Next up in our ‘Welcome to The Brain’ series is a complex yet fascinating structure known as the insula. The insula not only processes sensory information in relation to how we perceive our physical self, but it also makes meaning around what it feels like to be in our body; the shape, the movement and the felt sense.

The insula is involved in interoception, our ability to sense what’s going on internally, helping to provide an embodied understanding of our visceral experience. Yoga and mindfulness are known to strengthen the insula, and when this structure is robust, it allows us to move away from the analytical mind and into the felt sense of the body.

One of the most important studies on yoga and the insula was conducted in 2014 by Villemure et al. Their research revealed that yoga practitioners could tolerate pain more than twice as long as individually matched controls, a finding which correlated with larger insula cortices.

Here, founder of The Minded Institute, Heather Mason, explains possible mechanisms behind these fascinating findings.