You know that feeling.

Whether it originated from your gut, your chest, your heart, or your spine…It wants to tell you something.

There is a wise man/woman living inside each of us. With this wise being, we understand without knowing, we see the truth without trying.

 

I. The Brief History of Intuition, Your Mother Tongue.

 

NO MATTER WHERE we are from, Intuition is our native language. Before we learnt how to pop out our first words, or structure a sentence, we were born with a powerful instinct to survive. Back then, this intuitive sense was an important aspect of our life. We were aware of the environment that we were in.

We’d make our unspoken needs known to adults around us.

And when we were brought to somewhere with a funny vibe, we’d “voice” it immediately by perhaps crying, despite the fact that we were not able to name the reason yet.

As we grew slightly bigger, to the age that we could speak, our mother tongue, Intuition, was still present.

We were creative and playful. We understood our pets better than our parents did. At times, we could even sense tensions in adults before they fully lashed out.

Noticing what was truly going on underneath the surface was not just another “learnt behaviour” but our authentic nature.

There is a wise man/woman living inside each of us. With this wise being, we understand without knowing, we see the truth without trying.

Yet, we did not have a chance to fully embrace this being inside.

As we stepped into the world, often critical and censored opinions encroached on and rushed into our little psyche. We were then occupied by so-called social conditions.

Gradually a taught pattern dominated our thoughts: we were told that we were never enough; we began to go outside looking for solutions; we gave up things that made our heart sing; we started to allow self-sabotage to creep in and constantly doubt our hunches.

Soon before we realised, we were less and less aware of those hunches, we hid our mother tongue, Intuition, in a safe but distant corner of our heart – our native language became rusty.

For some of us who are highly sensitive, in childhood if we suppressed our Intuition – our inner compass just to fit in with the wider culture, then later on in adulthood, we might have trouble recognising our true needs, let alone being able to fulfill them.

We might also manifest difficulties in areas of setting appropriate boundaries, cultivating personal space, which can cause an imbalance in giving and receiving that leads to different forms of illness.

Our Intuition is not meant to be ignored.

Our inner voice is not here to be silenced.

Nevertheless, it is never too late to reclaim your Intuition and reconnect with your inner wise being.

The first step is to know where you are now.

If you haven’t before, take this quiz today: how intuitive are you right now?

REFLECTION TIME

Do you believe that you are naturally intuitive? Or do you think that it only belongs to some “chosen ones”?

Do you give yourself enough space daily to pay attention to your instincts? Or do you often dismiss your instincts at first then in hindsight wish that you have followed them?

Do you take regular breaks during your busy schedule, so that you can hear your inner-voice? Or are you too stressed out to even plan down time?

Do you feel sovereign each time you say YES or NO? Or do you secretly resent people as you feel like they make you do things you would not choose otherwise?

Is your life based on the core values of your essential Self or do you feel like running on the hamster wheel?

In our modern culture, we can often feel muffled, baffled, discounted and discouraged. Reconnecting with our Intuition becomes our saving grace.

It is like plugging back to the vital source energy, our heart opens and eyes softened, we grow our backbone and a sense of self-worth, we learn how to become ourselves all over again. We are showered by miracles and synchronicity. 

You might say, “OK, I understand the power of my Intuition, but I’m struggling to follow it.”

“I want to reawaken my Intuition, but I’m just having a hard time to tell the differences between my Intuition v.s. emotions/fears/overthinking.”

Or “Normally I can hear/feel my Intuition, but when I lose this connection when I am stressed out, ie, need my Intuition the most, how can I make it work consistently?”

I hear you. It’s not always easy to have tunnel vision, especially when facing complex situations, but I believe that you can turn it around with the right tools.

II. Reawaken the

Lost Language of Your Soul.

Listen to your Intuition, for you’ll hear songs few know.

INTUITION IS ABOUT listening and receptivity. Be receptive to our inner-flow so that our essential Self is present and directive. As Dag hammarskjöld said, “The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only she who listens can speak.”

Nowadays, we experience life as a whirl of demands and madness. We live on deadlines, we perform under pressure, we are forced into different directions simultaneously.

Whether it is our choice or not, we are fed by sea of information. We are distracted by stimulation on a second by second basis.

