Latest news with #CarolineWilliams
Elle
27-05-2025
- Health
- Elle
You Know The Gut Feeling You Have When Things Go Wrong? It Has A Name: Interoception
Imagine a world in which our bodies had their own built-in health and wellness data tracker, which kept tabs on our rest, heart rate, and breathing, the way an Apple Watch would. No longer would we have to defer to our pieces of wearable tech to check spikes in our heart rates or note our sleep deficits the morning after a disturbed night of rest. Instead, our bodies would keep a score, that we could read ourselves, from our very own data store. This isn't some Black Mirror futuristic vision, but rather the reality of a new frontier within mindfulness called interoception. You might not have heard of the term yet, but some of the wellness world's most prominent voices are extolling the virtues of this 'basic power of detection that we're born with,' including Dr Rangan Chatterjee who makes the case in his latest book, Make Change That Lasts, that interoception is one of science's most exciting new fields of research. 'Interoception is a sixth sense we are born with. It's not about us interpreting signals from the outside world but about the signals transmitted from our internal organs to our brains.' And it can help us carve out time to improve both physical and mental health in a world where external stimuli are often in overdrive. FIND OUT MORE ON ELLE COLLECTIVE Interoception is a way for us to 'train the mind and body to work better together, so we can almost hack the nervous system to induce calmness,' says science journalist Caroline Williams, the author of new book Inner Sense: How the New Science of Interoception Can Transform Your Health, who advises working on 'making friends with your body' through breath-focused meditation and mindful movement like Pilates, yoga and Tai Chi. In talking to experts for this piece I realised I had also practiced interoception without knowing. In a recent session, my therapist was encouraging me to ground myself when I sense that my inner child feels fearful. She advised me to close my eyes, focus on my breath, and to place my dominant hand on my chest, my heartbeat pitter pattering beneath my skin. 'In through the nose,' she said softly, her voice barely audible. 'And out through the mouth.' The exercise, I'd later learn, was a way of developing my own interoceptive awareness. There are three main types of interoceptive signals: unconscious — heartbeat and breathing, for example, which happen most of the time without much awareness; conscious — which you can teach yourself to tap into, such as thirst, hunger or anxiety — and gut feelings, which are tricky to pinpoint to one particular area of the body but affect you anyway. 'These are things like how much energy you've got, and whether you feel like you've got enough energy to do what you need to do, whether you feel capable today and confident, whether you feel a little bit on edge, and you're not quite sure why,' Williams notes, adding that interoceptive signals are important because they affect how you feel, what you're motivated to do, the way you think and the decisions you make, but they're not easily quantifiable. And while we may have talked about 'gut feelings' for years to describe a sense of intuition, many people don't realise that they're grounded in science, which is where interoception comes in. Breathwork exercises are a key part of building interoceptive awareness, although the critical difference between wellness-focused mindfulness breath work and interoceptive breath work is the latter asks that you apply your bodily signals critically to the knowledge you have of what's happening around you. Rob Rea, a breathwork specialist has seen a marked increase in clients coming to him for help with problems he has treated by helping them to become more interoceptively tuned in. He tells me about a client who's a principal ballerina at the Royal Opera House. 'Before she performs sometimes, we'll Zoom and she'll often tell me that she's in stress mode,' Rea explains. 'My job is then to regulate her nervous system. I'll ask her to look around the room and to tell me what she sees, what she's wearing, which colours she can see in the room. This is called somatic experiencing, which utilises interoception to gain awareness and insight of what's really happening in the body.' Rea then asks his client to tell him what she can hear and feel, and where the feelings are manifesting in the body. 'It can feel a little bit like a waste of time for people whenever they close their eyes,' Rea says. 'But it's only in getting in touch with what your body's telling you that you can really hear it properly.' I recently shared a traumatic experience from my childhood with my therapist; her response, like Rea's, was to ask me how I felt, and where in the body the feeling manifested. In locating the feeling — which we uncovered as fear and shame — I was able to process it better, without becoming triggered by it. The exercise was a way of enhancing my interoceptive ability. When I thought about what I experienced as a child later that day and my heart started racing and my stomach sunk, I sat down, closed my eyes and allowed my body to metabolise the feelings that were manifesting in my solar plexus. It made me feel more in control during a moment that otherwise felt overwhelming. An improved sense of interoception can have a transformative impact on a person's wellbeing. Research from 2013 found that good interoceptive awareness was what allowed 'intuitive' eaters – those who eat in response to physical rather than emotional cues and as a result eat only when hungry – to keep their weight down. 