Connecting to Your Intuition

*NOTE: You are invited to journal throughout this exercise.

Have you ever wanted to connect with your intuition to deepen your self-awareness, improve your emotional balance and mental clarity, solve problems, improve your relationships, and/or make more effective decisions?  This Inner Wisdom Journey will guide you step by step through an exercise to help you connect with your intuition. We hope you find it helpful.

So, what is intuition?

Often called insight, gut feelings, hunches, or an inner voice, intuition is knowing something without fully understanding how you know it. You might feel intuition in your body, maybe as a gut feeling, to follow your heart when considering a particular choice. Learning to connect with – and to trust – your intuition can help you gain confidence and clarity, make decisions more often and more quickly, creatively solve problems, and feel more inspired, fulfilled, and uplifted. The more you trust and use your intuition, the more quickly and consistently you can connect with it.

Intuition is like a muscle; the more you exercise it, the stronger it will be. Making time to check in with your intuition regularly helps you focus on your physical experiences moment to moment and strengthens the connection between heart and mind. This exercise will help you connect with the feelings and sensations you experience while intuiting and help you recognize the vital information those signals contain. As you build a habit of present-moment awareness, you also create space for your intuition to be heard, and with practice, connecting with your intuition can become a regular, readily accessible part of your daily life.

This 5-minute exercise, several times per day, will help you build your intuition muscle!

Step 1: Formulate a question

Think about a decision or problem you are currently faced with and formulate a question in your mind. Ask yourself this question and consider your possible responses. Write down two potential choices you have regarding this issue and label them Option A and Option B.

Step 2: Practice Heart-Focused Breathing

This step focuses your attention on the heart area. To begin, stand or sit comfortably with your spine straight, relax your body completely, and close your eyes. Place your hand over your heart, take three deep breaths, and imagine your breath flowing in and out through this area.

Keeping your hand over your heart, inhale slowly through your nose [five seconds], and imagine your breath coming in through your heart. As you breathe in, expand your abdomen outward as your lungs fill with air. Exhale slowly [five seconds] through your mouth and imagine the breath flowing out through the heart. Contract your abdomen inward toward your spine as your lungs empty. Continue breathing in this way until you find a natural rhythm that feels good to you.

Step 3: Connecting to your intuition with choice A

Now imagine yourself making choice A. Keep your attention focused on the area of the heart. If your mind wanders, bring your attention back to the heart.

Observe the sensations you feel in your heart without trying to change them or make them go away.

How does your heart feel as you make this choice? Perhaps it feels warm, light, and open? Or tight and tense? Is your chest expanding quickly with each breath? Or is it shallow and constricted? Write down all the sensations you feel in your heart.

What do these sensations tell you about this decision? Do you feel optimistic and energized? Or do they alert you to something that needs extra attention?

Step 4: Connecting to your intuition with choice B

Now imagine yourself making choice B. Keep your attention focused on the area of the heart. If your mind wanders, bring your attention back to the heart. Remain quiet as you allow yourself to imagine making choice B.

Observe the sensations you feel in your heart without trying to change them or make them go away.

How does your heart feel in response to making this particular choice? Perhaps it feels warm, light, and open? Or tight and tense? Is your chest expanding quickly as you breathe? Or is it shallow and constricted? Write down all the sensations you feel in your heart.

What do these sensations tell you about this decision? Do you feel optimistic and energized? Or do they alert you to something that needs extra attention?

Step 5: Reflection

Were you able to notice a difference between the sensations around your heart that emerged after concentrating on choice A versus choice B? If so, how would you describe the differences?

Were you able to discern a definite “yes” or a definite “no” to the question you asked? Which of the options felt right?

What made this choice seem better than the other?

Did you notice any physical sensations you might not normally notice? If so, what? 

Would you recognize these sensations as a sign of intuition in the future?

 We often “know” but are unwilling to trust it. Can you identify times in the past when you listened to your heart?

 Can you identify times when you ignored what your heart was telling you? How might these situations have turned out differently if you had paid attention to your intuition?

 What has this exercise taught you about your connection to your intuition?

 CREDIT: Special thanks to Elaine Houston for creating this exercise.