Proprioception is very important to the brain as it plays a big role in self-regulation, coordination, posture, body awareness, speech, and the ability to attend and focus.

Proprioception is your sense of self, your body and how it moves, and where you are in space.

The Physical

Proprioception is important for many reasons as it’s the way the brain perceives the body.

The nervous system decides what is threatening, what is stressful, how to respond, and how to remember situations for future reference. All of these can be experienced negatively with excess unnecessary stress dumped onto the system or positively with beneficial change occurring depending on the quality of our proprioception.

By knowing your body and having an accurate sense of who you are, what you can do, and what is required to respond to any given situation, our system can make more intelligent decisions, from everyday tasks, to more difficult skilled based work.

We recruit less brain power to perform complex tasks, we act and respond faster, we adapt quicker when met with resistance.

In a physical sense, we can accurately judge and decide how to move to ensure load is distributed throughout our structure rather than overloaded in one place.

We commonly see this with lower back, shoulder, and knee injuries. The body moves in a particular way which overloads an area, even if you do a variety of movements, you can still do each one with a repetitive overload to said area. Then once an injury is sustained, and this is the only way in which you know to move, we have an even bigger challenge to overcome.

In order to promote longevity we should aim to increase our proprioception as early in life as possible. Understanding our structure, gravity, loads and have enough sensitivity to feel where we are in space and inside the body.

The Mental

In a conceptual way, proprioception relates to knowing where we are in our life, the bigger picture, being able to make decisions quickly, and respond with your best interest, those around you, and your environment in mind.

We don’t want to follow in the footsteps of others blindly, we want to consciously be choosing the path we walk and able to deviate when necessary.