Using Our Intuition for Better Health

Checking with your internal gut hunches is one of the healthiest practices to help you make powerful decisions.  Your internal guidance system can help you navigate life more smoothly and with greater harmony in concordance to your particular desires and goals. I use my gut to check on how aligned I am with situations every day—but this was something I began to listen to and learn, just as you can.

When I was a child, I was the most conventional person on the planet. Since I was a 5-year-old my singular goal was to become a physician. Throughout my education, I worked hard to become an M.D. by the age of 26. I began working in a conventional medical setting with strict protocols, but something shifted after giving birth to my first child. When I looked at her, I could see her beautiful soul shining out from her eyes. I realized then that I could never shake the truth that each of my patients was also a divine soul wearing a human body, just as precious as my child.

When I returned to work, my conventional practice of doing 15-minute exams on patients (as is protocol) and writing prescriptions for them caused me to stay awake all night feeling saddened.  After one particular patient appointment, I had in inner knowing that she needed more help than a conventional medical appointment would allow. After she left her appointment, I felt so sick about it I went into the bathroom and vomited. Right then and there, I knew I had to find a deeper way to support my patients.

I began to work in my inner knowings into my conversations with patients. We talked about their health goals and their lives. As I opened to sharing intuitive information, they started showing up more intensely. They would experience feelings of déjà vu or as if they were waking up from amnesia to clearly see what had been there all along.  This entirely new method, weaved in my intuition and honored each patient’s unique energy, allowed me to heal things on a deeper level rather than simply prescribe a cover-up. Now I know it takes a two-pronged approach to affect permanent, sustainable change, one that encompasses both the physical and energetic nature of our existence.

The Power of Intuitive Information

Intuitive information can be considered your sixth sense.  In a six-sensory existence, one that welcomes intuitive information as valid information equal to the other five senses, we can see a bigger picture that helps us make more empowered decisions.  Opening to intuitive healing can help us see the entire dynamic of energy flow throughout the body instead of just a linear cellular process of A = B = C.

Medical knowledge is amazing. Knowing physically what is going on inside the body helps us figure out how to help treat the disease process, alleviate symptoms, and provide life-saving interventions. But the truth is, that among the miracles and breakthroughs and life-saving medications and surgical interventions that modern medicine provides, there is still so much left unknown.  In medical school I became painfully aware of how little modern medicine really knows about any single illness. Often there is no drug, lab test, or operation that can fix an issue. I began to understand that medicine has limitations, whereas intuition does not. I appreciate medicine for what it offers… and I honor intuition for what it adds.

One of the reasons that I know that intuition is how we were designed to operate is that using intuitive guidance is actually in the design of our cells, in the design of our DNA, in the design of our very existence. Bruce Lipton, PhD, pioneered the ground-breaking revelation that it is not our DNA that is a master template that our bodies are wired around, but it is actually the exact opposite: DNA stands to serve as a resource for incoming information. In other words, it is actually messages coming into our cells that our DNA responds to, used as a template according to the messages our cells are receiving externally.  The cell functions by receiving information from the external and using this information to then respond epigenetically.

Our cell membranes are the cells’ control centers, turning genes on and off from information received and signals transmitted through cell receptors. Cells are perceptive to outside stimulus and this shapes our health and function.  Our biology is designed to receive outside information and to use this information as a directive on how to function. Our bodies do this every single moment of every single day, naturally.

If every single cell in our body—from our neurons to our sensory organs to our muscles—is created to take in external information and use it to achieve optimum health and expression, then we as whole organisms are designed to pick up on external information and use that information to achieve optimum health and expression.

Any vision, sound, smell, sensation, emotion, experience, message and interconnection between yourself and others that brings you extrasensory information is designed to be listened to.  You are meant to receive intuitive information. You are meant to recognize it. You are meant to utilize this information to make the best possible decisions in your daily life in order to align with the best possible outcome—every day, all day.

By opening to your intuitive hunches, you begin to get the deeper meaning of why you are going through a particular situation or experience, so that the entire journey through it becomes meaningful.  And with meaning, comes healing. Deep, soulful healing.

Discovering How to Access Your Intuition

You can use intuition in your daily life by approaching situations with all of the information you can glean to make the most powerful, balanced decision. To do so, it is powerful to understand how you best access your intuitive knowings—because each of us do so in unique ways. Follow these exercises to discover your intuitive power and how to best access it.

1. First, sit or lay down. Take a big deep breath in and release it slowly.

Enter a place where you are neutral and not forcing any particular outcome at all. You are relaxing into the feeling of just receiving. This means:

• You do not have to create any feelings.
• You don’t have to force any response.
• You do not have to come up with any answers.
• You don’t have to picture anything in your mind.

Your job is only to be an active listener. Feel in your body if you get a positive response at any time while connecting to the different intuitive centers. if we all drop our awareness into our body we can all feel aligned with one or more of these different levels of awareness.

2. Bring your awareness down to the base of your spine.  If you are sitting down, feel down your back right into the area that you are sitting on.  If you are laying down, feel the lowermost portion of your spine at the base of your glute muscles. As you bring awareness to this portion of your body, ask yourself:

• Do you tend to get a knowing deep in your bones?
• Do you make decisions based on something indescribable?
• Do you ever feel like your body moves itself when making decisions, like you are able to watch it play out, knowing your body automatically makes the decision and moves when the time is right?

