How to Listen to Your Intuition

Intuition is partly SIGNAL PROCESSING – Listening to the body. The body and the instincts talk to us through the senses, both internal and external. For example, vision and hearing is not just related to the external world; we also see and hear our thoughts.

We have a dozen senses, not we are not just listening. There are many different proprioceptive signals coming from our senses of touch, temperature, smell, taste, balance, joint position, and many different skin sensations and muscle sensations.

One of the purposes of meditation is to let the noise in our heads resolve itself so that our minds are clearer afterwards. At the same time, the background tension in our nerves and muscles moves toward relaxation, an optimal relaxation in which we are tuned for action. When we do this, then our senses can function better after meditation, and when we get a signal – a fear or an alarm – we know it is something to attend to. It's not just that noise in our heads that blares all the time.

How Does Your Intuition Talk to You?

Midline torso sensations:
Gut feelings
Sinking feeling in your stomach
Queasy sensations

Constricted or cold sensation in your heart
Tightening of the throat
An ache in your forehead
Pain in the butt

Skin Sensations
Tingling on the arms or shoulders
Hair standing on end
Crawly creepy sensation

Emotions
Nagging worry
Anxiety
Suspicion
Hesitation
Curiosity
Wonder
Humor


Vague Inklings
Hunches

Imagery
Faint images, persistent images
Movie clips

Sound
Hearing the silence
Hearing something underneath

Smell
Something doesn’t smell right

Balance
Something is out of balance




Sensing Danger
Some of what we think of as intuition and instinct in terms of sensing danger is being aware of the senses, of tiny changes, and then letting the instincts move us appropriately. For animals, this is natural. For humans, we usually have to practice meditation to be this clear.

From the BBC: Animals escaped tsunami

"While tens of thousands of people along the Sri Lankan coast were killed by the tsunami, wildlife officials say that they haven't found any dead animals. The waves swept inland to the island's largest wildlife reserve but none of the elephants, tigers, jackals, crocodiles, or other animals drowned.

Debbie Marter, who works on a wild tiger conservation program on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, one of the worst-hit areas in Sunday's disaster, said she was not surprised to hear there were no dead animals.

"Wild animals in particular are extremely sensitive," she said. "They've got extremely good hearing and they will probably have heard this flood coming in the distance. There would have been vibration and there may also have been changes in the air pressure which will have alerted animals and made them move to wherever they felt safer."