'That's something that's really important these days, because we live in the era of gym selfies, and young people are trying to live up to these unrealistic body images from the outside,' Williams says. 'And actually, if you feel your body more from the inside, then you like yourself more. You have less body image issues.' Another study from 2021 found that by training autistic individuals to be more aware of their heartbeat, stress levels could be dramatically reduced. After six sessions, 31% of them recovered completely from their anxiety, compared to just 16% of the control group. Interoception has also helped experts to understand why physical exercise can help relieve symptoms of depression. The fitter you are, the more active your heart is, and the more attuned you're likely to be with the body's muscles and organs. 'People who are very sedentary may have problems tuning into their interoceptive senses because they haven't experienced their heart rate rising and their breathing rate rising — they may not understand that that's completely fine and healthy,' Williams adds. Being interoceptively aware is harder than it sounds though. Our increased reliance on digital devices has also impacted our interoceptive awareness. 'The digital ecosystem is set up to keep us online and to give us instant dopamine hits,' Rea warns. 'We're up against a very powerful beast that is training our brains to switch from one thing to another every 8 or 9 seconds. That's a huge change in how our attentions have shifted, so a large part of interoception is actually training yourself to focus and pay attention to what's happening in your body.' It's something I remember the next time I reach for my phone and start doomscrolling. As my screen flashes through dancing, cooking and hair washing videos, I take a minute to stop and detect what the nebulous feeling of sadness is inside of me, and whereabouts in my body it's located. I sit in the sadness and do some deep breathing just like my therapist advised and I physically feel something shift. The more I do this, the more I feel in tune with, and ultimately in control of, my own body. While the instruction to 'listen to your body' might have been bandied around in the age of wellness, it holds more weight, and scientific backing, than previously thought. Interoception is the sixth sense we could all tap into more. After all, everyone's body has something to say, it's just a case of tuning in more intentionally so that we can hear and understand it more clearly. ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE. Naomi May is a freelance writer and editor with an emphasis on popular culture, lifestyle and politics. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard as its Fashion and Beauty Writer, working across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Acting News Editor at ELLE UK and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others.
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘The unfinished business of the freedom movement': 60 years after Bloody Sunday
The atrocity of 'Bloody Sunday' helped move public sentiment, and eventually helped bring about the passage of the landmark voting rights ruling of 1965. Today, the struggle continues. In recent years, the Supreme Court has rolled back key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, states have enacted dozens of new voting restrictions, and Trump's platform has focused on ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Today, award-winning poet Caroline Williams, the great-great-granddaughter of
CairoScene
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
‘Cairo, My Love' Literary Book Fair Features Leading Publishers
The event showcases books on Cairo's history, monuments, modern heritage, intangible culture and urban landscape. Feb 14, 2025 As part of the 'Cairo, My Love' book fair, MASQ – Multicultural and Artistic Spaces at Qaitbey will bring together three major publishing houses and bookstores for a literary showcase on February 15th, 2025. The event will feature a curated selection of books covering Cairo's history, monuments, modern heritage, intangible culture and urban landscape. Amongst the highlighted works is 'Islamic Monuments in Cairo: The Practical Guide' by historian Caroline Williams, who will be there to deliver a talk on the city's enduring legacy. The participating publishers and bookstores include The American University in Cairo Press, Al-Balad Bookstore, and Dar al-Maraya for Arts and Culture. The event will run from 1:00 PM to 7:00 PM.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pace of parks' protection plan criticised
