This week in Holiday tips, we will focus on interoception… one of the hidden senses.
According to Craig (2002)… “Interoception is how one experiences bodily feelings, such as hunger, thirst, and pain and includes internal sensations from the entire body, including pulse rate, heart rate, temperature, breathing rate, and urge to urinate or defecate”.
Interoception is now defined as the “process of how the nervous system senses, interprets, and integrates signals originating from within the body” (Quigley et al., 2021).
Miller et al., 2014 mentioned that interoception is referred to in some literature as an eighth sensory system. But it is not a unitary sensory domain, it is a multidimensional, complex system representing the integration of multiple senses.
Here are some games that can be played with children to help them understand more about their body sensations through play and have a great family time.
Exploration of the inner senses:
Invite your children to focus on their senses. They can close their eyes and pay attention to the sensations of their bodies, anything they perceive from inside. It can be a guided meditation on how they feel inside. “Am I feeling hungry? sleepy? tired? nervous? cold? Do I have any pain?”
Breathing exercises:
There are many breathing exercises that can be done with children. The main idea is they become more aware of breathing and inner sensations on their bodies. Here are some examples:
“Five-Finger Breathing”: children need to trace the outline of the hand while breathing. While inhaling, they trace up the finger and when exhaling, trace down the finger, so they go one by one and then come back on the opposite direction.
“Fist Breathing”: children close one hand into a fist. They take a deep breath in while slowly opening the fist, and then they slowly exhale while closing the fist again. So they coordinate the movement of the hand with their breathing.
“Animal breathing”: this is a creative game where children can simulate different kind of breathing by imitating animals.
“Bubble breathing”: helping your kids to learn how to breath by making bubbles with awareness. Controlling the breathing for making small bubbles, big ones, slowly,…
After these games, a good idea would be to have a little chat with the kids and mention different sensations they had and see how they experienced breathing and body sensations during these games.
If you are interested in this sensory system, you can find out more about it on the following webinar:
Webinar | Interoception – Sensory Integration for Body Awareness and Self-Regulation
Lectured by Valeria Isaac
See you on our next Holiday Tips post!!
References:
Grist, N., Brown, T., Yu, M. L., & Clark, E. (2023). An Exploration of the Association Between Sensory Processing and Interoceptive Awareness in Neurotypical School-Aged Children. Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, & Early Intervention, 17(4), 1097–1116. https://doi.org/10.1080/19411243.2023.2215759
Schmitt, C. M., & Schoen, S. (2022). Interoception: A Multi-Sensory Foundation of Participation in Daily Life. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 16, 875200.https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.875200