What I learned in my 20s Lesson 4: Intuition Is Not Intuition Until You Check It Out

Growing up I believed intuition was this mystical thing that just hit you with insight out of no where. I have learned along the way in my 20s that intuition is really just another word for being mindful and truly present in the moment with what is. In Graduate School when my Family and Therapy Teacher spoke the above words, Intuition Is Not Intuition Until You Check It Out, my perception of intuition has changed forever.

When we feel called to respond to a situation in a certain way we can slow down and tune in to our body and explore the emotions that might be arising for us. We can often be responding in the present from how we used to respond in the past. Or we can be reacting out of fear to a situation that feels similar to a moment we have been through and scared of the same results happening.

Let's say you just entered into a new relationship and you are feeling anxiety or fear that this isn't the "right" relationship for you. In these moments, we can explore how does this situation remind us of our past and are we thinking these thoughts to avoid feeling the fear of the unknown and showing up with another human being vulnerably.

Every single reaction we have can offer us information for how we are processing our life. We are all powerful mirrors and teachers for one another. In any moment we can ask what is this moment or this person here to teach me? How is this person being a strong mirror for me right now in what I am perhaps still working on within myself? What can I learn about myself in this moment and what patterns or reactions do I want to engage in that might actually not serve me or feel respectful to another individual?

So the next time you hear someone say, "just listen to your intuition," get curious around what you want that to mean to you. How do you want to define intuition for yourself?

When people find out that I am a nutritional counselor, I suddenly feel like they are nervous to eat in front of me.  Like I have all the answers and what they are doing is supposedly wrong.  I want to dispel that right now, that I never judge what someone else is eating. 

I have learned through my journey and relationship with food that what works for me isn't going to work for everyone else.  I don't live in your body, I don't truly know what your body needs from moment to moment (I do however love teaching how to learn to communicate with your unique body).

At the beginning of my gut healing journey, I was told how mucus forming dairy was and that it could be causing some of my issues.  You want me to give up my yogurt!? I loved my sugary added yogurts and the first time I heard this I was not ready to take that advice.

I tell you this story because it took me another 3 years to actually experiment with completely taking dairy out of my daily eating habits to find out that indeed dairy and I are not friends.  When we are ready to deepen in our relationship with food and ourselves we will.  What I have learned through my client's and my own process with the gut is to be patient and to give yourself plenty of time.

Embrace where you are now with your relationship with food.  Sometimes it may just be too intense to look at how you are nourishing yourself because it may be a protective blanket covering up some intense emotions that you are just not ready to deal with yet.  And that is totally fine!  Love yourself up and know that you are doing the best you can in this moment to take the very best care of yourself.

I wish I had been told this more on my journey to heal my gut.  Every time I had a digestive upset I felt like a failure and that all my effort to heal was for nothing. But every decision, every effort, every choice I made in the direction of listening, of tuning in to myself, especially in the moments that I was in pain and I didn't want to listen, brought me closer to myself and to my body and what it truly wanted.

So if you find yourself eating in front of me, just know that all I wish for you is an enjoyable experience with that food. We are all at different phases and stages in our relationship with food and I find the journey beautiful and full of deep wisdom and knowledge for who we are and the stories we bring with us from childhood.  It is all right there on our plate.

I get really excited about things.  Ethan, my boyfriend, often compares me to a dog when I get really excited because I can't contain myself.  I want to pounce on the opportunity, the conversation, the situation.  I get so wrapped up in the moment that I can forget about waiting my turn to speak and being patient with my surroundings.

Furthermore, I grew up in a family where I am the youngest of 3 and the only girl.  So I constantly felt like I had to interrupt to be heard over two very entertaining and loud brothers.  This continues to show up in my life now. 

