Most of us treat tiredness as a signal to push harder or stop completely — as if the body only speaks in on/off switches. The medieval Persian physician Ibn Sina argued something more subtle in his Canon of Medicine: that health isn't a fixed state but a constant negotiation between qualities in flux, and that the skilled person learns to read the body's intermediate signals before they become crises. This maps surprisingly well onto what psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett calls 'interoceptive awareness' — your brain's running model of your body's internal state, which shapes mood, judgment, and energy in ways you rarely consciously notice. The practical upshot: the low-grade restlessness you feel on a Friday afternoon probably isn't boredom or laziness. It's data. Treat it like a dashboard warning light, not a character flaw.

In the last 48 hours, which physical signal did you override rather than interpret — and what did you tell yourself to justify it?

Drawing from Islamic / Galenic medicine (Ibn Sina) — Ibn Sina (Avicenna), with reference to Lisa Feldman Barrett's interoceptive research