인터셉션 마스터하기: 신경계 인식을 위한 전략

### 신경계 마스터하기: 최고의 성능을 위한 차단 해제
* 🧠 우리는 매일 의식하지 못한 채 **세 가지 신경계 모드 사이를 오가**지만, 우리 몸을 잘 조율하면 능력을 향상하고 의미 있는 삶의 퀘스트를 추구할 수 있습니다.
* 👩 인지 신경과학자인 안 로우(An Law)가 신경계 성능을 최적화하기 위한 증거 기반 프로토콜에 대한 인사이트를 공유하며, **우리 내부의 신체 감각을 인식하는 인터셉션의 중요성**을 강조합니다.
* 🔍 Law는 인지적 측면에 집중했던 과거를 되돌아보며 **신체 감각, 호흡, 감정 상태 등 우리 내면의 경험에는 다양한 층위**가 있다는 것을 깨닫고 이를 요리 경험의 맛에 비유합니다.
* 💪 인터셉트 능력의 개념은 기존의 감각을 증폭시키고 몸과 마음을 다시 연결하는 데 도움이 되는 **호흡법과 같은 수련**을 통해 기를 수 있습니다.
* 🎭 로는 자신의 개인적인 여정에 대해 이야기하며, **인터셉션을 받아들이면서 혼란에서 호기심으로 바뀌었고 직관과 의사 결정 능력이 향상**되었다고 말합니다.
* ⚠ 몸에서 뇌로 정보를 보내는 활동성 뉴런이 그 반대보다 **4배나 많기 때문에 이러한 신호를 무시하면 번아웃으로 이어질 수 있으므로 정기적으로 몸을 점검할 필요**가 있습니다.
* 💡 "원숭이" 방법(인식, 자세, 감정)과 같은 전략은 개인이 자신의 신체 상태를 조정하고 **불안이나 스트레스가 확대되기 전에 징후를 인식**하는 데 도움이 됩니다.
* 🌱 궁극적으로 긍정적인 경험과 환경을 염두에 두면 **더 건강한 결정을 내리고 전반적인 웰빙을 개선**할 수 있으며, 일상 생활에서 차단이 얼마나 중요한지 다시 한 번 강조할 수 있습니다.

인터셉션은 개인이 자신의 감정을 인식하고 조절하여 의사 결정과 전반적인 웰빙을 향상시킬 수 있도록 지원합니다.

Every single day, you will constantly be shifting between three different nervous system modes, likely without even realizing it. However, if you practice the skill of noticing your body and listening to it as it moves through these nervous system states, you can unlock a whole new world of skills that allow you to complete the quests that are most meaningful to you in your life. Some of these quests might include having a prestigious career, completing a PhD in neuroscience, or becoming a published author. And today, we're talking with my friend An Law, who's completed each of these quests and is here to discuss our favorite evidence-backed protocols for peak nervous system performance. As a cognitive neuroscientist, I studied emotions and feelings almost as if the rest of the nervous system didn't exist. Nothing under the shoulders existed. I really liked mental models of the world: A, then B, then C. And if something didn't work the way I expected it to, probably something in the equation was wrong. Discovering the concept of interoception, which is fairly recent for me, I only started reading about it about

last year here I was saying, Oh, there's this entire cupboard in my kitchen that I had never looked at. There are different lenses on our internal experience, and you know, most of us are aware of the cognitive, like thought lens, because we just hear the thoughts go all day long. But there are also so many other layers. There's the layer of our physical somatic sensations, like, Am I hungry right now? or Am I noticing this tightness in my chest or in my gut? There's the breath, like, How is my breath in this moment? There's all of these different... I think of them as flavors, like an interoceptive chef. In that last year, since you've discovered this from your head down more into your body and living more in this place, what are some of the shifts you've noticed? So, first, confusion, because things felt more out of control than they did before when it was all cognitive, and then almost a sense of wonder, curiosity, and all discovering that I had all of those

