FIRST CUES: Making an Art-Form of Instinct
Ask people how they recognize intuitive guidance and some say they depend on their tactile sense of good or bad “vibes,” while others swear by their “little voice.” Many suddenly have a “flash,” “get the picture,” or “see the light.” Still others, though more rare, rely on their sense of smell or taste, like the chairman of the board of Sony Corporation, who solved problems by pretending the potential solution was a piece of food, and then tried to “eat” it. Receiving insights via the five senses is a large part of intuitive perception, but what if you could pick up cues from your internal and external worlds at an even earlier point?
When you pay extremely close attention, you notice that intuitive information first makes itself known through what we commonly call instinct — the deep yet subtle language of your cells. Just as animals sense an imminent earthquake, your body knows what’s happening in the world long before your mind does, and it transmits instinctive signals constantly from the cells to the most ancient part of your mind — your reptile brain. Learning to recognize these primitive body messages can give you the edge in knowing who to trust, what’s true for you, or when it’s time to take action.
Intuition, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t usually descend from above. I experience it almost always occurring in the body first, then percolating up into consciousness. I jokingly tell people that “our mind is the last one to know!” If you’re in your head too much doing mental, analytical work, you may literally overshoot your intuitive, instinctive messages because they’re so subtle and preverbal. It’s as though you’re the high-flying bird and the message is at the bottom of the pond down below.
Some years ago when I was writing my first book, The Intuitive Way, I decided I should have a snappy anecdote to open a new chapter, something that would demonstrate the body’s important link to intuitive ability. My impatient mind wanted the perfect story to instantly appear out of the recesses of my brain and march in an orderly progression onto the page. Search as I might, I couldn’t retrieve a thing from my memory banks. After a prolonged period of staring blankly at my computer, I realized I was daydreaming about a special hiking trail near my home. Managing to overcome my “shoulds,” I took a break to play hooky for a few hours.
It wasn’t until I was three quarters of the way into what had become a truly magical nature walk that I realized my mind and body were once again equally activated. I felt alive, absolutely involved with my world, easily inspired, and full of an enthusiastic creativity. By noticing my body’s immediate responses to the environment — sometimes attraction, sometimes repulsion — and by allowing myself to become engrossed with the elements of nature I encountered — the delicately-marked baby snake on my path, the regal, high-stepping water birds, the sound of the dry grasses in the wind — I remembered an important lesson. It is only through deep connectedness and a personal, physical resonance with life that we know what is real and true for us, that we derive our sense of direction. Lose your body’s live connection to the world and intuition and creativity stop. To jumpstart it again you may need to look to your deeper animal nature, to your instinctive self. This experience became the very anecdote I needed for the book.
As you begin to open intuitive perception, or your direct knowing, the first rudimentary messages always come from your body’s instinct. Learning to pick up data at this early stage of perception can save time, energy, and worry. When you learn to trust your first responses to new people, situations, places, and ideas you’ll discover an important truth: your body never lies to you. “First thoughts,” as writing teacher Natalie Goldberg calls them, are fresh, accurate, and full of genius.
TRUTH AND ANXIETY SIGNALS
How do you know when something is really right for you? Or when you hear the truth? How do you know that you want to do something, and that you’re actually going to do it? Conversely, how do you know when someone’s lying to you? Can you tell when timing is off? When a situation is being forced? When there’s a high possibility of failure or danger?
Your body communicates with you constantly, giving feedback about the relative safety and appropriateness of every option you consider. Its messages contain either survival information that comes from the body’s rapport with the natural environment, or higher guidance about your optimal self-expression that comes from your soul and the collective consciousness of the planet. Most of us never take the time to know how we know or what we know; we just act. Yet our bodies are speaking volumes — just not in a language we immediately recognize. To develop higher intuitive skill, we need to decipher our body’s information cues, to know quickly and directly, without taking time to “figure things out.”