If you experience any of this, you are likely to be a kinesthetic intuitive. To access your natural intuitive abilities, conducting this body scan is your go-to tool for accessing intuitive information.

3. Bring your awareness up to your lower abdomen, just below your belly button. As you bring awareness to this portion of your body, ask yourself:

• Do you tend to get intuitive information flowing to you while you are creating?
• Do you find that doodling, painting, drawing, sewing, cooking, gardening, or any creative hobby is when your best answers and solutions arise?
• Do you find that after a massage or love-making that you are able to open up to creative solutions?

If so, then you are likely an action-oriented intuitive, one that needs to be doing something physical to allow the intuition to flow. You may find accessing intuitive information easier if you ask a question and then get active such as by taking a hot bath, dancing to music, or doodling on a sketch pad.

4. Move your awareness up to your solar plexus.  This awareness center is in your upper abdomen, between your belly button and rib cage. As you bring your awareness to this portion of your body, ask yourself:

• Do you ever get a strong gut-knowing?
• Do you know when to make a decision based on how it feels to you in your stomach?
• Do you prefer to take action—any action—instead of doing nothing when facing a choice?
• Do you feel relief after making a decision, and would you rather make any decision than no decision at all?

If so, then your type of intuition is through gut-knowings.  You can work with this type of incoming information most easily by going with your first impression. Gut intuitives should not deliberate, wait, or weigh the pros and cons. The gut response is quick, quiet, sure, immediate, and direct.

5. Move your awareness up to the heart.  This intuitive center is right in the middle of your chest. As you bring your awareness to this portion of your body, as yourself this:

• Do you make most of your decisions based on emotion?
• Do you feel that you can sense other people’s emotions?
• Can you have tears spring to your eyes simply by witnessing other people’s emotions?
• Do you feel in your heart when you know exactly what you need to do?

If so, you are an emotional intuitive. You can feel in your heart when you align or do not align with a particular decision. You can often sense a feeling of fullness in your chest or a lifted sensation when an option is intuitively right, and you can sense a heaviness or a subdued vibration when an option is not in your highest alignment. To help use your heart to make big life decisions, emotional intuitives can imagine a cord leading from your heart to each particular decision and follow the one that makes the strongest and most positive connection.

6. Bring your awareness up to the throat.  This intuitive center is in the center of your neck, in your throat. As you bring your awareness to this portion of your body, ask yourself:

• Do you ever use talking or journaling to make big decisions?
• Do you ever use singing to de-stress or to ramp up your energy before tackling a big task?
• Do you hum or whistle a lot?
• Do you like to make a list of pros and cons, do you like to talk big decisions through, do you prefer to bounce your ideas off of others?

If so, you likely connect your inner truth through the use of vocal or written expression. This helps to simply get your mind out of the way and let the words arise in a free flow format whether by talking out loud or stream-of-conscious writing.  If you have this as your most easily accessible form of intuition, it might help you to begin each day writing a page or two uncensored in a journal.

7. Bring your awareness up to your mind’s eye.  This intuitive center is in the center of your forehead. As you bring your awareness to your mind’s eye, ask yourself:

• Do you ever get sudden pictures or images that seemingly come out of nowhere?
• Do you ever get distinct impressions or visions in your mind’s eye?
• Have you always been thought of as having an ‘active imagination’ as a child?
• Do you get mental images that are seemingly co-incidental to reality (for example, you think of someone and then they call you later that day)?

If so, you are likely a visual or auditory intuitive. Keep a journal and record all visualizations as they come

8. Lastly, bring your awareness up to the very top of your head. As you bring your awareness to this area, ask yourself:

• Do you get information through vivid dreams?
• Do you feel like one of the best things you can do when facing an important decision is to sleep on it?
• Do you find more clarity after taking a quick cat nap?
• Do you enjoy mediation?
• Do you feel comfortable in silence?
• Do you often prefer to take a break and leave a stressful environment than stay in the struggle of it?

If so, your skill is silencing your brain to receive intuitive information. This type of intuitive is the opposite of the gut intuitive. Instead of acting on that very first gut feeling, you may need to take time before making a big decision. Sleep allows for information to integrate and process. It is helpful to have a dream journal by your bedside to record feelings, thoughts, words, images, and sensations that they have while they are still in that open hypnagogic state, before becoming fully alert.

No matter which form (or forms) of receiving intuitive information resonates, you can use your body to discover deeper knowing. I hope this helps you make choices that feel calming, centering, empowered, and certain.  Even when the world is tumultuous, uncertain, and ever changing, you can always center deeply within your own intuitive guidance and make choices—especially health choices—from a place that is in deep alignment with your own values and feelings.

This article was featured in the December 13, 2020 edition of The Sunday Paper. It is solely intended to provide information and inspiration. This information is not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. The views are those of the expert. The Sunday Paper inspires hearts and minds to rise above the noise. To get The Sunday Paper delivered to your inbox each Sunday morning for free, click here to subscribe.