parts of me that had been ignoring in the research. There is this idea that we have four times more efferent neurons going from the body to the brain than afferent neurons going from the brain to the body. This like super high wave information that I'm otherwise missing out on that impacts my intuition, the way that I make decisions, the way that I feel about other people, and the way that I also, you know, take care of myself. It's like any habit, the more times that that little check-in muscle gets built, the stronger it is. Interoceptive capacity is a skill that can be learned, cultivated, and practiced. You know, there's other ways like this breath work experience, which really amplifies all of the sensations that are already there, but just it brings much more like aliveness to them. What was your internal experience like during this like Amplified State? Yeah, my head felt really full this morning, but it almost felt like it was a little bit disconnected from my body also, and then

uh with Kelly. You facilitated this breathwork session. Pres. Amazing way to reconnect. I've actually only done breathwork in a group, and it's as if you're feeding off the energy of everyone else around you. Typically, the journey follows the arc of a bell curve, so it starts off quite gentle, like first or second gear, and then increases in intensity and energy and aliveness and emotions, and then there's the peak, and then you kind of come back down into integration, relaxation, and just calm, basically. I ended up crying some. Sure that it was extreme clarity, like stuff got out the way here exactly accessed, unlocked. I've burnt out in the past, and I think that was largely due to overriding and not listening to the feedback that was coming from my body. I've also experienced burnout several times. I still very often feel like I could be on the verge of it. What are other ways I could access that information so I can maybe see burnout coming from further away? I created something that I call Ape.

which stands for awareness, posture, emotion. After I get up, I do some stretching, do some moving in the morning, take a dog for a walk. I'll sit down, drink some tea, and just tune in. How is my awareness? Okay, in this moment, it feels quite expansive. I'm aware of the space behind me. I'm aware of you. I'm aware of the cameras over here. How is my posture? Tuning in to see what is present. Like, it's nice to do in the morning and evening because that's when there's naturally a period of spaciousness in between meetings. Remembering to listen and to tune in. For me, anxiety shows very much in the belly. Like, and I feel like there, like, very uncomfortable warmth sometimes. Psychologists call it free-floating anxiety. To me, it's the worst kind because, again, I'm a problem solver. Being anxious when there's a clear reason, it's fine. But this free-floating anxiety where I'm literally typing an email and all of a sudden I'm like anxious and I don't know why. I really

like dancing in my living room. That to make dancing is amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I get up, I put some music on, and I Just Dance. I'm very silly in my living room, and I do that for 5 minutes. In this whole process, there's no point where I managed to label and interpret what was wrong at a cognitive level, but I feel better, and I can go back and sit at my computer and keep on working, and it's fine. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. I learned recently that the word anxiety, the Latin root, it comes from a word that means to constrict. Anxiety is actually a sense of constriction or resisting other emotions. And so your practice of noticing that, tuning into interception, putting on some music, and then moving your body and allowing your body to just move allows whatever that emotional energy was to just be discharged. And like you said, you don't even need to know what the underlying emotion was, let alone what the story was, and you can sit down, and you feel good again that moment.

when you feel the anxiety kind of in your belly, that's something that I think of as a cognitive canary, the early warning sign that if you were to ignore that, that would then lead to a full-blown panic attack. In that moment, there's different options you can either do exactly as you did, which is like play music, move the body, dance, feel it out. You could do, you know, like a breathwork practice to downregulate your nervous system and calm down that way. There's ways in which the breathwork practices can be used to self-regulate away emotion, which, you know, might work in the short term, but in the long term, um, you're just adding more emotional debt, and it's that over time creates more fragility in the nervous system, which creates a whole host of challenges. I've noticed this with public speaking for me, where I used to have this knot in my stomach before coming on stage, and I still have it, but the big difference now is that I

actually notice it, and I say hello. Or I used to have anxiety about that because I felt like, Oh, maybe it's because I'm not good at public speaking, and I'm not. I haven't maybe prepared enough, and this is why it's there. Now I'm like, No, actually I'm just feeling a bit anxious because I care. I want this to be good. It's connected to the concept of meta-emotions, the feelings about feelings, which is a word you would see in modern research but is not new at all. Because I don't know if you know about the concept of the double arrow in Buddhism. Like the first arrow is the shame, the second arrow is the shame about the shame, and you're suffering twice, ashamed of that shame about the shame, and it never stops. And some of the benefits of interoception is just stopping that vicious cycle in its tracks. Yeah, particularly in our culture, we spend so much time avoiding what are labeled like bad emotions, anger, grief, shame, and in my experience, if our

