Sep 15, 2026 · 11 min · 6 segments
Our bodies are constantly signaling us and letting us know how we are doing. How do we tune into those signals and how do we use them to become our best. Particularly how do we deal with the anxiety…
Let's start with a question.
Think about the last time you felt anxious before something important.
Where did you feel it? Most people, when you ask them this directly, can answer immediately.
The tightness in the chest, the sensation in the stomach, that hollow, slightly nauseating quality, the tension in the shoulders or the jaw, the feeling that the breath is shallower than usual, higher in the chest, not quite reaching the bottom of the lungs.
Maybe the lung-- maybe the legs want to move.
Now, here's the more interesting question.
When did you feel it? Because for most people, when they think carefully, the physical signals arrived before they consciously register the anxiety.
The body knew first.
Well, in a sense, the brain knew, but it's the old part of the brain where we're not very aware, and that sends a signal to the body, and then the body reflects it back to us.
This is not accidental.
It's architecture.
The threat response doesn't begin in conscious thought.
It begins, well, in the old brain and then in the body via the brain's subcortical threat detection systems operating below the level of deliberate awareness.
The amygdala receives sensory information and initiates a physical response, and the physiological changes that prepare the body for action engage before the cortex, the conscious thinking part of the brain, has even fully formed or been informed about what's happening.
By the time you think, "I'm anxious," your heart rate has already shifted, mmm, your breathing has already changed, your body has been in a state of preparation for some seconds.
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has spent decades studying what he calls somatic markers, the body's system for generating what he describes as gut feelings, the physical signals that influence decision-making and emotional experience.
His research fundamentally changes the old model of anxiety as a cognitive phenomena, a story that the mind tells, and replaces it with a more accurate picture.
Anxiety is a whole-body event in which the body is not just responding to the mind's story, but actively contributing to it and shaping it.
The implications of this for how we work with anxiety are significant.
If the body is part of the conversation, and, and it is, then working only with thoughts, only with the cognitive layer, is like trying to resolve a two-person disagreement by only listening to one person.
You might make some progress, but you're leaving out half the information.
This brings us to a concept called interoception, the brain's perception of its own body's internal state.
Your interoceptive system is the network of signals via the vagus nerve and related pathways that tells your brain what's happening inside: heart rate, breathing, gut, muscle tension, temperature.
Everyone has this system, but people differ enormously at how accurately and how consciously they can read it.
Research by Sarah Garfinkel and her colleagues at Sussex and UCL found that people with high interoceptive accuracy, a precise, conscious sense of their body's internal signals, experience anxiety differently from people with low interoceptive accuracy.
Let's start with a question.
Think about the last time you felt anxious before something important.
Where did you feel it? Most people, when you ask them this directly, can answer immediately.
The tightness in the chest, the sensation in the stomach, that hollow, slightly nauseating quality, the tension in the shoulders or the jaw, the feeling that the breath is shallower than usual, higher in the chest, not quite reaching the bottom of the lungs.
Maybe the lung-- maybe the legs want to move.
Now, here's the more interesting question.
When did you feel it? Because for most people, when they think carefully, the physical signals arrived before they consciously register the anxiety.
The body knew first.
Well, in a sense, the brain knew, but it's the old part of the brain where we're not very aware, and that sends a signal to the body, and then the body reflects it back to us.
This is not accidental.
It's architecture.
The threat response doesn't begin in conscious thought.
It begins, well, in the old brain and then in the body via the brain's subcortical threat detection systems operating below the level of deliberate awareness.
The amygdala receives sensory information and initiates a physical response, and the physiological changes that prepare the body for action engage before the cortex, the conscious thinking part of the brain, has even fully formed or been informed about what's happening.
By the time you think, "I'm anxious," your heart rate has already shifted, mmm, your breathing has already changed, your body has been in a state of preparation for some seconds.
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has spent decades studying what he calls somatic markers, the body's system for generating what he describes as gut feelings, the physical signals that influence decision-making and emotional experience.
His research fundamentally changes the old model of anxiety as a cognitive phenomena, a story that the mind tells, and replaces it with a more accurate picture.
Anxiety is a whole-body event in which the body is not just responding to the mind's story, but actively contributing to it and shaping it.
The implications of this for how we work with anxiety are significant.
If the body is part of the conversation, and, and it is, then working only with thoughts, only with the cognitive layer, is like trying to resolve a two-person disagreement by only listening to one person.
You might make some progress, but you're leaving out half the information.
This brings us to a concept called interoception, the brain's perception of its own body's internal state.
Your interoceptive system is the network of signals via the vagus nerve and related pathways that tells your brain what's happening inside: heart rate, breathing, gut, muscle tension, temperature.
Everyone has this system, but people differ enormously at how accurately and how consciously they can read it.
Research by Sarah Garfinkel and her colleagues at Sussex and UCL found that people with high interoceptive accuracy, a precise, conscious sense of their body's internal signals, experience anxiety differently from people with low interoceptive accuracy.
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