Sweat & Smiles: Strengthening and Getting in Touch with Your Intuition
By Melissa Robbins on March 31, 2018 from Sweat & Smiles
The word intuitive or any variation of intuition is becoming a hot buzzword. Intuitive eating, intuitive living really, isn’t a “new age” concept. It is quite literally how we were designed to eat and live. While some are excelling in trusting their intuition, others are left wondering where to find it. Like most things worth doing it’s simple but it’s not easy.
In my belief system prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening, and intuition is the way the message gets delivered. We were designed with a sixth sense. The feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know something isn’t right. The warmth in your chest, the goosebumps on your arms, and the knot in your throat are all indicators of that sixth sense. Right around the time Cannon was one year old a darker part of a movie came on cuing the ominous music; Cannon paused and slowly backed away from the TV. That’s intuition.
As we grow up we become domesticated. We’re told what’s acceptable behavior, what’s not acceptable behavior, and how we should ‘act’. All this is of course only according to our parents, family, and the society in which we live. If you think about it, it’s all made up. If you grew up in a different era, a different country, a different class, your domestication would look drastically different.
It’s through these rules that our intuition starts to become blurred. That inner voice, that inner knowing, gets the volume turned down while the voices of our peers get turned way up. We begin to try to out logic our intuition. Our inner voice says “this person doesn’t seem right for me” but society says this person is a great catch. Our inner voice says “I really need to take a rest” but our peers say “you’ve got to keep pushing”. Our inner voice says “I need more food” but dieting rules say “eat less”.
Slowly we’ve turned the volume so far down on our intuition we no longer even recognize it as a voice let alone our greatest asset. We ignore our inner knowing and have become more anxious, depressed, and sicker than ever. Our bodies are full of inflammation, our brains are on the verge of burnout, and we’re stuck in an endless loop of unsurety.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. We’re able to turn the volume up on our intuition through practice. The first step comes in the decision to trust yourself. Deciding to trust yourself, whether it’s with food or any other area of your life, then becomes a learning process. There is no way to mess it up, there is no way to fail, you just trust and then you learn. The second step comes in deciphering what’s your intuition and what is just a bunch of supposed tos. My technique for this is simple: anything after the ‘but’ is probably not your intuition. Let’s use working out as the example; Someone will say to me “I am exhausted but I ate so much yesterday” or “I know I’ll feel better but I just want to lay down”. It’s easy to find the intuition here. The first example should take the day off and rest (that’s not how balancing your energy in/energy out goes anyway). The second example should get moving.
The more we practice listening to our intuition the louder and stronger it will get. The more we trust the warning signs that a situation or person isn’t right for us, the more we’ll surround ourselves with people and environments that will decrease stress and alleviate anxiety. The more we trust our body when we need to rest, to say no, to take care of ourselves the better equipped we’ll be to take care of the things most important to us. The more we trust our body to eat with unconditional permission the more our bodies will be left to heal and regulate themselves. Once we turn the volume all the way up on our God-given intuition, the more weight we’ll shed… both literally and figuratively.
Sweat & Smiles,
Melissa
In my belief system prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening, and intuition is the way the message gets delivered. We were designed with a sixth sense. The feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know something isn’t right. The warmth in your chest, the goosebumps on your arms, and the knot in your throat are all indicators of that sixth sense. Right around the time Cannon was one year old a darker part of a movie came on cuing the ominous music; Cannon paused and slowly backed away from the TV. That’s intuition.
As we grow up we become domesticated. We’re told what’s acceptable behavior, what’s not acceptable behavior, and how we should ‘act’. All this is of course only according to our parents, family, and the society in which we live. If you think about it, it’s all made up. If you grew up in a different era, a different country, a different class, your domestication would look drastically different.
It’s through these rules that our intuition starts to become blurred. That inner voice, that inner knowing, gets the volume turned down while the voices of our peers get turned way up. We begin to try to out logic our intuition. Our inner voice says “this person doesn’t seem right for me” but society says this person is a great catch. Our inner voice says “I really need to take a rest” but our peers say “you’ve got to keep pushing”. Our inner voice says “I need more food” but dieting rules say “eat less”.
Slowly we’ve turned the volume so far down on our intuition we no longer even recognize it as a voice let alone our greatest asset. We ignore our inner knowing and have become more anxious, depressed, and sicker than ever. Our bodies are full of inflammation, our brains are on the verge of burnout, and we’re stuck in an endless loop of unsurety.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. We’re able to turn the volume up on our intuition through practice. The first step comes in the decision to trust yourself. Deciding to trust yourself, whether it’s with food or any other area of your life, then becomes a learning process. There is no way to mess it up, there is no way to fail, you just trust and then you learn. The second step comes in deciphering what’s your intuition and what is just a bunch of supposed tos. My technique for this is simple: anything after the ‘but’ is probably not your intuition. Let’s use working out as the example; Someone will say to me “I am exhausted but I ate so much yesterday” or “I know I’ll feel better but I just want to lay down”. It’s easy to find the intuition here. The first example should take the day off and rest (that’s not how balancing your energy in/energy out goes anyway). The second example should get moving.
The more we practice listening to our intuition the louder and stronger it will get. The more we trust the warning signs that a situation or person isn’t right for us, the more we’ll surround ourselves with people and environments that will decrease stress and alleviate anxiety. The more we trust our body when we need to rest, to say no, to take care of ourselves the better equipped we’ll be to take care of the things most important to us. The more we trust our body to eat with unconditional permission the more our bodies will be left to heal and regulate themselves. Once we turn the volume all the way up on our God-given intuition, the more weight we’ll shed… both literally and figuratively.
Sweat & Smiles,
Melissa