meta emotion. If our relationship to those emotions is bad, then we resist them, and that resistance is actually what causes the suffering. Versus if you take the interceptive fruit, you stay with the sensations. The unpleasantness or the discomfort will pass very, very quickly. The life cycle is like 15-20 seconds, and then there's this clarity and freedom that emerges on the other side. Because if someone doesn't have any interceptive capacity, they'll just be in the story over and over again, and they will experience the resistance they have, which just causes that infinite double arrow thing. For quite a few people, every time they made a bad decision, there was some kind of gut feeling or some sense that was being like, Actually, you shouldn't do that, but it was overridden by like, No, this is actually a great opportunity, or I'm going to make loads of money, or whatever that decision is. I have a decision to make. I'll be like, Okay, does this feel expansive, or does it feel like it's contracting in my body?

system, and that is a really good, even if I don't know why, that's a really good indicator of do I start this business project, do I go in this direction, do I do this trip, which is counterintuitive to a lot of people who consider themselves decision-makers 'cause they're trying to make the most rational, most logical decision, and they'll almost tell you don't trust your intuition, and what you're saying is actually maybe trust your intuition. Yes, there's no such thing as a non-emotional decision. All decisions have emotional kind of undertones, and then we tend to post-rationalize. If I'm in a kind of tense or challenging conversation, let's say with my wife Kelly, um, my default tendency is to go into the kind of like shut down freeze response, and it'll happen, and I'll go numb, and I won't even realize in that moment. As soon as there's awareness, like acknowledging it, not making that bad, not making that wrong, I'll usually say, Hey, I

need a moment to just like return back to my body, get up, move, shake, do some breathing, and just like get some energy going to bring that sensation, bring that interceptive sensation back online. One that it takes me longer sometimes to notice is when I'm having a difficult interaction with someone. It will sometimes take me a good 5-10 minutes into the conversation to notice that I'm like this and I'm very, very tense, which has an impact on the conversation, my way of responding. Yeah, the freeze response, it's also known as dorsal shutdown. It is basically like a protective mechanism to protect us from feeling stuff in an extreme situation. You know, let's say like an Impala is in the jaws of a lion, like you're going to want to not feel that that's happening. It can be a problem if, as you say, you're in a conversation and you're frozen and you haven't even noticed, or you do notice and then you make that a bad thing. And so for me, it usually

requires getting up and moving to some degree sometimes. Um, making sounds is helpful as well, like humming or singing or vocalizing. Toning is another way of saying it. And so, there's these different strategies depending on how the body is responding to stress. A practical question I wanted to ask you: are there any ways to apply these strategies when you're in the context where you can't really get up and make monkey sounds, for example? 'Cause it's great if you're having this difficult conversation with your partner, and he knows that you're working using these modalities to develop interoceptive awareness. But what if you're in the office with your boss, and you're having that difficult conversation? How about processing that sensation and that emotion in a way that is, I guess, socially acceptable? Breath and awareness, I think, are the two things that can be played with subtly, that in a way that no one else notices. In the case of the freeze response, bringing your awareness and sensations down into your

feet on the floor and also your hands, like to your extremities, and feeling the contact between the feet and the ground. When the physiology feels safe, that's when the system relaxes again. Touch and heat is a great one. Maybe you're holding a cup of tea, like really feeling the warmth of the tea, like really coming back into the senses. Secondly, playing with awareness. So often when we're angry, frustrated, or shut down, our awareness goes from being kind of expanded to very, very collapsed. And so there's a way that when I'm speaking to you, I like my voice kind of sounds different. It sounds a little bit tighter when I'm contracting my awareness. This is what happens when we get stressed versus if I start to relax and just allow everything to be more easeful and have the awareness in the back of my body behind me. There's more spaciousness, and even the tone of my voice starts to change. I could have done that, and you might not have noticed that I was doing that if we were just in a

