What is intuition? It's that "Aha" moment, gut feeling or hunch. That feeling when you know something without knowing how you know. There are so many ways we have adopted to describe that innate knowing we all employ.
Intuition is your inner guidance system. Your inner knowing that spans way beyond logic. The guiding presence that's not separate from you that offers you the insight you didn't know you had. Your inner voice that tells you the truth about your path and journey, even when your logical mind tries its hardest to steer you from it. Every single person is equipped with intuitive faculty, however, as we grow into adulthood our innate power becomes seemingly value-less. As logic, reason and our outer senses are asserted as the priority in solving problems, making decisions and navigating through life, our inner sense becomes faint, forgotten and written off as "weird" or "crazy" phenomena.
Tapping into our inner guidance is imperative. Critical even. If we refrain from being intentional about building our relationship with our inner guidance, we deepen our vulnerability to being led strictly by logic, by reason and by outside forces and influences that rarely place our best interest and wellbeing as a priority. I want to share what I have learned on my own journey to deepening my relationship with my intuition.
Here are four tips for building your intuition muscle.
1. Practice Personal Presence (P.P.P)
"Get out of your head and into your body"
-Belinda Davidson
Connecting to your body is crucial as your body offers so much information and feedback in regards to your responses to what is happening in your internal and external environment. Mindful body practices such as yoga (even regular stretching and exercise) or a simple body scan can serve as invaluable ways to deepen your body awareness. Paying attention to and observing senses in our bodies that we might normally neglect when we're encountering different experiences offers profound insight. It's important to listen and tune in. Become conscious of the very vehicle that sustains your physical existence.
2. Lose Your Mind, Frequently
"But if you continue simply moving, moving, moving inside, sooner or later society will be left out. You are in, society is out. You have moved from the periphery to the center."
-Osho
Mediate. Mediate. Mediate.
In our society, almost everything is done with the mind. We think ourselves into a frenzy, we create stories, rationalizations, interpretations and live through them, never creating space to look at them. On top of that, with our minds and bodies on auto-pilot, always working, chattering, noisy and constantly caught up in the external world, there is not much space for retreat. For rest. For silence. For stillness. So we need to create the space. Mediation is the practice of losing (letting go of) the mind and receiving presence over and over and over. Practice sitting in stillness, sitting in silence and listening to and going inside. Practice settling your mind. Allow space to do nothing, only listen. Only be. Lose your mind and allow yourself to hear what you usually cannot.
Click here to get started with your meditation practice.
3. Listen. Trust. Allow.
"And the moment you come into your being, you will say 'yes' to it. All of it"
-Michael Bernard Beckwith
Simply practicing and learning to listen when we get that feeling or hear that little voice tell us something is a huge step.
So many of us hear our inner guidance and simply don't listen. We give it the imaginary middle finger in favor of our second thought. Practice listening. A lot of times we don't listen because we don't trust what we hear. We have our own agenda and attachment to what we "think" the outcome should be. The practice of listening to what you hear is also the practice of self-trust. When we practice listening and practice trusting what we hear, we allow ourselves to be grateful for whatever has been revealed. Trust the truth.
4. Write It Down
"Build a case to build your trust"
-Melanie Holst-Collins
Document the hunches you get. Journal those moments when you know something without knowing how you know it. Keep note of the synchronistic experiences you notice. Record the response of your body when you get that gut feeling or your emotional response to people and places you are in relationship to/with. Build a case to build your trust. Tune into yourself, then write it down.