Ruminating On The Past? Your Sleep And Digestion May Be Paying The Price
When sleep or digestion feels off, you might reach for a supplement, tweak your diet, or adjust your bedtime routine. But what if the issue isn't purely physical? A new study exploring body awareness and time perception1 suggests that how well you tune into your body, and how much mental energy you spend dwelling on the past, could be shaping these everyday functions more than you realize.
About the study
Interoception (your brain's ability to read internal body signals like hunger, heartbeat, and tension) has long been linked to emotional regulation and mental health. But researchers wanted to explore whether it also connects to physical outcomes like sleep and digestion, and whether your relationship with time plays a role.
They recruited 152 adults to complete validated questionnaires measuring interoceptive awareness and time perspective (whether you tend to focus on the past, present, or future). Participants also self-reported their sleep and digestion quality. The study was observational and cross-sectional, meaning it captured a snapshot in time rather than tracking changes (so it can't prove cause and effect).
A balanced sense of time was linked to better sleep and digestion
People with higher interoceptive awareness (aka those who could more easily notice and interpret their body's internal cues) reported better sleep and digestion. But the researchers also found that a balanced time perspective partially explained this relationship.
Specifically, people who scored high on "past-negative" time perspective (a tendency to ruminate on regrets, failures, or painful memories) reported poorer somatic functioning. In contrast, those with a more balanced orientation, characterized by less fixation on the negative past and more engagement with the present and future, fared better.
This makes sense through when we think about the nervous system. Chronic rumination keeps the stress response activated, which can disrupt digestion (the gut-brain axis is highly sensitive to stress) and interfere with the restorative processes that happen during sleep. The researchers suggest that interoception influences self-regulation not just through autonomic processes, but also through how we mentally relate to time.
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Six ways to strengthen body awareness and shift out of rumination
If you want to strengthen your interoceptive awareness and cultivate a more balanced time perspective, a few evidence-aligned practices can help:
- Body scans and mindfulness meditation: These practices train you to notice internal sensations without judgment, building the very skill the study measured.
- Mindful eating: Slowing down to notice hunger, fullness, and how food feels in your body reinforces interoceptive signals.
- Slow, diaphragmatic breathing: This type of breathwork stimulates the vagus nerve and supports parasympathetic tone, helping shift your nervous system out of stress mode.
- Journaling or therapy: If you tend toward rumination, working through past experiences with a therapist or through reflective writing can help loosen the grip of past-negative thinking.
- Movement practices: Yoga, walking, and other forms of mindful movement connect you to your body in the present moment.
- Tuning into early stress cues: The more you notice tension, shallow breathing, or digestive discomfort early, the faster you can intervene before stress compounds.
The takeaway
Sleep and digestion aren't purely physical; they're shaped by how attuned you are to your body and how you mentally relate to time. Strengthening body awareness and loosening the grip of past-focused rumination may support both.