Intuition: Getting In Tune With Your Intuitive Abilities

12/10/22 10:25 Filed in: Intuition

The world today is overwhelming! Each year, society revolves more and more around technology, screens, and stress. It is far too easy to get caught up comparing ourselves to the perfectly curated lives we see on social media, or feel overwhelmed by the never ending 24 hour news cycle. It’s no wonder we often find ourselves feeling caught in negative cycles of anxiety, fear, and stress.

Thankfully, we are all born with the ability to access a tool that helps us overcome all of today's modern struggles. A tool that helps guide us through life and stay on the right path. It is our one true superpower, an ancient wisdom buried within each of us. What I’m talking about is our intuition!

The definition of intuition is, “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning”. In other words, it's the bridging of the gap between our conscious and unconscious minds. For example, have we ever had an unexplainable feeling in our gut that instinctively told us when something we were doing was right or wrong? That was our intuition speaking. Now imagine what our life would be like if we were able to access that inner guidance system whenever we needed it. That sounds amazing, right? Who wouldn’t want more of that?

Listening and trusting that little voice is a marvellous thing on its own, working to develop that little voice makes it even more powerful. We all have the sacred ability to grow and strengthen our intuition. The more we use it, the more it expands and evolves. Imagine our intuition as a muscle that needs exercise and nourishment to flourish. Let’s take a look at the 11 best ways to get in tune with and develop our amazing gift!

Meditate: Unless we have been living under a rock for the past 5 years, we know that we should be meditating. We hear about it everywhere! We all know that we should be meditating more. Let's take a look at mediation through the lens of helping us tune into and grow our intuition.

For most people, intuition has a very soft voice. If our minds are busy with the stresses of daily life, it may be very hard to hear that little voice. Meditation is a great way to clear the mind, quiet the constant inner dialogue and make room for our intuition to come through. Try this basic meditation to help us listen and tune into our inner spirit!

-Set a timer for 10 minutes.
-Find a relaxing and comfortable place to sit. -Close our eyes and stay quiet.
-Listen to and feel our breath (really pay attention to it) without trying to change it.
-Just observe the breath. Notice any sensations that arise. Just BE present.
-When our mind wanders, just bring our focus back to our breath.

When our timer goes off, slowly open our eyes and take a moment to write down any important thoughts, messages, feelings, or insights we may have received during our meditation.

Dreams: During our waking hours, our cognitive brain is in control. It uses logic and reasoning to override our subconscious mind. However, during sleep that conscious mind rests, allowing our inner subconscious to shine though. We learn a lot about overcoming issues or problems by listening to this inner consciousness.

Keep a dream journal. Keep a notebook and pen right next to our bed, and immediately upon rising try to record everything we remember about our dreams. Dreams begin to fade from memory immediately upon waking, so make sure to grab our dream journal before we do anything else. Like most things, this takes practice, we will get better over time at interpreting and recording these dreams. We will be able to see patterns and occasions where our inner consciousness is trying to help us solve problems or guide us in the right direction.

Before going to bed, visualize ourselves remembering our dreams. Picture ourselves waking up and recording these dreams in our journal. Try to keep this thought in our head as we fall asleep. This will help imprint the practice in our mind and make it easier the next morning.

More nature: Spending time in nature, away from technology, is one of the best ways to quiet the mind. Nature is a great way for us to get in tune with our ancestral self and our celestial intuition. This is where we come from, our ancestors relied on their intuition for everything. For finding food, avoiding predators, finding the right path, intuition was one of the most important aspects of life. Anytime we immerse ourselves in nature's beauty, we have an opportunity to dip our toe in another world, a world where intuition rules.

Get creative: Do something creative! Paint, draw, build, sketch, anything that elevates our creative mind. When we are young, our inner voice is loud and not hesitant to shine through. As we get older that inner voice is pushed down with responsibilities and the stresses of life. Tapping into this creative part of our brain helps re-ignite those pathways and amplify our intuitions.

Get in tune with all our senses: Our intuition flows through any of our five senses. It may come as a strange or loving sensation we feel physically within our body, or as a thought that seems to appear out of nowhere. It may be triggered by a certain scent, or even taste. Start noticing and paying attention to all of our senses. When was the last time that we really concentrated on our breathing, our sense of smell, our taste? We have all heard the phrase, “stop and smell the roses”, yet it really helps in developing our intuition. The more we practice getting in tune with these senses, the more our “6th sense” flourishes as well.