I try to be kind and compassionate with myself when I notice I am getting super excited and want to speak when it is not my turn or feeling the urge to interrupt someone else to make sure I get my point across.  I'll admit, this is a constant practice for me, both to pause and take a breath and to be kind and compassionate toward myself.  But, something that has helped (besides talking to myself to either calm myself down or tell my inner child that they will be heard eventually) is to start to focus on what the other person is saying.

I teach my clients that we are not just nourished by what we are eating but also by our surroundings and environment.  A conversation can satiate you just the same way a meal can when you are really hungry.  When we slow down, not just with our meals, but with our friends and family we get the chance to enjoy their company and truly listen to what they are saying.  When we sit and listen to what someone else has to say we can then process that information easier and digest that experience thoroughly because we were truly present and not in our heads thinking about the next things that we want to say.

Greek Philosopher Epictetus said: We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

When I am able to listen with both my ears, my excitement does not diminish but it gets contained; it becomes more manageable in the moment so that I can stay present with myself and those around me.  This feels more nourishing in the end.  When we are able to be nourished and satiated by our conversation with others, we feel connected to our surroundings and thus more connected to ourselves. 

Breath in.  Pause.  Breath out. Pause.  Breath in.  Pause.  Breath out.  Pause.  It is within these pauses that I come back to myself.  It is within these moments of stillness, of clarity that I see through the clutter of my mind and I am able to come back to what is real.  During the pauses within my yoga practice is when I remember that I am not alone.  That no one is truly alone.  We are always in relationship with ourselves and we always have the capacity and capability to walk outside of our door and introduce ourselves to a complete stranger or walk bare foot outside and connect back to mother earth and our relationship to the external world.  When I am flowing in between poses within yoga and I take a pause to hold myself, to stay still, to be present; that is when not only the pose unfolds before me, but my life unfolds before me reminding me to let go of control.

It is when we allow ourselves to pause, to be quiet for a moment that we come back to ourselves and what is most important.  The more we can empty ourselves out and forget about who we are, who we think we should be, and drop any definitions of ourselves that we can become open to being receptive to life just as it is.  I have experienced when I stop searching for that thing I think will "make me whole" or "make me happy" that is when I realize that my wholeness and happiness are already right there residing within me.  A friend of mine told me a story this afternoon that Wayne Dyer once told about two cats: (it went something like this but I added the exact video of Dyer telling the story if you want to listen to it)

There was an old wise cat and a small kitten in an alleyway. The old cat saw the kitten chasing its tail and asked, “Why are you chasing your tail?”

To it the kitten replied, “I’ve been attending cat philosophy school and I have learned that the most important thing for a cat is happiness, and that happiness is my tail. Therefore, I am chasing it: and when I catch it, I shall have happiness forever.”

Laughing, the wise old cat replied, “As I’ve gone through life, I too have realized that the most important thing for a cat is happiness, and indeed that it is located in my tail.  The difference I’ve found though is that whenever I chase after it, it keeps running away from me, but when I go about my business and live my life, it just seems to follow after me wherever I go.”

The answers to all of our questions, I truly believe, we already know.  It is just a matter of asking the questions to our wise selves and finding a moment of stillness to listen.  Nourishment comes in all different forms.  Sometimes it is unclear what needs to be nourished: our mind, our body, our soul.  And since food was our very first form of love in this world, ultimately the first thought we have when we need some kind of nourishment is food.  Yet, I have learned from my yoga practice, from taking that pause, that when I ask myself what I really want, a lot of the time it isn't food.  I need touch, understanding, connection, communication.  I don't have a sweet tooth but I need sweet smells, sweet hugs, sweet glances from loved ones.  Then it is a matter of cultivating acceptance; of listening to what we do need, and that perhaps what we desire isn't readily available at that moment.

And then we come back to the pause and the fact that life moves on, things change, and what we need will change too.  So I invite you, right here, right now.  Breath in.  Pause.  Breath out.  Pause.  Come into the pause with me and truly experience your emotions with all their sensations, colors, and textures, for they remind us that we are alive.