I would sit in her office week after week. We would talk about my current situation – AKA my divorce, my challenges with single parenting, and the habits and patterns that brought me to this point.
Some days it wasn’t much fun to see this reflection, but I kept going back. I knew I had to go through the fire (so to speak) so I could see how I could begin to do things differently moving forward.
My therapist was a wise and nurturing woman. She would speak many truths and point out many observations during our sessions. Some were harder to hear than others. Taking ownership and seeing my habits and patterns came with many daunting moments, feelings of wanting to crawl out of my skin, and big openings for which I am eternally grateful.
One thing I always appreciated was her ability to turn me back towards myself.
“Your body never lies Sue, your body never lies.” she would say.
This particular piece of wisdom stuck with me. I had become pretty good at overriding the wisdom of my body and intuition. I did it to cope, I did it to get through the day, and I did it as a personal survival skill.
Most of us have ignored, numbed, or turned away from our own wisdom at certain points in our lives. Our cultural paradigms are not structured in a way to promote the strengthening and listening to our female intuition. Sometimes, avoiding this part of our feminine can feel like our only choice. Feeling into our sensitivity is one of our greatest gifts and yet can feel like a big heavy cloak of burden.
Living from this wildish part of the feminine allows us to live in our body’s adjoining instinct, integrity, sensation, love and certainty of self.
Summer Solace Series: #2 Your Body Never Lies + A Story Time Sit Down Audio Session
In today’s Summer Solace Series#2:
- Learn to recognize what you do or have done to numb your body’s wisdom (intuition)
- How to take the first steps in fine-tuning and honing your intuition as a positive tool in your life.
- Listen to this week’s story time sit down in a archytypical myth that addresses the feminine power of intuition and its lineage though time and feminine history.
Our intuition, our bodies, our inner voice is something all of us have. For many of us, we have tuned it out over time, because what it was saying was too much, or it would create too many ripples, or lead us to big life changes that we were scared of facing. It may have even been the wildness in us that was not welcome.
Although, female intuition is a gift, many of us have been encouraged to disregard her.
We are taught to think rather than feel.
Our intuition goes beyond our thinking and includes our body's, our heart's, and our soul's deep knowing.
We all have intuition but I refer to this as the female intuition because it is more heightened from the aspect of our feminine receptive nature (man or woman).
Where Do You Numb?
We tend to pile on the layers of numbing so we can simply keep going in our daily life. We numb with all the usual things – food, alcohol, TV, business, sex, drugs – you know the story.
If we did not numb ourselves, we would have to FEEL more. Feeling more can be uncomfortable.
When we don’t like our gut feelings, when they are not welcome, discouraged or shunned, we develop a multitude of patterns and habits to drive them underground. We keep them at bay, and our wild, true nature becomes meager, ghostly and desolate.
As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says: “When we engage and live from our true, wild and intuitive nature, we are like a starry night, gazing at the world through a thousand eyes. We carry stories, dreams, words, songs and symbols for both a vehicle and a destination.”
Where can you find her? Where can you feel her? Where does she live?
Seeing where and how we numb is a bit of an awakening that comes with the willingness to be a little uncomfortable, a bit messy, an opportunity and the courage to acknowledge a habit or a pattern that is outdated (read last weeks summer solace #1 series here about breaking old habits), and to find the power and grace in our body’s inherent knowing.
How Do You HONE Your Intuition?
Your intuition is like a muscle that gets a bit weaker without practice. Intuition and body wisdom are never gone. In fact, they are always there, even when we ignore them. When we acknowledge how and where we are numbing, we can begin to listen again.
Intuition becomes available to us when we listen to our hearts, when we pay attention to our body’s somatic expressions, and when we follow the prompts of our wisdom. We must first become receptive to our intuition to begin to strengthen her.
We must learn to respect our hunches, notions and impulses. With this practice, we witness our emotions and feelings flowing through us free from judgment and guilt.
The way our bodies (all in our own unique way) speak to us is a tool that we can use to navigate our lives, our decisions, our eating, and our happiness.
All to often, we look outward to the world around us for our cues and guidelines when the answers lie within.
When we stop questioning and trust, when we stop overriding and check in, and when we practice cultivating this inner gift, we can notice the grace of moving in life with an intuitive body knowing that it can become our biggest strength.
Here are some of my favorite ways to practice honing our intuition:
- Clear your mind – create some space each day to slow down and listen.
- Do a body check in – scan your body for information through your senses. Pay attention to tightness, nausea, shortness of breath, headaches and other recurring sensations.
- Pay attention to your dreams – they are the window into your subconscious mind and intuitive wisdom.
- Spend time in nature – it is rich with intuition and grounding for the heart and mind.
- Ask questions – Get specifics, be proactive, and simply ask your intuition (aka higher self) for information.
- Drop the judgment – Instead of criticizing or repressing, get curious.
- Take small steps and practice often.
Always remember that in the heart of the feminine nature lies a strong wise and powerful intuitive nature. If you listen she won’t steer you wrong.
Get comfy, settle in, be gentle with yourself, and listen to today’s story time sit down session below.
Listen to today's Story Time Sit Down HERE
The Summer Solace Series is here for you to lean into.
This is my late summer offering for you to explore your own true nature with respect to health, happiness and inner peace. My intention with the Summer Solace Series is to make our journey of the feminine feel a little smoother, a lot more whole, while staying deeply connected to ourselves, as women.
During the late summer weeks, I will be sharing some of the gems from my work with women in the groups I lead all over the world. I will share with you some ways where we can begin to create a loving and female approach to our eating, and our bodies, with tastes of some of the myths and archetypes I work with that provide a little extra support.
As we transition into the last part of summer, we energetically prepare for a transition into a new school year, another autumn season, and a time to begin a new pulse that works well for what we are intending for ourselves.
I have also created the Summer Solace Series to share with you some samples and nuggets from my upcoming women’s circles that are beginning in September (one live full moon weekend retreat, and one virtual women’s focus group) with tastes of some of the most potent themes and practices.
Just like the sweetness of a ripe August peach, The Summer Solace Series is my late summer treat for you. A harvest filled path into the last weeks of summer, a taste of the Sisterhood Circles Focus Group and Full Moon Women’s Retreat weekend that begin this September as well as some summer savoring secrets that will keep you satiated.