meeting or something where your awareness is and coming into the sensory qualities. I think it's like the way back. We're going to do something called vuh hum or B breath. So, this is kind of weird, but it's fun. Your thumbs are going to go inside your ears like this. Your two fingers are going to be over your eyes, and your ring finger is going to be over your nose cartilage. We're going to take a full breath in, hum all the way to the end of the exhale, and the hum should kind of vibrate in your nasal cavities. This vibration releases nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator. It feels immensely calming, reduces eye tension. It's a great way to just really come back into the body and feel great. I'm ready. Okay, great. So, thumbs, yeah, not like fully in, but just like touching. Fingers over on the eyes, yep, and then ring finger on the nose. We'll take a full breath in all the way to the top and

then hard on the exhale, so inhale. It feels a little bit weird. Yeah, it's like vibrating everywhere. I mean, the vibration is good. That means you're doing it right. Yes. Okay, let's do it again. I'm ready. I won't laugh this time. You didn't laugh when you said you can hold your breath for a very long time. I stopped humming, and you were still going for a very long time. Every moment reminded me of a sensation deprivation tank. It was very comforting once I got past the word sensation of the vibration at the beginning. It was very comforting. Yeah, I find it's really good for me, particularly after I've been on Zoom or looking at screens a lot, when I have eye tension. It really helps me to relax the eye tension. Yeah, and it's so simple. I love that it's just like, it's humming, right? I will be humming more often now. Thank you. I think of these three different strategies for changing our state, and

changing how you feel. There's the top-down, which you mentioned already. One example was like the reframing of your anxiety before speaking, where you turn that into like, Wow, I really care about this. There's the bottom-up, like the humming, for example. And then there's the environment design, the outside-in, which is, you know, going outside in nature or changing who we're around, changing the sound, changing the sensory stimuli that we're being impacted by. So, what would you say one or two of the most effective top-down cognitive practices for changing the way that you feel about something at a broader level? I would say journaling is one of the most effective ones, just writing about your emotions, writing about the context around those emotions, understanding that those are deeply interconnected and that you very feel emotions in isolation. Another tool that I like also very often as part of journaling is what's called effective labeling. It's really just putting words onto emotions. It doesn't always work, and we've discussed sometimes you don't need

it sometimes. It's fine to just process the emotion, but it can be helpful in some cases when they keep on coming back to just naming them. Affective labeling is literally as simple as putting a word on it, and you can do it as an iterative process where you write one word and you sit with it a little bit. Is that anxiety really, or oh, maybe it's actually fear of being judged, or maybe it's excitement, but I'm interpreting it as anxiety because you mentioned the environment, because maybe my co-workers are all very anxious around me. I'm actually excited about this, but I'm feeling anxious because everyone is running around being stressed about this thing. So just labeling it and sitting with that label until you feel like it perfectly aligns. So did any kind of environment design shifts come to mind for you in terms of like helping you to feel more at ease and just good in your body? A big one for me has been being a bit careful about the kind of foods and snacks that I have in

my kitchen because I kind of regulate with sugar. If I'm stressed, I will just eat a lot of chocolate and things like these. And so, I found that by having more like fruit and good things at home, or eggs, or things like these, I can have a little snack and I don't feel bad. So, that's been a little environmental design tweak that I've made that's been really helpful. Uh, we moved house recently somewhere that was like more in nature, where I the first thing I do is get outside, like put my feet on the ground, get some sunshine, and like that's a really, it's a much better way to start the day. There's less traffic noise, balancing those stimulating environments with places where our systems can actually like relax and recharge. There is spaciousness amongst the stimulation as well. I like that. I actually live very close to a farm in London, nice, and that's also been something I didn't think about it this way before, but anytime I feel a little bit

overwhelmed. I'll walk there. Just a lucky accident that I moved very close to one of the very few farms in London. But it's been really good for just regulating my nervous system, taking care of my mental health. And I've been doing this in an automatic way, which makes me realize that we probably instinctively do some of these things already, where we know it feels good. And learning about how it works is maybe just a way to do it in a more systematic manner, doing it more often. So that's one more thing that I want to like almost double click on, which is paying attention to the times when we actually feel really good, like when there's a certain person that we're around that our body just feels great around, or the farm, or the animals. And like really, maybe more than any other day, like paying attention to that, and then be like, okay, how can I be around this person? How can I collaborate with them? How can I go to visit this?

