAPEUTIC Our clients typically just want to feel better. Ironically, the hidden key to feeling better is often just "feeling, better": that is, simply refi ning the interoceptive, inner-sensation function of the body THE SOMATIC EDGE sense. 5 It's easy to overlook the fact that just feeling our bodily sensations and letting them register in our awareness is often therapeutic in its own right. Mindfulness-based approaches, trauma resolution methods, and many other somatic therapies build on this basic practice of refi ning awareness of inner sensation . 6 This is because sensation is the basic building block of much of our experience, emotion, and behavior. Accordingly, the insula is involved in a vast range of functions in addition to what's been mentioned so far. A partial list of those includes mediating fear and anxiety, compassion and empathy, taste, motor control, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal experience. Interestingly, the insula is also active when listening to music, laughing, and crying. A common theme in these seemingly unrelated functions might be simply the pleasant or unpleasant assessment of bodily experience. As bodyworkers, we have the benefi t of the body being our very scope of practice and therapeutic focus. Asking questions about interoception is an effective way to help change the insula's mind about its assessments, help shift a painful body experience, and perhaps help shift so much more. In this article, I've given examples of interoceptive questions to use while your client is on your treatment table. Off-the- table questions about interoception are also essential to our work, such as when assessing pain. I hope to explore specifi c questions for that context in a future column. NOTES 1. Sahib S. Khalsa and Rachel C. Lapidus, "Can Interoception Improve the Pragmatic Search for Biomarkers in Psychiatry?," Frontiers in Psychiatry 7 (July 2016): 121, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2016.00121. SCAN AND WATCH "INTEROCEPTION" 1. Open your camera 2. Scan the code 3. Tap on notification 4. Watch! Watch Til's technique videos and read his past articles in the Massage & Bodywork digital edition, available at massageandbodyworkdigital.com, abmp.com, and on the Advanced-Trainings.com YouTube channel. 2. Nadine Gogolla, "The Insular Cortex," Current Biology 27, no. 12 (June 2017): R580–86, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.05.010. 3. Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (Boston, MA: Houghton Miffl in Harcourt, 2017). 4. Nadine Gogolla, "The Insular Cortex." 5. Thanks are due to Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi for "feel better by feeling better." 6. Cynthia J. Price and Carole Hooven, "Interoceptive Awareness Skills for Emotion Regulation: Theory and Approach of Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT)," Frontiers in Psychology 9 (May 2018): 798, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00798. Til Luchau is the author of Advanced Myofascial Techniques (Handspring Publishing), a Certifi ed Advanced Rolfer, and a member of the Advanced-Trainings. com faculty, which offers online learning and in-person seminars throughout the United States and abroad. He and Whitney Lowe host the Thinking Practitioner podcast. He invites questions or comments via info@ advanced-trainings.com and Advanced- Trainings.com's Facebook page.