We find ourselves with countless options, yet we do not know which are truly beneficial. Are they nutritious for our being? Or are they junk wrapped up by a pretty cover?

We almost forget how to “close the curtain” and simply concentrate. We must not let our ability to focus diminish.

Something quiet, valuable and precious inside needs our full attention.

Dive deep.

Feel the gentle pull in your bone.

Listen to the whisper of your inner voice.

In the age of Big Data, we need our Intuition more than ever.

Intuition has a direct connection with our essential Self  – the true, shining, wise and courageous Self.

We have a strong and clear instinct to know what we actually need. When we honour and follow our Intuition, we feel authentic.

So how do we reclaim our Intuition – the under-valued language of our Soul? 

Today, I’d love to share the following three steps to develop your intuitive skills, in your own style, without falling into any “permission” or “hierarchy” based traps.

III. How To Develop An Accurate Intuition & Make It Work For You

Nature is the bedrock for your Intuition. Although we were born intuitive, many of us have numbed out our Intuition while growing up.

Reawakening our Intuition is also to rekindle the sacred relationship with our Soul.

And how can we build a good foundation and do it effectively?

Well, we must get ourselves back into the right environment for our Intuition and Soul to thrive.

Just like, for example, if we want to learn Chinese, we go to China; if we want to speak Intuition fluently, we should go to mama nature.

The purpose of listening to our Intuition is to be attentive to our heart, understand what goes on beneath the surface, get to know and fulfill our true nature.

There is no better place than nature to cultivate our true nature. 

Nature can filter any unnecessary distractions or noises.

When we are fully present in nature, we are communicating with the Universe.

When we watch and observe how season changes, we are practising one of the most grounding meditations. We can then embody the depth of harmony that no textbook can teach us.

When we carve out time and notice what is happening within and around us, our subconscious mind is quietly recording complex patterns that later on we can draw back on.

Reawaken our Intuition is to reclaim our wisdom.

Schedule some regular nature walks by yourself and with your loved ones. Unplug from the web from your daily routine.

Apart from some extreme circumstances, everything in nature is very natural.

When we see that tides come and go, we’ll understand that nothing is truly possessed by us and nothing is really lost.

When we see that the Sun rises and sets and the Moon goes dark and full, we’ll feel the rhythm and pattern that governs our life, abusing which will only cause chaos and distress.

Nature is the simple truth. Truth invokes our Intuition.

Immersing ourselves in nature regularly will train our Intuition to know what is in balance and what feels off – this will become your innate discernment over time. This is your inner guiding light to determine how true or relevant any external inputs are.

Give yourselves the space and permission to feel the world and the universe directly, you will be in a better place to develop your own intuitive style.

Your first hand experience with nature will help your Intuition sound exactly just like you, as is intended.

You’ll then naturally want to pay more attention on your surrounding, with confidence.

You know that feeling, whether it originated from your gut, your chest, your heart, or your spine…It wants to tell you something.

However, as you are pondering if the hunch is real, it has gone. You don’t know if you can trust it, letting alone to follow it.

“Is my Intuition reliable? Or is it just hit and miss?” You ask.

There is only one way to find it out – test it once you have an intuitive hit.

Intuition is a way of living.

As you are getting more and more open to receive intuitive insights directly from your Soul, you will (rightly) want to develop a stable relationship with your Intuition, and consistent practice is the only way forward.

Grab yourself a journal to note down every time when you have a hunch. Big or small. Quiet or strong. One-time-only or persistent. Do not judge anything at this stage.

You get the idea.

Last but not the least, keep a daily log of your own state of being.

How do you feel? Where are you in the spectrum from being completely your self or not yourself at all?

Intuition works the best for us when we develop a good rapport with ourselves.

Encourage yourself to be 100% honest with how you are and where you are, this will allow you to receive intuitive insights with more ease and flow.

What you are doing in your Intuition journal is to collect your personal data bank.

You’ll see that those data actually shape and form patterns that guide you to your personal success (see the next point), which does not contradict with logic. It actually is a wider, deeper and more complete form of intelligence.

In your Intuition journal, you’ll have a series of events, hunches, nudges, instincts and any other intuitive insights.

Reviewing them regularly is very important.