Follow our hunches: A surefire way to develop our intuition is to test out our hunches. When we are going about our daily life, keep a journal and write down every time we have a hunch. When that little voice chimes in, be sure to write it down, so we record and see how these hunches play out. It is as simple as seeing the weather reporting rain for tomorrow, and we have a feeling it will be sunny. Maybe a friend's partner give us bad vibes, write down our feelings and see if it plays out. Follow our hunches and see what we learn about our intuition.

Switch up our daily routine: The conscious brain loves routine and order, the more regimented our life is, the further our inner voice is pushed down. When the mind is busy it is especially hard to hear that little voice. Switching things up throws our cognitive brain for a loop, and let our intuition shine through. Escape the daily routine, slow down and do something different. Our intuition will thank us.

Replay past events: Sit down and try to think back to a situation where things didn't go as planned, or didn't go as we wanted. Visualize ourselves back in that situation, notice any feelings or moments where we felt as if something was wrong. Was there an opportunity to go a different way? Did our inner voice speak up for a moment, only to be overtaken by our cognitive mind? Try to evaluate some of these occurrences and look for patterns, look for ways that we could do things differently the next time. Look for ways our intuition is trying to guide us and the things it was trying to tell us.

Breathe-work: Hands down, breathe-work is one of the best ways to quiet the mind and get in tune with our inner voice. Try this 4-7-8 method to give our intuition the opportunity to shine through and bring our consciousness to the present.

-Start by emptying our lungs of air.
-Breathe in through our nose for 4 seconds.
-Hold that breath for 7 seconds.
-Exhale slowly through our mouth for 8 seconds.
-Repeat this process 4 times.

This 4-7-8 technique will not only help with intuition, it is a great way to mitigate stress and lower anxiety. Basically, the whole world would be a much better place if everyone would practice this simple technique once a day!

Think less, feel more: Our cognitive brain thinks, our intuition feels. Our minds are always reasoning, questioning and thinking their way through the day. After so many years of this, we don't even realize it's happening. If people could hear all the questions, our cognitive brain is bouncing around all day, they would think we are crazy!

Try to slow down and “feel” more. Feelings that are grounded in our body, are also grounded in truth. These feelings will never lie. Learn to listen to them more. Pay attention to those little signals that our body gives us. Heart beating faster, that knot in the pit of our stomach, feeling hot, feeling cold or a tingling sensation. We know the situation; we meet someone and immediately know something is off about them, we just feel it. Maybe they are lying to us or treating someone poorly, our physical body feels that and alert us. If we pay more attention to these physical cues, we could avoid many uncomfortable, painful or awkward situations. This is our intuition speaking and it's trying to guide us in the right direction.

Practice “sensing” people before meeting them: This is a great way to test and grow our intuition. Put ourselves into a situation where we may sit and observe someone before meeting them.

Imagine ourselves in line at the coffee shop, try to imagine what the person behind the counter will be like, before we speak to them or meet them. Take in everything we can about them just by looking at them and trusting our feelings. Try to create a mental picture of what they will be like, sound like, are they friendly, are they sociable or not? We may use this in almost any situation to test our intuition. This is a powerful and actionable way to help us get in tune with our senses, our body and our inner voice.

Practice Gratitude: In this day and age, it's easy to look at the negative aspects of life and forget about all that we are blessed to have. We all do it! It is so easy to overlook our health, the love of our families, food and water, our home or our community. Take time, every day, to recognize and give thanks for a few of these amazing things that we are lucky enough to have in our lives. This simple practice opens us up to a higher frequency and allow more of life's wonders to find their way to us.

-Gratitude improves relationships.
-Gratitude improves sleep.
-Gratitude improves physical health.
-Gratitude improves self-esteem.
-Gratitude enhances empathy and reduces aggression.
-Gratitude improves psychological health.

The benefits of practicing gratitude have been scientifically researched and proven to be powerful, real tools. Think about just how much a few of those positive benefits could drastically change our daily lives. Gratitude truly opens a plethora of doors to a better life, which in turn, will help our intuitions flourish!