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How the war disrupted my interoception + workshop today
Since the war, my body signals have been…weird.
Brain fog. Exhaustion. A creativity that went quiet. Hunger and fullness signals have been off. This is what extreme, sustained stress does to the nervous system. It scrambles our interoceptive signals. The internal messaging system that tells us when we’re hungry, when we’re full, when we’re tired, when we need to move — that system gets disrupted.
This doesn’t only happen during war. It can happen after any period of extreme stress such as illness, loss, upheaval, trauma. If you’ve ever come out of a hard stretch and noticed that something felt off in your body in ways you couldn’t quite explain, this is likely what was happening.
What interoception is:
Interoception is our ability to sense what’s happening inside our bodies. It’s the signal that says I’m hungry or I need rest or something feels wrong. It’s the quiet internal conversation our body is constantly having with us.
When our nervous system is under extreme stress, that conversation gets harder to hear. The signals get blocked. And we can’t simply force our way back to hearing them. Telling yourself to “just listen to your body” when your nervous system is dysregulated is like trying to hear a whisper in a storm.
This morning, for example
I came home from a Feldenkrais class and didn’t feel hungry. My body wasn’t giving me the signal. But I knew I’d been up for hours, I’d moved my body, and it made logical sense that I needed to eat — even if I couldn’t feel it.
So instead of waiting for the hunger signal (which I knew by now would arrive too late and too loud, less ‘I’m ready to eat’ and more ‘get food in me right now!!!’) I went to the fridge and started looking. Really looking. And as I noticed each food — the colors, the textures, what appealed to me, what excited me — something started to shift. Oh, that looks good. I want that. And with each small moment of interest and excitement, the hunger signal started to wake up. By the time I sat down to eat, I was genuinely hungry.
I didn’t force the signal. I created the conditions for it to arise.
The same thing happens on my walks. Now that I can walk without one ear on the sky, I don’t just walk. I look at the mountains. I notice the trees. I take in the wide, open world that had been so hard to be fully present in when rockets were flying overhead. And with each thing I notice, I’m giving my nervous system a piece of evidence: See this? This is here. You are safe enough to be part of this.
The principle underneath both of these
It’s not about specific tools or techniques. There’s no single practice that fixes a dysregulated nervous system. What helps is creating new experiences of safety. Anything that helps your nervous system feel safe enough in your body, in your environment, and in your senses strengthens the neural pathways that allow interoceptive signals to flow again. Each small experience of safety is a message: we can come back online now.
This is slow work. I don’t know if it will take me days or weeks or longer. But I trust the direction.
Soul Tilling is another one of those doorways.
It’s a dedicated hour to turn inward, with guidance, and see what’s already there. Not an attempt to plant new thoughts or positive reframes — think of it more as archaeology. We’ll open with a short guided imagery, move into twenty minutes of uncensored private journaling, and close with a somatic meditation and brief movement practice to integrate whatever moves through.
Surface. Express. Settle. Move.
TODAY – Monday, April 27
10:30 AM NY / 5:30 PM Israel
50–60 minutes
Live on Zoom — not recorded
$40 — limited financial aid spots available on the payment page
Supporting your sensitivity,
Rena
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