Farm on a more regular basis because that's, you know, such great feedback for our bodies and making decisions from that place with that like, like, wow, I feel great in the situation. It feels essential, and again, I think it keeps coming back to interception because without noticing that and acknowledging that mentally, we could just completely miss that really valuable piece of info, and we tend to only pay attention when we're feeling bad. Yes, so making a conscious effort to notice when we feel good. I really like that and celebrating it, and like, wow, I feel great right now. Like, in this moment, I feel great. More of that, more of that in our lives. Yeah, I like that. If you want to learn more about mastering your nervous system, watch this video next to keep on learning, or click the link in the description to get an instant report on your current nervous system quotient or nsq score.

How To Reset A Dysregulated Nervous System (Best Techniques)

Jonny Miller

매일 세 가지 신경계 모드를 전환하면서 자신의 몸에 주의를 기울이고 귀를 기울이는 방법을 배우면 변화를 가져올 수 있습니다.

내부 신체 감각을 인식하는 인터셉션은 의사 결정과 자기 관리에 중요한 역할을 합니다.

인터셉트 능력과 호흡법과 같은 기술을 연습하면 이 기술을 키우는 데 도움이 되어 감정을 더 명확하게 인식하고 번아웃을 예방할 수 있습니다.

인식과 움직임을 통해 불안 관리하기

연사는 아침 루틴과 춤을 대처 메커니즘으로 사용하여 불안을 관리하는 데 있어 인식, 자세, 감정의 중요성을 강조합니다.

자유롭게 떠다니는 불안을 최악의 불안으로 묘사하고 신체 감각에 집중하는 것의 중요성을 강조합니다.

또한 불교에서 말하는 메타 감정과 이중 화살의 개념을 살펴보고, 차단이 부정적인 감정으로 인한 고통의 고리를 끊는 데 도움이 될 수 있다고 제안합니다.

메타 감정이 의사 결정에 미치는 영향

감정과 우리의 관계는 저항을 통해 고통을 유발할 수 있지만, 불편한 감각에 머무르면 명료함과 자유로움을 얻을 수 있습니다.

직관적인 직감은 종종 의사결정을 이끌며 순전히 이성적인 선택이라는 개념에 도전합니다.

긴장된 상황에서 신체 반응을 인식하고 인정하면 인식을 회복하고 상호 작용을 개선하는 데 도움이 될 수 있습니다.

사회적 상황에서 스트레스를 관리하기 위한 전략

흥얼거리거나 노래를 부르는 등 소리를 내는 것은 스트레스 완화에 도움이 될 수 있지만, 사회적 환경에서 이러한 전략을 적용하는 미묘한 방법을 찾는 것이 중요합니다.

손과 발에 주의를 집중하고 촉각과 열을 이용하면 안정감과 이완감을 느낄 수 있습니다.

특정 손의 자세를 취하고 허밍을 하는 '부흠' 기법은 산화질소를 방출하고 진정 효과를 제공하여 힘든 상황에서 스트레스를 관리하는 데 유용한 도구입니다.

감정 상태를 변화시키기 위한 전략

허밍은 눈의 긴장을 완화하고 이완을 촉진하는 간단하면서도 효과적인 기법이 될 수 있습니다.

일기 쓰기와 감정 라벨링과 같은 하향식 인지 연습은 감정을 이해하고 처리하는 데 도움이 될 수 있습니다.

음식과 간식에 신경을 쓰는 등 환경 디자인도 긍정적인 감정 상태를 만드는 데 중요한 역할을 할 수 있습니다.

환경 디자인을 통한 스트레스 및 정신 건강 조절

연사는 스트레스를 조절하고 정신 건강을 개선하기 위해 건강한 간식을 구비하고 자연과 더 가까워지는 등 주방과 집 환경을 변화시켰습니다.

자극적인 환경과 휴식 및 재충전을 위한 공간의 균형을 맞추는 것이 중요하다고 강조합니다.

연사는 기분이 좋은 순간에 주의를 기울이고 이러한 긍정적인 경험을 의식적으로 삶에 통합할 것을 권장합니다.