Proprioception: how the body senses itself.

When you close your eyes, how do you know where your feet are? Your arms? Your hands? When you put a spoon to your mouth, you don’t need to look at the spoon to see where it is or feel for your mouth to know where to place the spoon; you know where your hand is in relation to your mouth.

Proprioception is the unconscious awareness of body position. It tells us:

•About the position of our body parts, their relation to each other, and their relation to other people and objects.

•It communicates how much force is necessary for muscles to exert and allows us to grade our movements.

•Receptors for the proprioceptive system are located in muscles, tendons (where the muscles attach to the bone), ligaments, joint capsules (the protective lining of each joint), and connective tissue.

•The receptors of the proprioceptive system respond to movement and gravity.

•We depend on our proprioceptive system to help us make sense of touch and movement experiences.

•Your brain then uses this information to plan movements so that you can coordinate your body.

Proprioceptive sensations are provided by activities that require muscles to stretch and work hard. One of them could be yoga practice where we reconnect with our body part sense. I encaurage you to close your eyes.