The body’s language is a simple binary one — there are only two modes: yes and no. You can recognize these messages through feelings of expansion or contraction in your body. When a choice or action is appropriate and safe, you’ll experience expanding energy: you may sense energy rising, becoming active or bouncy, or perhaps you’ll “warm” to an idea, get “light-headed,” or feel flushed with enthusiasm. Have you ever had the “hots” for someone, or had “butterflies” of anticipation, or been “up” for a new adventure? Perhaps you’ve felt magnetically drawn toward someone or a new situation. Have you ever said, “I’m leaning toward this option?” The body’s yes often feels like health and vitality, even good luck.
When I ask people how they know something is true for them, and exactly where they experience the feeling in their body, many describe a warm, spreading sensation across their chest. Others feel energy bubbling up from below their diaphragm or from their chest into their throat. Some even feel it bubble up further, resulting in tears of happiness. Some feel the blood rush to their neck and face, making them blush. Still other people describe a variety of “clicks and clunks” as if something out of alignment suddenly snaps or drops into its rightful place. These feelings most often occur along the vertical center line of the body and seem to be related to that other oft-described sensation of something “ringing true,” where the body silently reverberates like a huge bell. One of the other common truth signals is the sudden movement of energy up the spine, out across the shoulders, and down the arms, giving the sensation of chills or gooseflesh.
But what about when something is not true or not appropriate for you? When the body answers no, the message is unmistakable. In fact, most people are more aware of their anxiety signal than their truth signal. When an option or action is unsafe or inappropriate, you may experience contracting energy: your energy may drop, recoil, darken, or tighten. You might act coolly, even coldly, to someone, or get a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. When something is not true for you, your body will try to withdraw and back away. You may feel repulsed, or become leaden, or “turn to stone.” Instead of blushing, you may blanch as the blood drains from your face. You may get tired, feel gray, blue, even depressed. You may actually feel pain in a specific area of your body. Common anxiety signals are: a stomachache or nausea, a “pain in the neck,” chest pain, headaches, or a feeling like a tight fist in the solar plexus area. Yet another anxiety signal is a prickly feeling of the hair rising along the upper spine and neck.
Why is it important to know your truth and anxiety signals? First, you need a fail-safe way to discern which options in life are best for you, to be able to make authentic choices, straight from your soul’s wisdom. Truth and anxiety signals are your inside pipeline to the highest knowledge. Second, by learning to discriminate clear answers more quickly and directly, you won’t waste so much time, energy, and so many opportunities for happiness. Third, by learning to absolutely trust your body’s first response, you will soon find the guidance you receive is of a high quality. Goethe said these deceptively simple words: “Just trust yourself. Then you will know how to live.”
You might write in a journal about the different ways you know when something or someone is true, safe, or purposeful for you. Where in your body do you experience the signal? Does the signal move from one area of the body to another? And then, you might write about the ways you know when something or someone is false, unsafe, or not purposeful for you. Where in your body do you experience the signal? Does the signal move from one area of the body to another?
MAKING AUTHENTIC CHOICES
When it’s time for dinner, what will you eat? Perhaps instead of having what you usually have, you might question your body. “Body, what’s your feeling tonight about fresh lettuce? Tomato soup? Pasta with cream sauce? Steak and potatoes?” Let your truth and anxiety signals inform you of your body’s preferences — instead of your habits — and see if you can discern the most subtle signals. Maybe your body would prefer a handful of crisp, cold radishes or half a grapefruit.
Perhaps you’re thinking that you “should” move from an expensive house you’re renting, and 1) find a less expensive neighborhood locally, 2) move out of state, 3) get a roommate, 4) get a studio apartment, 5) try to buy a house, 6) move back in with your parents. As you ask your body about each option, your stomach contracts, you get a headache, you want to take a nap, or you get nervous and irritable. What is your body telling you? Perhaps the timing isn’t right, or you don’t have enough information, or someone else is going to help make the choice clear to you in the near future. Maybe you’re trying to force things. Can you let it be for now?
