Burnout is not a badge of honor. It’s a signal.

Interoception, often called the “8th sense”, is your ability to sense internal signals from within the body. These signals include cues like hunger, thirst, a racing heart, shallow breathing, pain, or the urge to use the restroom.

Interoceptive awareness takes this a step further: it’s the skill of not just noticing these signals, but accurately interpreting what they mean. This awareness plays a vital role in how we modulate stress, make decisions, and respond to challenges, and it’s a skill that can be developed through intentional training and coaching.

Interoceptive intelligence is the ability to tune into the continuous conversation between the body and the brain, accurately interpreting what the body needs in any given moment. It forms the foundation of all other types of intelligence. While we can train cognitive, emotional, cultural, social and other intelligences, their effectiveness depends on one essential core: interoceptive intelligence.

Interoceptive awareness and interoceptive intelligence are closely connected, but they’re not the same. Interoceptive awareness is the first step: it’s about learning to notice and pay attention to the internal signals your body is constantly sending, like your heartbeat, breath, or tension in your jaw or shoulders.

Interoceptive intelligence, on the other hand, takes it further. It’s the ability to not only notice those signals, but to accurately interpret them and use that information to guide your behavior, decisions, and interactions. When you build interoceptive intelligence, you turn awareness into action, leading to lower stress, better focus, and more intentional choices.

Because interoception is grounded in the functioning of the autonomic nervous system, attempts to train it without proper guidance can backfire, especially for individuals experiencing chronic stress, trauma, anxiety, or mood dysregulation, which are far more common than many realize. Developing interoceptive awareness must be done with care, intention, and ideally with support from a qualified coach or facilitator.

In today’s fast-paced and often unpredictable work environment - marked by high demands, organizational change, and frequent turnover - it’s easy to focus exclusively on external stressors. We react instinctively, entering a state of fight or flight, driven by the pressure around us.

But amidst these challenges, one critical resource is often overlooked: our own bodies and nervous systems. No matter the external conditions, our capacity to perform, lead, and thrive depends on how well we manage our internal state.

Prioritizing nervous system regulation and rethinking our relationship with stress is not just beneficial, it’s essential. It’s the foundation for sustained high performance, resilient leadership, team morale, and long-term success in both work and life.

While tools like Emotional Intelligence, Psychological Safety, Unconscious Bias training, and personality frameworks like the MBTI can be powerful for teams, they all rely on one essential foundation: interoceptive intelligence.

When team members can tune into their internal signals, recognizing stress before it becomes burnout, and accurately interpret those sensations, they’re better equipped to make clear decisions, strengthen relationships, maintain focus, and elevate overall performance.

Mindfulness is not inherently an interoceptive technique, but every interoceptive awareness practice is grounded in mindfulness. Interoceptive awareness involves watching sensations in the body without judgment or labels - simply allowing them to exist as they are. Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention; interoception is the content of what you're paying attention to (specifically, what’s happening inside your body.) Think of mindfulness as the lens, and interoception as one of the most important things you can observe through that lens.

We provide coaching services for individuals of all ages. While coaching is often viewed as something designed primarily for adults, Colleen brings extensive experience working with clients across generations, including teenagers. She is passionate about helping each person build interoceptive awareness and confidence in ways that meet their unique needs.