**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Dictionary #NervousSystem > **🌱 Planted:** Mon 30 June 2025 --- # Neuroception At any given moment, our nervous systems are adjusting its state based on how it senses and perceives is happening in our environment. This is what Steven Porges calls "Neuroception" and it's something that happens below awareness in the primitive parts of the brain, constantly monitoring sensory information from both our internal bodily states and the environment. It is our nervous system's automatic ability to scan and detect safety, danger, or threat in our environment or relationships. This automatic scanning happens below the level of awareness and triggers our body's responses (fight, flight, freeze, or feelings of calm and connection) before we even consciously register what's happening. When neuroception is functioning well, our responses are appropriate based on what's going on in the present moment. When we detect safety, the ventral branch of the vagus nerve activates. On the other hand, our nervous systems can perceive risk and become dysregulated as a result even when there is no immediate risk and we are safe—the cliché of how modern humans are no longer being chased by tigers, yet are still dysregulated as if we were. # Interoception Interoception is our ability to sense what's happening inside our own bodies. It's how we know we're hungry, tired, need to go the bathroom, feel our heart racing, or notice tension in our shoulders. Some people naturally have very clear interoceptive awareness (they immediately know when something feels "off" in their body), while others might be less tuned in to these internal signals—this is a matter of sensitivity.