You know the feeling. You simply know when something is awesome or something isn’t quite right or you need to pay attention to something. It’s a subtle feeling, which can easily be missed when you don’t pay attention. It’s your intuition!
Intuition or gut feeling speaks with a quiet voice, but if you can tap into your intuition and listen to it, it has the potential to be life-changing. Unfortunately, our modern society has taught us to value reason and rational thinking over our bodies and hearts and we sort of lost the ability to tap into our intuition.
You can experience intuition as a gut feeling, a flash of insight, a body signal, an ‘ah-ha’ moment or in your dreams. There are tricks and techniques that help you to tune into your intuition and distinguish it from fear-based or wishful thinking.
Here are our TOP 10 ideas to open up and access our intuitive powers.
#1 Pay Attention
Most of our day is made up of habits. Habitual emotions, feelings, thoughts and behaviors. We simply go through our day using habits without really paying attention and especially not tuning in to what our intuition is trying to tell us. Start by paying attention to what is happening around you. Our intuition uses the information that our conscious mind collects through experiences and interactions with other people and the more information you consciously gather, the more insightful your intuition will be.
#2 Learn to Listen to Your Gut
Pay attention to what your gut is telling you, especially in situations like initial meetings when this visceral reaction is strong before you have a chance to think. It will tell you whether you are at ease with the other person or not. Science calls this the gut brain, the enteric nervous system, which is a network of neurons that almost instantaneously processes information before your thinking brain kicks in. So check in with your gut right away to find out how you are reacting to people. Is your gut in knots, do you have cramps, are you feeling anxious? Or do you feel completely relaxed and at ease with a feeling of immediate trust. Your gut feeling is usually right, so don’t talk yourself out of these initial intuitions.
#3 Pay Attention to Your Body’s Signals
Your body never lies and is a powerful source of information when it comes to making decisions or how you feel about other people. On a deep level, your body tells you what to do and lets you know if people give you energy or drain it. On a simple level, when your body tells you you are tired, rest. When you feel sad, cry. When you are feeling completely stressed out, stop what you are doing right now and do something fun instead. Really tune in to your body’s reactions and messages and you will know what to do.
#4 Relax and Practice Noticing
We live in a very noisy world where listening to our intuition can be a challenge. Quiet the noise around you, relax and practice noticing your feelings. Turn on some chill-out music and focus completely on the question at hand that you are trying to find an answer to and tune out everything else that is just noise. When you focus on that question, notice how you feel. When we actively tune into our feelings and listen to our intuition the solution will become clear and you will know what actions to take.
#5 Meditate
Meditation is an important tool that can be beneficial for almost anything in our lives, including tapping into our intuition. We go through several states of consciousness throughout our day. Beta is the consciousness in which we operate most of the day at work or at school. Alpha is a state of relaxed awareness, theta is like a meditative trance and delta happens during deep sleep and is a state of transcendental experience. When we meditate, we enter the alpha state, which is the level that helps us memorize, learn, interact and read our own emotions, feelings and thoughts as well as those of others. If you meditate daily, you will be able to control this alpha state and with that control your intuitive process.
#6 Journal
This takes a little bit of practice and patience to get into, but if you take the time and find a quiet space to practice writing down what your intuition is telling you, it can be a fantastic tool to tap into your intuition. Practice it as if you were writing a letter to your inner voice. Ask it a question and let it respond. For example take a plank sheet of paper, start with: Dear Intuition, what do you have to tell me today? And then let the question go, take a deep breath and just begin to write. Sometimes the answer will arise immediately, sometimes it may take some time, simply begin to write and see what appears on the page without judgment.
#7 Live in the Now
It is very difficult for your intuition to speak to you, if your mind is ruminating in the past or worrying about the future. The power of intuition works best, when you are in living in the now and your mind is in the present. Intuition resides in the ‘now’, so let go of dwelling on the past or being anxious about the future, because all you ever have is this very moment and if you can stay in the present, you will be able to tap into your intuition.
#8 Make Intuitive Art
A great way to open up the pathway to your inner voice is by making art, because intuition is extremely visual and symbolic. When you are trying to tap into your intuition, simply ask what is trying to come through and then let the question go, get out some paper, paint and drawing tools, put on your favorite music and start drawing, without having any preconceived ideas of what you are trying to create. Simply let the paint inspire you, play with different colors and enjoy the process without judgement. Remember, you are not trying to create a master piece, even though this may very well be the case, but in this instant you are simply trying to access your inner wisdom.
#9 Connect with Others
Remember, when you are interacting with others, there are a lot of things that give you insight other than speech. It’s about the tone of their voice, body language, facial expressions, gestures, volume of speech. These non-verbal forms of communication give meaning to the interactions with other people. If you can tune in to picking up cues from this non-verbal communication and with that find out emotions, feelings, thoughts and intention of the person you are interacting with, you will be able to better tune in to your own intuition as well.
#10 Listen to Your Dreams
Your dreams translate your intuition into pictures and provide powerful information about your relationships, health, finances or any other area where you are looking for a solution and your rational, waking mind can’t find it right away. We oftentimes forget our dreams shortly after we wake up, so an easy way to remember them is to have a journal right next to your bed and write down your dreams immediately, when your memory is still fresh. To initiate dreams, ask yourself a question that you can’t figure out the answer to with your conscious, rational mind and see if your dream will give you the answer. Be patient with this, the answers may not come right away and you will have to practice until your intuition becomes stronger and louder.
Scientists believe that intuition is a key component of our operating system as human beings. When we listen to and trust our intuition, it can have a huge impact on our lives. Think of your intuition like a muscle that you need to train regularly, because if you stop using it, you will lose it. Some of the above techniques will take a little patience and practice, but it will be well worth it in the end.
LOGIC IS GREAT, BUT SOMETIMES IT JUST ISN’T ENOUGH
Joschi & Monika
#BoldNaked