InTUITION

Intuition - Is it as simple to understand as the word suggests? - 'in', meaning inside or from within and 'tuition' meaning knowledge or to know.

Some call it 'gut instinct, others 'a feeling in my waters' but it's all referring to the same thing. A feeling, a knowing, a sense of clarity that helps us to feel confident about making a decision or choice. It's an internal guidance system that serves to help navigate through all the twists and turns, detours and unexpected surprises in our lives.

Animals have a much more heightened sense of intuition along with their other senses to help keep them alive and avoid danger from predators. Thankfully being higher up the food chain, us humans can use our intuition for less threatening and more gratifying means.

We all accept that we have a level of intuition but not many of us really think about it as something that we can finely tune and use to help us in our daily lives. Some of us may even block our intuition without realising it. As children, we were all much more connected to our intuition, it's only as we pile on the distractions of life that we start to lose our ability to connect to ourselves in this way. Children live so much more in the moment (mindfully) than adults. We sometimes even see this as being distracted or being lost in their own worlds and make negative comments or associations with this behaviour. To be connected to ourselves in vital and something that should be encouraged to do as much as possible, like 1 of our 5 daily vegetables! This inner connection is what builds the foundation for a clear and strong intuition that we carry with us throughout life. A clear developed intuition is more reliable than any friend, family member or partner because it will only ever guide you in putting your needs first in order to reach your highest potential.

How can I reconnect with my intuition?

There are many ways of reconnecting, not every method will suit everyone so use your intuition to see which appeals to you...... see what I did there.

• Remove the distractions so that you can feel more and think less - take yourself away for a solitary walk in nature, swim at the beach, go to a park, meditate, sit in a cave, play an instrument etc the choice is yours but be by yourself and quiet your mind. Take time to actually feel your feelings and don't allow thoughts to pull you out of that moment. This is where you start to reconnect yourself and hear your own inner thoughts.
  

• Give yourself permission to daydream - Dedicate 10 minutes per day to complete abandon and daydream yourself to whatever you wish to be, do or have. Like visualisation, this method helps connect your subconscious to the conscious mind - it's like a hit workout for your intuition and fun too!

• Notice your reactions to people, places and things. Think about a situation where you met someone and you felt a really quick bond to them, the conversation flowed easily, you felt interested in what they had to say and most importantly how you felt when you parted company. Did you feel uplifted, energised, pleased to have met them? butterflies in the tummy? These are all the markers of a positive interaction that help our intuition to learn that in times like these, you are safe and able to be open and be trusting with this person. Now try to recall a situation where you met someone that you felt guarded or on edge interacting with. How did you feel when you parted company? relieved, distrustful, emotionally drained? heavy? These are the markers of an an experience that make your intuition remember the type of interaction and associate it with having your guard up or remaining closed as a form of protection. Our feelings are our biggest communicators of our intuition so if we dedicate ourselves to achieving emotional balance, then our intuition is primed and ready to give us the clarity that we need. Anyone with emotional instability will have a blocked intuition and will heavily depend on the opinions and decisions of others rather than their own. Those that don't appear to need or want validation from others feel safe and secure in their choices and direction in life are highly likely to have emotional balance and therefore an accurate intuition.

• Check in with your values and integrity - Our minds may take us off track but your intuition will not. Think about doing something that is clearly against your moral barometer and take notice of how it makes you feel, icky right! Doing things that betray your core values causes your intuition to feel intensely out of sync, why? - because it's not in your best interest! It's going against every fibre of your body and your intuition will let you know. The take away - if it feels bad, unclear, difficult or like a fish swimming up stream, STOP what you're doing. Intuition is always guiding us towards the things that feel right, easy and trustable.

• Write down your dreams - For those of you that can remember your dreams on waking, write them down, however abstract or fragmented. During sleep the subconscious mind is fully active and speaking to you through dreams and intuitive feelings. Read back over what you've written in the following weeks and see if anything stands out to you and triggers deeper thoughts or any 'aha' moments.

• Test your intuition - Observe someone you've never met before and see how much you can intuitively pick up from them before you actually know anything about them. You may be surprised about how much your intuition knows, things that you couldn't possibly have known with the cognitive mind. Sometimes this can cause confusion, when what you're seeing with your logical left brain doesn't match up with what your intuitive right brain is seeing.

• Reflect and learn from your past - Think back to a recent negative experience and try to remember if there was any kind of intuitive signal right before it happened. It could have been a feeling, a physical sensation, a bodily response such as pain or discomfort or something else that put you on high alert. Try to remember how you felt and your thoughts at the time. Connect the dots to past events will help you to recognise and trust your feelings more accurately.

Being able to accurately trust that your intuition is giving you clear and balanced guidance is vital. How do we know which thoughts are coming from our intuition and which are coming from anxiety or fears? Understanding this is key to being able to trust your intuition.

Fear based thoughts are generally - loud and over-analytical, there's a need for others opinions or reassurance, they cause obsessive thinking or increased heart rate or a physical sign of anxiety or nerves. Fear based thoughts are not comfortable or subtle and they keep spiralling around in a negative loop.

Intuition on the other hand is a quieter, calmer feeling, subtle but clear and matter-of-fact. Intuitive thoughts may spark your interest to research something or to feel curious and it won't leave you with a feeling of dread. It's a more comfortable sensation that gives you reassurance to make changes or to act on something.

Using your intuition can feel like a powerful tool and the more you use it, the more highly tuned and dependable it becomes. It's interesting how we all accept our senses of smell, touch, taste, seeing and hearing but we leave out our intuition like it's a separate entity for only a special few to experience when really we are all born with it and have equal opportunities to develop it.

I wonder if ancient civilisations were more developed in using their intuition given that they didn't have the same distractions and lifestyle pressures in their daily lives?....Let's ask Siri.

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