The Feedback Age
Everywhere we turn, something is tracking us.
Our watches measure our sleep, our phones log our steps, and our rings tell us if we’ve recovered well enough to train today. Even beneath our skin, implanted devices are now reading our rhythms in real time—our blood glucose, our heart rate variability, our temperature, our hormones.
We live in what could be called the feedback age—a time when nearly every function of the body can be captured, translated, and reported back to us. The idea is simple: more data means better decisions, and better decisions mean better health.
But what happens when the constant hum of information drowns out our ability to actually feel?
When every signal we need to interpret ourselves is outsourced to an algorithm or device, we lose contact with the most powerful biofeedback system that has ever existed: the body itself.
The Promise of External Feedback
Before we go further, let’s be clear—tools can be extraordinary teachers.
Biofeedback devices and wearables can offer powerful insight into how our bodies respond to stress, food, movement, and rest. Continuous glucose monitors can help us see how a late-night snack impacts blood sugar. Heart rate variability sensors can show us when our nervous system needs more recovery. Even simple heart rate monitors can teach us how breathing, sleep, and mindset affect our physiology.
And of course, training equipment—from free weights to resistance bands to reformers and machines—has long served a very direct purpose: to build strength, power, and endurance. But these same tools can also be viewed as biofeedback devices in their own right. If we can’t feel the coordination of our shoulders or hips during a lift or movement, the added resistance can make those sensations more available. The external load becomes a mirror—helping us sense what was previously hidden.
In the learning environments created by exceptional coach and teacher Will Chung, external structures—groups, tools, and games—are used to illuminate what’s going on inside. He might pair people with similar behavioral patterns so they can see each other’s tendencies more clearly. One person recognizes another’s anxiety, only to realize they’re seeing a reflection of their own. The group becomes a living feedback device, helping each member awaken to their inner state.
This is what powerful teaching does—it uses the external to help us awaken to our internal, to help us awaken to ourselves.
Ecological Dynamics: Learning Through Interaction
In the science of motor learning, there’s a framework called ecological dynamics. It’s built on the idea that we learn not in isolation, but through constant interaction with our environment. The body, mind, and surroundings form one integrated system.
Rather than relying on rote repetition, ecological dynamics encourages exploration—using games, obstacles, and real-world challenges—to promote adaptability and awareness. The environment becomes the teacher, helping people sense and adjust through experience rather than instruction.
In that way, ecological dynamics can be a powerful learning tool. By immersing us in complex and changing environments, it mirrors the natural way the body learns: through experience, not abstraction.
But it’s important to remember that ecological dynamics, too, is an external framework. It sets the stage for self-discovery but cannot replace the discovery itself. The field, the drill, or the game provides structure—but it’s still the participant’s responsibility to notice what’s happening within.
When approached consciously, this framework can help guide people back to themselves. It can awaken adaptability, self-trust, and embodied presence. But if treated mechanically—just another system to master—it can easily become another layer of outsourcing.
The tool’s value lies in whether it brings us closer to our own inner awareness—or farther from it.
When Tools Become Crutches
There’s a fine line between using a tool to enhance learning and using it to replace self-awareness.
Some of our clients at Embody Health and Performance have experienced this firsthand. One began wearing a biofeedback device that tracked heart rate variability throughout the day. At first, it offered useful insight—it showed how stress, meals, and rest affected physiology. But rather than using the information to make meaningful changes, they found themselves stuck just watching the numbers. When HRV dipped, anxiety rose—and that stress itself kept the HRV low. The very tool meant to empower became a source of fixation and frustration.
Another client was given a continuous glucose monitor by their doctor, to track blood sugar fluctuations. Initially, it was fascinating—an inside look at her metabolism in real time. But as data streamed in day and night, she began to feel watched and tense. Her anxiety about every spike caused even more spikes, as stress hormones drove the numbers higher. Worse, the constant alerts disrupted her sleep—the most vital time for repair and restoration—further stalling her progress.
A third client used a device that automatically sent her weight and body composition data directly to her insurance company. While the intention was accountability, she soon described feeling a loss of privacy and independence—along with growing concern about how that information might affect her coverage. What began as motivation quickly turned into judgment and unease.
In all of these cases, the external measurement was valid—but the relationship with it became the problem. Instead of using feedback to foster self-regulation and action, the clients became dependent on the devices to dictate their state of being.
This dependence—the belief that an external source must define our internal state—can pull us farther from our innate wisdom. And that innate wisdom is what makes each of us our own best advocate.