• Has your Intuition helped you? 
• Did following your Intuition open up an opportunity for you?
• Did you manage to avoid unnecessary conflict by respecting your gut instinct?
• Or did you regret something that got you into trouble because you ignored your Intuition?

Go through each item in your journal.

Maybe some of your intuitive hits are spot on straight away, maybe some you will find are right later (or many years, even decades later – that’s why you should keep a log now so that you can look back for evidence), while others are completely off.

We all know the benefits when our Intuition is right. But how about when it is wrong?

Does it mean that Intuition does not work, or you are not intuitive at all?

The short answer is that life is complex and this is not a black-white situation, no matter how well we use and exercise our Intuition, it does not prevent us from mistakes – otherwise, it just de-humanizes us, doesn’t it?

When your Intuition is not 100% right, one or both of the following reason(s) might be the case.

a) You have confused your Intuition with your emotions or mental thoughts. However, with some exercises, you can still lift the fog and develop clear insights.

If you have shut down your intuitive senses for a long time, you could be a little rusty. It will take time to recover.

It will take multiple scenarios or life events for you to tell the subtle difference between your Intuition and your emotions or mental thoughts.

Sometimes you are too involved in a situation that your emotions can override your Intuition.

If you have shut down your intuitive senses for a long time, you might be a little rusty.

For example, your emotional urge to stay in a toxic relationship can be so overpowering that you’ll ignore the quiet voice nudging you that it won’t work out no matter how hard you try…

Other times, you can confuse some mental thoughts with your Intuition.

Mental clutter is often filled with someone else’s voice, such as an authority figure from your childhood who told you that you were wrong, or you would never be enough.

Those are not your Intuition, but limited beliefs that block you from your truth.

Reading the signs wrong at this stage is normal, as you have just reawakened your Intuition, while still looking for reliable ways to navigate.

Don’t judge yourself nor beat yourself up.

Intuition works best when you are relaxed and playful, and when you trust the process.

Many people fall into the trap that there is a “big guy up there judging you”, or you need to obtain permission or special authority to listen to your Intuition.

But the truth is that as a unique being, you have your own relationship with Intuition, your own process, your own flavour and style.

Just because your Intuition takes different forms than someone else’s, it doesn’t mean that yours is invalid. 

You are more intuitive than you ever know/think. Keep recording your own findings and experiences in your Intuition journal. Whenever in doubt, this short video can encourage/remind you.

b) The other main reason of inaccurate insights is that you need more practical experiences in certain areas for your Intuition to be clear and spot on.

Your Intuition works the best in the field that you have already built or are continuously building on.

For example, if you have no experience in the stock market, then making a major investment just by following your Intuition is unwise. Please don’t do that.

However, if you are a more experienced trader, your Intuition will be more reliable when it comes to noticing what happens in the market before the masses respond.

For another instance, if you are learning a new topic, such as nutrition, and you want to help your friends and family to live more healthily.

However, you wouldn’t jump straight into giving people advice merely using your Intuition at this stage, because you are yet to build a solid knowledge base, gather plenty of real life cases, and make real progress via experiments and feedback.

While learning about a new subject, navigating a new experience, or trying to understand life better in general, we should be patient with our growth, resist instant gratification, and dive deeply into our interests.

We’ll gradually flourish as our Intuition settles in, step by step, guiding us to our truth.

We are all students of life. Accessing our Intuition is not for us to bypass life, but make our life more meaningful, personal, and authentically rich. 

Intuitive living is a deep sensory living.

When we awaken our five senses, we’ll notice that our sixth sense tries to get to us via every sight, scent, sound, touch and feel.

From here, our world expands.

We no longer take things personally, as we know that our counterpart is fighting hard with a long, stubborn pattern.

We are able to move past the superficial and connect at the real level.

We become more equipped to understand who we are, walk and live our truth.

Yiye Zhang 章一叶

PS. Thanks for visiting this page. I sincerely hope that this article encourages you to enjoy your intuitive journey and practise this valuable skill with curiosity and confidence.

As always, I’ll be glad to hear from you. If you want to add your thoughts or have any questions, please leave a comment below or email me via yiye@yourlifeexpression.com.

For those of you who are curious how an Intuitive Soul Session can help you get unstuck and move forward, you can check out this page.

New here? Sign up my newsletter + be the first to receive the next complimentary resources.