How to learn to listen to intuition

If intuition is not a mystical gift, then each of us is able to learn to hear intuition, we just need to work on it. Here are some practical tips and exercises for those who want to get in touch with their own inner voice.

“Intuition is not the lot of the rare lucky ones. This is an ability that each of us has, — says art therapist Elena Ryzhova, who leads intuitive drawing trainings. “Another question is, are we able to hear what she is trying to convey to us, and how much do we trust what we hear?”

The ability to hear yourself and trust yourself can be developed. For starters, try to just…stop. Stop, slow down, calm your thoughts.

“Any meditation, breathing exercises or grounding techniques will help here,” explains Elena Ryzhova. Sit comfortably, take ten full breaths and exhalations. Observe how you breathe — this technique is called «conscious breathing». Then try to «ground».

Express method: jump up and shout out loud “Oh!”. The task is to return to your own body, stop being in a thousand different places at the same time, slow down the pace, slow down the endless stream of thoughts … Of course, other, more traditional methods are also suitable for these purposes: rest, walking, dancing, swimming. They just take much longer.

“We use the same tools in trainings,” continues Elena Ryzhova. — We start drawing only when the connection with the body, feelings is established and there is a switch to images, fantasies, dreams — that is, more subtle spheres. Sometimes we draw directly with our hands — any work with our fingertips (including knitting, picking cereals) stimulates the release of oxytocin, which reduces the activity of cortisol — the stress hormone.

We calm down, a holistic picture of what is happening to us is formed in our head, and answers to questions, ready-made solutions seem to pop up by themselves …

There is nothing magical about this, we just let the right hemisphere do its job: process a huge amount of information received from many different sources. And at this moment they themselves are ready to hear the voice of intuition, which is usually drowned out by rational calculations, iron logic, undeniable arguments.

How to find the right solution

“Emotions are a key element in the decision-making process,” says renowned science journalist Jonah Lehrer.

Imagine that the choice has already been made. Listen to your feelings and emotions, try to “scan” yourself.

“More attention to the body,” Elena Ryzhova insists. — Read his reactions: his stomach hurts, his eye twitches, it enters your lower back … If you are scared, sit down, breathe, “ground yourself” and, when the excitement goes away, listen to yourself: is there a feeling that the decision is right? If the fear has not only not gone away, but some other unpleasant sensations have been added to it, it may very well be that your decision is wrong.

Don’t miss the moment when a sense of relief appears: it means that the decision came from the heart.

“Many people are in love with their experience, with their own judgments about themselves and the world,” add psychologists Ev and Marik Khazin, who lead the intuition development training. — In this case, the task is to clear the trash of non-working beliefs, relying on the «here and now», to revive one’s own essence. Each of us has a whole range of ways of perceiving reality, including logic, feeling, bodily signals … Intuition is a way of processing information from all these areas at once. If such a skill is trained, it can give us solutions that do not require proof.

How to understand the first impression

“Intuitive thinking allows you to quickly form an impression about a person. However, we can only find out how accurate it was after the fact. Intuitive assumptions are necessary for us in order to understand how to act — we often have to decide something without having complete information for this, ”writes Eugene Sadler-Smith.

Try to connect the first impression of the person and what the body was saying to you then. We receive information mainly through one of three channels — vision (visuals), hearing (audials), touch (kinesthetics). 65% of people are visuals, who prefer a picture to a thousand words, 30% are auditory people, for whom communication is the main thing; only 5% are kinesthetics, trusting primarily their tactile or motor sensations.

“Over the course of life, we often have to develop those channels that are not very active,” says the art therapist. “For example, a visual woman gives birth to a kinesthetic child … He must be hugged and kissed all the time!”

By the way, it is necessary to develop the kinesthetic channel for everyone who wants to feel better in their own body. And to develop the perception of all channels of receiving information at once, try this exercise: sitting in silence, note everything that you see around you (colors, movements), what you hear (sounds, near and far) and what you feel (the weight of your own body, a soft pillow) .

How to know your motives

We live in a «left hemisphere society»: from childhood we learn to plan, structure, sort things out. And as a result, many people get used to thinking only in the usual format and find themselves unable to get out of this rut, face the unknown, find an unexpected solution …

Art therapist and coach Dominique Vaudoisé has developed a method that allows you to establish contact between the two hemispheres of our brain: the left, responsible for logic, and the right, responsible for creativity.

To give free rein to your imagination, hear your desires, discern hidden meanings in familiar plots, sit in a quiet, calm place, taking with you white sheets of paper and a set of colored pencils — as our colleague did.

“The arrangement of words on the sheet also matters: on the left is the past, on the right is the future, at the top is the conscious, at the bottom is the unconscious,” explains Dominique Vaudoisé.

Try to find the maximum possible meanings in the resulting combination of words, and then hang the diagram on a refrigerator or a mirror. Observe every day what thoughts and feelings will awaken in you when you look at her.

This method will allow you to find words that have a special meaning for you and are out of the beaten track, the usual framework and conventions.