The slow pace of a city council's plan to protect parks from development has diminished public trust, according to campaigners. In 2021, Liverpool City Council pledged to place 100 parks in trust to protect them from being built on – but nearly four years later, only one park had been given the status, overseen by the charity Fields in Trust. The council said the paperwork had been "complex to assemble" and stated 20 parks would be protected by the end of summer 2025. Caroline Williams was part of a campaign to stop a housing development being built on the Harthill Estate, part of Liverpool's Calderstones Park, in which campaigners took the council to court over the plan in 2019, and won. The land, which would have had 30 luxury homes built on it, is now a nature reserve. But, speaking to BBC Politics North West, Ms Williams said the current delays by the council made her "frustrated" and question whether it was really committed to protecting parks in the longer term. "I'm worried that this procrastination isn't just the council dragging their heels - it's deliberate," she said. "They feel, in the future, they might want some of these spaces to be developed. "[So] instead of being honest and upfront about dropping the plan, they are drawing it out and thinking if it takes this long to protect one park, people will give up. "But we won't give up – the electorate in Liverpool have been promised this," she added. The Green Party's Tom Crone said Liverpool City Council's proposals to build housing on several green spaces more than a decade ago had led to a lack of trust by some members of the public after the Harthill Estate debacle. He said: "There are several green spaces that wouldn't exist right now if it wasn't for people and communities protesting against proposals to build on them." Mr Crone claimed the council "had to do something" at the time, to counter the "backlash" and "negative headlines", and "that's why, to great fanfare, the council announced this plan". He said the Labour administration in 2021 had made protecting parks a "political priority", that had since fallen off the agenda. "They let people down, they lost the trust of the people of Liverpool on the issue of green spaces, and they have to do something to show that they take the issue seriously now." The only park to be placed in trust so far is Falkner Square in Toxteth. Mr Crone acknowledged the park was "beautiful", but was "essentially a big garden for the Georgian houses surrounding it", rather than a public park. The council said: "Legal discussions are now at a very advanced stage to progress with placing 20 of the city's parks into Fields In Trust. "This will include the 10 largest parks in Liverpool, which will see more than 1,500 acres of green space placed under the protection of Fields In Trust. "It is hoped this process will be concluded by the summer." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram, and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pace of parks' protection plan criticised
The slow pace of a city council's plan to protect parks from development has diminished public trust, according to campaigners. In 2021, Liverpool City Council pledged to place 100 parks in trust to protect them from being built on – but nearly four years later, only one park had been given the status, overseen by the charity Fields in Trust. The council said the paperwork had been "complex to assemble" and stated 20 parks would be protected by the end of summer 2025. Caroline Williams was part of a campaign to stop a housing development being built on the Harthill Estate, part of Liverpool's Calderstones Park, in which campaigners took the council to court over the plan in 2019, and won. The land, which would have had 30 luxury homes built on it, is now a nature reserve. But, speaking to BBC Politics North West, Ms Williams said the current delays by the council made her "frustrated" and question whether it was really committed to protecting parks in the longer term. "I'm worried that this procrastination isn't just the council dragging their heels - it's deliberate," she said. "They feel, in the future, they might want some of these spaces to be developed. "[So] instead of being honest and upfront about dropping the plan, they are drawing it out and thinking if it takes this long to protect one park, people will give up. "But we won't give up – the electorate in Liverpool have been promised this," she added. The Green Party's Tom Crone said Liverpool City Council's proposals to build housing on several green spaces more than a decade ago had led to a lack of trust by some members of the public after the Harthill Estate debacle. He said: "There are several green spaces that wouldn't exist right now if it wasn't for people and communities protesting against proposals to build on them." Mr Crone claimed the council "had to do something" at the time, to counter the "backlash" and "negative headlines", and "that's why, to great fanfare, the council announced this plan". He said the Labour administration in 2021 had made protecting parks a "political priority", that had since fallen off the agenda. "They let people down, they lost the trust of the people of Liverpool on the issue of green spaces, and they have to do something to show that they take the issue seriously now." The only park to be placed in trust so far is Falkner Square in Toxteth. Mr Crone acknowledged the park was "beautiful", but was "essentially a big garden for the Georgian houses surrounding it", rather than a public park. The council said: "Legal discussions are now at a very advanced stage to progress with placing 20 of the city's parks into Fields In Trust. "This will include the 10 largest parks in Liverpool, which will see more than 1,500 acres of green space placed under the protection of Fields In Trust. "It is hoped this process will be concluded by the summer." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram, and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
