How Well Do You Listen to Your Body?
Noticing the signals from inside, and knowing what to do with them
Your body sends a steady stream of messages - a tight chest before a hard conversation, a heavy stomach when something is off, the slow drop in energy an hour before you admit you are tired. Psychologists call the sense that picks these up interoception. Some people read it fluently, some barely notice it, and many notice it without trusting it. This test looks at four parts of that skill, because being good at one tells you surprisingly little about the others.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about an ordinary week, not about a day when you were ill or in pain. There are no right answers - this is about habits of attention, not health.
What it measures
Four of the eight scales of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness: noticing body sensations, keeping attention on them, linking them to emotions, and trusting them as a guide. Our mindfulness test measures present-moment attention in general; this one is specifically about the signals from inside your body.
Based on: Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness, MAIA and MAIA-2 (Mehling et al., 2012, 2018)
Possible results
Noticing
How readily you register sensations such as breathing, tension, warmth or heartbeat.
Attention regulation
Whether you can hold and steer your attention on body sensations.
Emotional awareness
Whether you link what you feel in your body with what you feel emotionally.
Trusting your body
Whether you experience your body as a safe place and a reliable guide.
Common questions
What is interoception?
It is the sense of the body's internal state - heartbeat, breathing, hunger, temperature, muscle tension, the sensations that come with emotions. It works alongside sight and hearing but points inwards. Questionnaires like this one measure how you relate to those signals; laboratory tasks, such as counting heartbeats, measure how accurately you detect them, and the two are only loosely related.
Is more body awareness always better?
No. The authors of the scale designed it to separate calm, trusting attention from anxious scanning, because noticing a lot of sensations while worrying about them is a different experience from noticing them with curiosity. What tends to go with wellbeing is the combination of noticing and trusting, not noticing alone.
Can body awareness be trained?
Yes, and the scale was built partly to measure exactly that - changes after practices such as mindfulness, yoga, breathing work or body-based therapy. Attention regulation usually moves first, and trust tends to follow more slowly. Brief daily check-ins, just pausing to notice breath, tension and energy, are the simplest place to start.
Sources
- Mehling, W. E., Price, C., Daubenmier, J. J., Acree, M., Bartmess, E., & Stewart, A. (2012). The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA). PLoS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0048230
- Mehling, W. E., Acree, M., Stewart, A., Silas, J., & Jones, A. (2018). The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness, Version 2 (MAIA-2). PLoS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0208034
An honest note This is not a medical assessment. The items are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from the MAIA-2, and cover four of its eight scales, so scores are not comparable to the published norms. Feeling aware of your body and measurably detecting signals such as your heartbeat often do not match. If a physical sensation keeps worrying you, or feels new or unusual, talk to a doctor rather than a questionnaire.