The Call to In-Sourcing
If biofeedback is “information about the body,” then in-sourcing is the act of listening to that information directly.
Our bodies have always existed as infinitely wise, self-knowing systems—constantly sensing, adapting, and recalibrating. Every moment, countless internal processes unfold without our conscious direction: our heartbeat modulates, our hormones balance, our cells repair. The architecture of our biology is designed not just to survive, but to heal, restore, and thrive—often without us even noticing.
That said, we also have the remarkable ability to tune in to what our bodies are already communicating. Through awareness, we can support these innate healing mechanisms rather than override them. Awareness doesn’t fix what’s broken—it helps us notice where the body is already working to recover and where it may be calling for help.
Often, the louder the symptom, the clearer that call becomes. Pain, fatigue, anxiety, or tension aren’t failures of the system—they’re signals. Invitations to listen.
We can strengthen that inner listening through simple, consistent practice:
- Breathing intentionally, not to control but to listen.
- Pausing before checking a metric—asking, How do I feel first?
- Using movement as a mirror, not as a measurement—how does my balance, breath, or tension change?
- Noticing patterns—when does my energy rise or drop? When do I feel connected or fragmented?
Each time we choose to tune inward before turning outward, we align with the body’s innate intelligence and strengthen our internal GPS.
Integrating External and Internal
None of this means we should throw away our devices or shun technology. The truth is, external and internal feedback both exist and can inform each other. But the ultimate objective isn’t to become dependent on tools—it’s to develop self-awareness.
External feedback can highlight patterns we haven’t yet felt. Internal feedback tells us when to step back and listen. The goal is not partnership with technology for its own sake, but partnership with ourselves.
At Embody Health and Performance, we encourage patients to explore both realms—with a deliberate lean toward inner awareness. We value tools that provide clarity, but we trust the intelligence of the body even more. True progress comes when people begin to sense what the devices can only describe—when they start noticing themselves in real time, without external confirmation.
That’s when growth moves from data to wisdom.
The Mirror Effect
Learning—whether in therapy, sport, or life—is often about being mirrored.
As mentioned earlier in the example of coach and teacher Will Chung, mirrors can take many forms—whether another person, a training tool, or a simple moment of reflection. What matters most is not the external form of feedback, but how we use it.
The same kind of mirroring can happen with any external feedback—training equipment, a glucose monitor, or a smartwatch. These tools reflect our patterns and reactions. But mirrors are only useful when we know when to look away and integrate what we’ve seen.
When we mistake the mirror for the self, we stop growing.
Becoming Our Own Best Doctor
Health, at its core, is not a destination—it’s a dialogue. A continual conversation between our body’s wisdom and the world around us.
We can—and should—learn from our devices, from our practitioners, from the people who walk alongside us. It truly takes a village to heal. But ultimately, we are responsible for the awareness we cultivate and the choices we make.
No one and nothing can feel what we feel, move how we move, or live in our body for us.
At some point, we must all return to that quiet, unmeasured space inside—the one that doesn’t need a readout to know it’s alive.
Listening for the Highest Voice
If we stay with this practice long enough, something remarkable happens.
As we fine-tune our awareness and begin listening more deeply to the signals within, we sometimes notice another kind of feedback—one that doesn’t come from the body, but moves through it. A deeper knowing. A higher voice.
Some call it intuition, consciousness, or soul. Others might recognize it as the whisper of the divine. Whatever name we give it, it’s the same quiet call that draws us toward wholeness, alignment, and peace.
This voice doesn’t shout. It doesn’t flash numbers or buzz our wrists. It waits for silence. It speaks through stillness, simplicity, and presence.
When we learn to hear that voice—to truly listen—we are no longer merely tracking health. We are participating in healing.
Final Reflection
Technology, tools, and experience can all help cultivate awareness. Whether sparked by training equipment, a wearable device, a coaching cue, or a moment of stillness, it’s that awareness—and the actions it inspires—that support true healing.
Biofeedback devices and training tools can all serve as valuable mirrors, helping us rediscover parts of ourselves we’ve forgotten to feel. But if we let them replace our internal listening, we trade wisdom for data.
The goal isn’t to reject the external or idolize the internal—it’s to harmonize the two. To use every source of feedback as an opportunity to know ourselves better, to act more consciously, and to live with intention.
Because the ultimate biofeedback device isn’t on your wrist or under your skin—it’s within you.
And it’s been listening all along.