Maybe you’ve met a new potential romantic partner and your body is giving you what appear to be a wide variety of truth signals: excitement, attraction, high energy. It seems like a definite “go”! Instead of diving in immediately, you might sit with the sensations a little longer and see if they mellow out a bit. Could the excitement actually be adrenaline, caused by the fact that the person is actually a little bit dangerous? Maybe they’re unreliable, or unable to commit, or have a negative aspect that will emerge after you get to know them. Perhaps proceed, but with caution.
Maybe you’re job hunting and have several possibilities for work. One lets you use your people skills, another pays more but you’ll be at a computer all day, a third gives you a chance to be innovative and work with a team of creative people. Your body gives you instant feedback: imagining sitting at a computer gives you a pain in the neck. The job with people skills feels lukewarm. Working with the creative team makes your body sit up at attention and almost salivate. Will you override your body’s direct knowing with “yes, buts” about not making enough money, or not knowing anyone there, or never having done this before, or thinking you don’t have enough talent? Or can you trust that your body might know more than your mind right now? The more you validate your body’s answers by acting on its information, the more easily it will provide expert guidance next time.
DISCRIMINATING NONVERBAL INFORMATION
Nothing in life is really that complicated, especially from your body’s point of view. For the body, it’s always a matter of one moment, one piece of information, one motivation at a time. And in each moment, there is just one choice, one solution that’s a perfect fit. In the next moment the choice may be different, so don’t be impatient and jump ahead. You’re not there yet. Anticipating future choices is a fruitless waste of time. When you need guidance, relax. Ask the body’s key question: What’s most interesting and crucial for this moment? Let that answer lead to the next most interesting thing.
You may notice when you pay attention to your body you become aware of subtle sensations and perhaps have fleeting, ghostly images that blend into an instinctive “knowing” that can’t be traced by logic. An answer just pops into your awareness like the words in the window on one of those magic 8-ball toys for children — “By all means,” “Highly unlikely,” “Try again later” — and even without words, you know what to do. Perhaps your body is concerned about having enough protein to function properly since you only had coffee and a sweet roll for breakfast, and during your morning meeting it gives you an image of a chicken breast sandwich, complete with the experience of smell and taste. You suddenly have a strong hankering and can’t wait to have lunch.
Or your body may have transmitted to you that it was most excited today about creating a new flowerbed, and it released to you a feeling of “hunger” for the feel of soft, well-turned dirt, the moist smell of the nursery where you’d buy plants, and the thrill of the colors you would combine. You might even have had glimpses of the design of the bed, and how it might look in a year. And all this probably came in such a rapid sequence that it seemed almost simultaneous. Because of the body’s shotgun-style, visceral way of communicating, we often miss its messages, especially if we’re caught up in worry or preoccupations.
To make instinctive information more conscious, you might develop the habit of talking with friends about “interesting perceptions I had today” or “interesting similarities I found between experiences I had this week,” or asking, “What do you think this means?” Also, assume you have the right to feel at home in your own body, that you don’t have to live with even the most subtle levels of discomfort. Make an agreement with yourself that the moment you notice an anxiety signal, you’ll stop and discover what the message is. Make it a way of life to keep your body clear of blockages, ignorance, and negativity. Follow your truth signals!
You can even become conscious of the data in your muscles and tissues by simply having conversations in your imagination with various parts of your body. Personalize your belly, or the bottoms of your feet, or your thyroid, or the pain in your knee. Let them tell you what they know. Practice dropping below the surface of your normal daily distractions to find a deeper, more direct experience of knowing.
Cultivating the habit of including your body in every decision-making process, and even trying to feel your cells talking, will help you honor your body as a living being, created by you-the-soul. By respecting its innate consciousness, and “conversing” with it, you’ll have a reliable source of intuitive guidance and a new best friend.
