4 Things You Can Start Doing Today to Enhance Intuitive Awareness

After writing my post on differentiating intuition from anxiety, I thought it might be good to share a few tips on how to become more intuitively aware in general. As someone who previously couldn’t tell their ass from their elbow in this department, I know what it’s like to start from the very bottom with no idea where to begin. People would tell me to just ‘tune into my higher intelligence’ and I would tell them to f*ck off because what does that even mean??? Like, what is my ‘higher intelligence’ and what does tuning into it entail? Is there a Wiki Simple English page for this?

Trust me, I get it – the concept of intuition can feel vague, abstract, and hard to pin down. But fear not my fellow ego-driven comrades! If someone like me can learn to hone their intuitive awareness, then someone like you can learn to do so, too.

Below I’ve outlined the 4 main practices that were incredibly effective for me in terms of familiarizing myself with what intuition is, what my own sounds like, and how to listen for it consistently. There are a thousand and one other ways to accomplish the same, some more advanced than others, but these are what worked for me at the very beginning stages of my intuitive development.

1.     Embodiment

Embodiment is essentially the practice of turning our attention to our physical bodies and listening. I’ll rely on this definition from the Somatic Movement Process, as it perfectly encapsulates the meaning and benefits of embodiment practices:

“Embodiment practices are a method of using the unique sensations of our body as a tool to develop awareness, stay present, self-regulate, feel whole, find balance, feel connected, know ourself, love ourself and be empowered.”

Truth be told, embodiment is something I actively avoided for most of my life because I didn’t understand it and was therefore very frustrated by it. As I’ve come to learn what it is and how to do it though, I’ve realized how helpful it can be in accessing my intuitive awareness via felt sensations in my body rather than a voice in my head. Let me to walk you through a quick exercise to help you better understand what I mean.

Wherever you are, I invite you to sit back in your chair (or find a place to sit for a moment if you’re standing) close your eyes, and take three deep breathes in through your nose and out through the mouth. Now, think of something that immediately lit you right the fuck up; something that was an intuitive HELL YES for you without hesitation. It can be a person, a situation, a decision you made, an invitation you said yes to – anything that left you with an instantaneous positive reaction will do. Think of this thing as you remain seated with your eyes closed and feel into your physical body. Can you detect any sensations? What are they and where are they present? Perhaps you feel a subtle feeling of expansion in your chest, or a tingling sensation across your forehead. There are no wrong answers here and there are no wrong sensations. Just breathe, scan down your entire body, feel, and notice.

Now think of something that was an immediate HELL NO for you – something where everything within you gave an instant hard pass. Following the same steps above, think of this thing and feel into your body with your eyes closed. What sensation(s) can you detect and where are they most apparent? You could feel a tight contraction in your chest or knots in your stomach, or maybe a tensing in your jaw. Again, there are no wrong answers here. Just be open, breathe and feel.

After a bit of practice, you’ll be able to use the benchmarks you establish through this exercise for guidance on decisions you need to make going forward. Once you learn what something feels like when it’s an intuitive yes versus what it feels like when it’s an intuitive no, you’ll be able to compare those feelings to the sensations brought about by new situations or people, and decide how to handle them accordingly.

2.     Meditation

Have you ever had someone ask you a question while you were blasting music, forcing you to turn down the volume in order to hear them? This is basically what’s going on in your mind only it’s your intuition that’s trying to speak over the loudness that is every form of mental processing. Unfortunately, our brains aren’t naturally adept at turning down the ‘music’, meaning it’s a skill that must be trained. And how do we go about training this skill, you ask? Meditation. If you want any hope of eventually learning to hear/hone your intuition, meditation is an absolute must.

Like everything else in the personal development/spirituality sphere, I haaaaaated meditation at first because, per usual, I didn’t get how to do it and was therefore frustrated AF by it. And if you feel the same, don’t worry. The thing to keep in mind is there’s not necessarily a wrong way to meditate, and mastery will come with practice. In the same way your muscles grow stronger when you regularly exercise them, your ability to quiet your mind will grow stronger when you regularly meditate. It’s a skill like any other that needs to be cultivated overtime through consistent effort and practice, so don’t beat yourself up if you feel like it’s not working. The more you do it the better you’ll become, and before you know it you’ll be getting Zen with the best of them.

3.     Journaling

Processing thoughts and feelings can be extremely helpful in honing your intuition for several reasons. To start, thoughts and feelings of the stronger variety are generally so distracting they make it virtually impossible to quiet your mind let alone think straight. Beyond that, getting into the flow state that comes with writing or any other activity that allows you to release is often where some of the most powerful intuitive hits come to you. Journaling is my personal fav as there’s nothing I love more than untangling my constant mess of thought and emotion through pen and paper, but if writing isn’t your thing there are all kinds of other mediums you can use to reach the same result. For example, a good friend of mine hates writing but loves graphic design, so she has a 30-minute daily design practice where she puts images and colors to her thoughts and feelings. And it’s effective AF.

This one is simply about processing what’s in your mind and clearing it out through the medium of your choice, so anything that can help you accomplish that is sufficient. The end goal is to both minimize distractions while meditating, and open yourself up to intuitive hits from the universe by placing yourself in the type of ‘flow state’ that comes with whatever method of emotional and mental release you enjoy. Writing, designing, dancing, singing, yoga – as long as it helps you process your thoughts and feelings, the medium you choose is entirely up to you.

4.     Ask yourself for answers

I remember the first time someone told me “wE aLl HoLd ThE aNsWeRs We SeEk WiThiN oUrSeLvEs” and I remember what an absolute crock of shit I thought it was. Like, if I had the answers I was seeking I wouldn’t be here in the first place, right? I know. But the annoying reality is that we do have the answers we seek, we just need a little confidence boost and a lot of courage to see it.

For this practice go somewhere private where you won’t be disturbed. Pick a topic you’re seeking guidance on, ask yourself what to do out loud, and verbalize whatever answers hit you. What I’ve learned is that whatever pops up is usually the right answer, but we either don’t trust ourselves enough to see it, or, more frequently, we don’t like what we hear so we claim to hear nothing at all.

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If you’re over there in woe-is-me mode saying you “don’t know what to do” or still “aren’t sure”, that’s a good indicator that you do know what to do, you just don’t like it. Trust me when I say you can waste YEARS searching high and low for any answer other than the one you already know deep down. You can claim you’re confused and say that you need guidance, but you aren’t and you don’t - and you’re not doing yourself any favors by avoiding the truth (I know, *HEAVY SIGH*). You already have all the guidance you need within yourself and will make your life a hell of a lot easier once you accept that and begin to live in full trust of it, no matter how tough the real answers might be. We all know what’s right for us and what isn’t, and looking outside ourselves for answers only serves to further distance us from our intuitive knowing and muddy the already muddied waters.

While these four practices are the ones I found to be most useful in the initial stages of learning to cultivate my intuitive awareness, there so many others that are equally as effective (this list from Mind Body Green has some great ones). Hopefully this provided you with a solid starting point to begin learning what your intuitive voice sounds like and how to identify it with certainty though, so that you can begin making all the aligned decisions with confidence from here on out.

Tell your higher self I say hello.

All my love.